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Manufactured by F. GRIMME 
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<Xxa CL 


FORMER LIBRARIAN 

THE NEWBERRY LIBRARY-CHICAGO 




ASSOCIATE EDITORS 

Professor William A. Golledge, D. D., F. R. G. S. 

Editor-in-Ohief New Standard Encyclopedia 
Samuel MacOlintock, Ph. D. Charles Higgins, Managing Editor 

Director LaSalle Extension University Americanized Encyclopedia Britannica 

William M. Handy 

Former Editor Sunday Chicago Tribune 
DeBower-Chapline Co., Publishers, Chicago 

































































































Copyright 1909 
BY 

DeBower-Chapline Company 


(c)£Uuf O' oC \ 

Cl. A 245567 

Alla 19 1909 



i MODERN LOOSE LEAF ENCYCLOPEDIA 

■, VOL I 


A, the first letter in almost all alpha-1 
bets. Most modern languages, as | 
French, Italian, German, have only one 
sound for a, namely, the sound which is 
heard in father pronounced short or 
long; in English this letter is made to 
represent seven sounds, as in the words 
father, mat, mate, mare, many, ball, 
what,besides being used in such digraphs 
as ea in heat, oa in boat.—A, in music, 
is the sixth note in the diatonic scale of 
C, and stands when in perfect tune to the 
latter note in the ratio of f to 1. The 
second string of the violin is tuned to 
this note. 

A i, a symbol attached to vessels of 
the highest class, A referring to the hull 
of the vessel, while 1 intimates the 
sufficiency of the rigging and whole 
equipment. 

AA (a), the name of a great many 
streams of central and northern Europe. 

AACHEN (a'Aen). See Aix-la-Cha- 
pelle. 

AALBORG (ol'borh), a seaport of 
Denmark, on the Liimfiord, see of a 
bishop, with a considerable trade, ship¬ 
building, fishing, etc. Pop. 31,457. 

AAR (ar), the name of several Euro- 

{ >ean rivers, of which the chief (160 miles 
ong) is a tributary of the Rhine, next to 
it and the Rhone the longest river in 
Switzerland. It has its origin from the 
upper and lower glaciers of the Aar in 
the Bernese Alps. On it are Interlaken, 
Thun, Bern, Solothurn, and Aarau, to 
which, as to the canton of Aargau, it 
gives its name. 



Aard-vark. 


AARD-VARK (ard'vark), a burrow¬ 
ing insectivorous animal of South Africa, 
having affinities with the ant-eaters and 
armadillos. Called also ground-hog and 
Cape pig. 

AARDWOLF (ard'wulf), a carnivo¬ 
rous burrowing animal of South Africa, 
allied to the hyenas and civets. Feeds 
on carrion, small mammals, insects, etc. 

AARGAU (ar'gou), or ARGOVIE (ar- 
go-ve), a northern canton of Switzer¬ 
land; area, 543 square miles; hilly, well 
wooded, abundantly watered by the Aar 
and its tributaries, and well cultivated. 
It formed part of the canton Bern till 
1798. Pop. 206,498, of whom more than 
half are Protestants. German is almost 
universally spoken. Capital, Aarau. 
v AARON (a'ron), of the tribe of Levi, 
eldest son of Amram and Jochebed, and 
brother and assistant of Moses. At 
Sinai, when the people became impatient 

P. E.—1 


A 

at „the long-continued absence of Moses, 
he complied with their request in making 
a golden calf, and thus became involved 
with them in the guilt of gross idolatry. 
The office of high-priest, which he first 
filled, was made hereditary in his family. 
He died at Mount Hor at the age of 123, 
and was succeeded by his son Eleazar. 

AARON’S ROD. See Goldenrod and 
Mullein. 

AB, the eleventh month of the Jew¬ 
ish civil, the fifth of the ecclesiastical, 
year—part of July and part of August. 

AB'ACA, or Manila Hemp, a strong 
fiber yielded by the leaf-stalks of a kind 
of plantain which grows in the Indian 
Archipelago, and is cultivated in the 
Philippines. The outer fibers of the 
leaf-stalks are made into strong and 
durable ropes, the inner into various 
fine fabrics. 

AB'ACO, Great and Little, two 
islands of the Bahamas group. 

AB'ACUS, a Latin term applied to an 
apparatus used in elementary schools 
for facilitating arithmetical operations, 
consisting of a number of parallel cords 
or wires, upon which balls or beads are 



Doric capital— a, the abacus. 


strung, the uppermost wire being appro¬ 
priated to units, the next to tens, etc.— 
In classic architecture it denotes the 
tablet forming the upper member of a 
column, and supporting the entablature. 
In Gothic architecture the upper mem¬ 
ber of a column from which the arch 
springs. 

ABAD'DON, the name given in Rev. 
ix. 11 as that of the angel of the bot¬ 
tomless pit, otherwise called Apollyon. 

ABALONE (ab-a-16'ne), a name in 
California for a species of ear-shell that 
furnishes mother-of-pearl. 

ABANDONMENT! a term in criminal 
law. Abandonment is the intentional 
exposure or desertion of a dependent per¬ 
son by one who is under a legal duty of 
protecting and maintaining him. A 
parent or a guardian of the person of a 
young child is guilty of a misdemeanor 
at common law if the child is physically 
injured in consequence of the abandon¬ 
ment; while if death results therefrom 
the abandoning parent or guardian is 
guilty of murder. 

ABA'RIM, mountain range of eastern 
Palestine, including Nebo, on which 
Moses died. 


ABATEMENT, in law, has various 

significations. Abatement of nuisances 
is the remedy allowed to a person injured 
by a public or private nuisance, of 
destroying or removing it himself. A 
plea in abatement is brought forward by 
a defendant when he wishes to defeat 
or quash a particular action on some 
formal or technical ground. Abatement, 
in mercantile law, is an allowance, 
deduction, or discount made for prompt 
payment or other reason. 

AB'ATIS, ABATTIS, in military affairs, 
a mass of trees cut down and laid with 
their branches turned toward the enemy 
in such a way as to form a defense for 
troops stationed behind them. 

ABATTOIR (ab-at-war'), a French 
term for a slaughter-house, now angli¬ 
cized since the establishment of the cel¬ 
ebrated abattoirs of Paris, instituted by 
Napoleon in 1807, and brought to com¬ 
pletion in 1818. Such public slaughter¬ 
houses, provided with every sort of con¬ 
venience, kept admirably clean, and with 
a plentiful supply of water, are now to 
be found in many large towns. 

ABBA, a Semitic word equivalent to 
“Father,” which, being applied in the 
Eastern Church to monks, superiors of 
monks, and other ecclesiastics, gave 
rise to the word abbot. In the Syriac 
and Coptic Churches it is given to the 
bishops. 

ABBAS I., the Great, shah or king of 
Persia, born in 1557, obtained the throne 
in 1586, and at his death in 1628 his 
dominions stretched from the Tigris to 
the Indus. He is looked upon by the 
Persians as their greatest sovereign. 

ABBASSIDES (ab'as-sidz), the name 
of an Arabian dynasty which supplanted 
the Ommiades. It traced its descent 
from Abbas (bom 566, died 652), uncle 
of Mohammed, and furnished thirty- 
seven caliphs to Bagdad between 749 
and 1258. Harun al Rashid was a mem¬ 
ber of this dynasty. See Caliphs. 

ABBE (ab-a), the French word for 
abbot, was, before the French revolu¬ 
tion, the common title of all who had 
studied theology either with a view to 
becoming ordained clergymen, or merely 
in the hope of obtaining some appoint¬ 
ment or benefice, to which such study 
was considered a preliminary requisite. 

AB'BE, Cleveland, American astrono¬ 
mer and meteorologist, born in New 
York City 1838. He graduated in 1857 
at the Free Academy (now the College 
of the City of New York), and studied 
astronomy at Ann Arbor and at Cam¬ 
bridge. From 1868 to 1873 he was 
director of the Cincinnati Observatory, 
where he inaugurated a system of daily 
weather forecasts based upon simul¬ 
taneous meteorological observations re¬ 
ported by telegraph. In December, 
1870, Professor Abbe was called to 
Washington to prepare the official 
weather predictions and storm warn¬ 
ings, and was appointed professor of 
meteorology in the Weather Bureau. 
To him is due the initiation in May, 
1879, of the movement toward the 


















ABBEOKUTA 


ABBREVIATIONS 


introduction of the present system of 
standard time and hourly meridians. 
In January, 1873, he prepared the first 
official Monthly Weather Review, which 
has continued under his editorship. 
He is professor of meteorology in 
Columbian University, Washington, 
lecturer on meteorology in Johns Hop¬ 
kins University, Baltimore, and a mem¬ 
ber of the National Academy of Sciences. 

ABBEOKU'TA, a town of West 
Africa, in the Lagos Protectorate, on 
the Ogun river 45 miles n. of Lagos, 
composed of scattered lines of mud 
houses, surrounded by a’ mud wall. It 
is connected with Lagos by a railway. 
Pop. 100,000 to 150,000. 

AB'BEY, a monastery or religious com¬ 
munity of the highest class, governed 
by an abbot, assisted generally by a 
prior, sub-prior, and other subordinate 
functionaries; or, in the case of a female 


subject is the “Search for the Holy 
Grail.” He was commissioned to 
paint the scene of the coronation of 
King Edward VII. 

AB'BOT, the head of an abbey (see 
Abbey), the lady of similar rank being 
called abbess. An abbess, however, was 
not, like the abbot, allowed to exercise 
the spiritual functions of the priest¬ 
hood, such as preaching, confessing, etc.' 
nor did abbesses ever succeed in freeing 
themselves from the control of their 
diocesan bishop. In the early age of 
monastic institutions (say. 300-600 
a.d.) the monks were not priests, but 
simply laymen who retired from the 
world to live in common, and the abbot 
was also a layman. In the course of 
time the abbots were usually ordained, 
and when an abbey was directly 
attached to a cathedral the bishop was 
also abbot. At first the abbeys were 



community, superintended by an abbess. 
An abbey invariably included a church. 
A priory differed from an abbey only 
in being scarcely so extensive an estab¬ 
lishment, and was governed by a prior. 
Some priories sprang originally from 
the more important abbeys, and re¬ 
mained under the jurisdiction of the 
abbots; but subsequently any real 
distinction between abbeys and priories 
was lost. The greater abbeys formed 
most complete and extensive establish¬ 
ments, including not only the church 
and other buildings devoted to the 
monastic life and its daily requirements, 
such as the refectory or eating-room, 
the dormitories or sleeping-rooms, the 
room for social intercourse, the school 
for novices, the scribes’ cells, library, 
and so on; but also workshops, store¬ 
houses, mills, cattle and poultry sheds, 
dwellings for artisans, laborers, and 
other servants, infirmary, guest-house, 
etc. 

ABBEY, Edwin Austin, American 
figure painter. He was born in Phila¬ 
delphia, April 1, 1852. He studied at 
the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine 
Arts, and afterward worked in New 
York until 1883, when he removed to 
England. In painting he has produced 
important canvases, dealing with sub¬ 
jects taken from Shakespeare and from 
romantic story. One of his most im¬ 
portant works decorates the delivery 
room of the Boston Public Library. Its 


more remarkable for their numbers than 
for their magnitude, but latterly many 
of them were large and richly endowed, 
and the heads of such establishments 
became personages of no small influence 
and power, more especially after the 
abbots succeeded (by the eleventh 
century) in freeing themselves from the 
jurisdiction of the bishop of their 
diocese. 

AB'BOTSFORD, the country-seat of 
Sir Walter Scott, on the south bank of 
the Tweed, in Roxburghshire, 3 miles 
from Melrose, in the midst of picturesque 
scenery, forming an extensive and 
irregular pile in the Scottish baronial 
style of architecture. 

ABBOTT, Emma (Emma Abbott 
Wetherell), an American soprano, born 
1849 in Chicago, Ill. She studied in 
Milan under San Giovanni and in Paris 
under Wartel and Albert James. She 
made her debut at Covent Garden, 
London. For three years thereafter she 
made an operatic and concert tour of 
England and Ireland under the direc¬ 
tion of Colonel Mapleson. Subsequently 
she returned to the United States, 
where she sang with the Abbott and Hess 
Opera Company, and later with the 
English opera company long known by 
her name. She died in 1891. 

ABBOTT, Jacob, a popular juvenile 
writer, born at Hallowell, Me., 1803. 
From 1825 to 1829 he was professor of 
mathematics and natural philosophy at 


Amherst. In 1839 he moved to Farm¬ 
ington. He died October 31, 1879. 
Abbott published more than two 
hundred volumes, the most noteworthy 
of which are The Rollo Books (28 
volumes), The Franconia Stories (10 vol¬ 
umes), The Rainbow and Lucky Series 
(5 volumes), a number of juvenile 
histories, written in collaboration with 
his brother, and a series of histories of 
America. 

ABBOTT, John Stephens Cabot, an 
American historian, a brother of Jacob 
Abbott, was born at Brunswick, Me., 
1805, and graduated at Bowdoin College 
in 1825. He died at Fairhaven, Conn., 
June 17, 1887. His most noteworthy 
books are The French Revolution, The 
History of Napoleon Bonaparte, Napo¬ 
leon at St. Helena, The History of Na¬ 
poleon the Third, The History of the 
Civil War in America, and the History 
of Frederick II., Called Frederick the 
Great. 

ABBOTT, Lyman, D.D. An Ameri¬ 
can Congregational clergyman and edi¬ 
tor, born at Roxbury, Mass., in 1835, 
son of Jacob Abbott. He graduated at 
the New York University in 1853. 
From 1869 he was successively one of 
the editors of Harper’s Magazine, and 
the principal editor of the illustrated 
Christian Weekly. He succeeded Henry 
Ward Beecher as pastor of Plymouth 
Church, Brooklyn, in 1888, but resigned 
in May, 1899, and has since devoted 
himself entirely to literary work. 



Lyman Abbott. 

ABBREVIATIONS, devices used in 
writing and printing to save time and 
space: consisting usually of curtail¬ 
ments effected in words and syllables 
by the removal of some letters, often of 
the whole of the letters except the first. 
The following is a list of the more im¬ 
portant :— 

A.B., artium baccalaureus, bachelor of 
arts; able seaman. 

Abp., archbishop 

A.C., ante Christum, before Christ. 

Ac., acre. 

Acc., %, or acct., account. 
























ABBREVIATIONS 


ABBREVIATIONS 


A.D., anno Domini, in the year of our 
Lord: used also as if equivalent to 
“after Christ,” or “of the Christian era.” 
A.D.C., aide-de-camp. 

AEt. or Aitat., cetatis (anno), in the year 
of his age. 

A.H., anno Hejira, in the year of the 
Hegira. 

A.M., ante meridiem, forenoon; anno 
mundi, in the year of the world; artium 
magister, master of arts. 

Anon., anonymous. 

A.R.A., associate of Royal Academy 
(London). 

A.R.S.A., associate of the Royal 
Scottish Academy. 

A.U.C ., ab urbe condita, from the 
building of Rome (753 b.c.). 

A. V., authorized version. 

B. A., bachelor of arts. 

Bart, or Bt., baronet. 

B.C., before Christ. 

B.C.L., bachelor of civil law. 

B.D., bachelor of divinity. 

B.L., bachelor of law. 

B.M., bachelor of medicine. 

Bp., bishop. 

B.S., bachelor of surgery. 

B.Sc., bachelor of science. 

B. V., blessed Virgin. 

C. , cap., or chap., chapter. 

C.A., chartered accountant. 

Cantab., Cantabrigiensis, of Cambridge 
Cantuar., Cantuariensis, of Canter¬ 
bury. 

C.B., companion of the Bath. 

C.D.V., carte de visite. 

C.E., civil engineer. 

Cf., confer, compare. 

C.I., order of the Crown of India. 

C.I.E., companion of the Indian 
Empire. 

C.J., chief justice. 

C.M., chirurgice magister, master in 
surgery; common meter. 

C.M.G. companion of the order of 
St. Michael and St. George. 

Co., company or county. 

C.O.D., cash on delivery. 

Cr., creditor. 

Crim. con., criminal conversation. 

C.S., civil service, clerk to the signet. 

C. S.I., companion of the Star of India. 
Ct., Connecticut. 

Curt., current, the present month. 
Cwt., hundredweight. 

d. , denarius, penny or pence. 

D. C., District of Columbia. 

D.C.L., doctor of civil law. 

D.D., doctor of divinity. 

Del., delineavit, drew it. 

D.F., defender of the faith. 

D.G., Dei gratia, by the grace of God. 

D.L., deputy lieutenant. 

D. Litt., doctor litter arum, doctor of 
letters. 

Do., ditto, the same. 

D.O.M., Deo Optimo Maximo, to God, 
the best and greatest. 

Dr., doctor, also debtor. 

D.Sc., doctor of science. 

D. V., Deo volente, God willing. 

Dwt., pennyweight. 

E. , east. 

Ebor., Eboracensis, of York. 

E.C., established church. 

E.E., errors excepted. 

e. g., exempli gratia, for example. 

E.I., East Indies. 

Etc. or &c., et cetera, and the rest. 
Ext., executor. 


F. or Fahr., Fahrenheit’s thermom¬ 
eter. 

F.A.S., fellow of the Antiquarian 
Society. 

F.C., Free Church. 

F.D., fidei defensor, defender of the 
faith. 

Fee., fecit, he made or did it. 

F.G.S., fellow of the Geological So¬ 
ciety. 

F.H.S., fellow of the Horticultural 
Society. 

FI., flourished. 

Fla., Florida. 

F.L.S., fellow of the Linnaean Society. 

F.M., field-marshal. 

F.O.B., free on board (goods de¬ 
livered). 

F.R.A.S., fellow of the Royal Astro¬ 
nomical (or Asiatic) Society. 

F.R.C.P., fellow of the Royal College 
of Physicians. 

F.R.C.S., fellow of the Royal College 
of Surgeons. 

F.R.G.S., fellow of the Royal Geo¬ 
graphical Society. 

F.R.S., fellow of the Royal Society. 

F.R.S.E., fellow of the Royal Society 
of Edinburgh. 

F.S.A., fellow of the Society of Arts 
or Antiquaries. 

F.S.S., fellow of the Statistical So¬ 
ciety. 

Ft., foot or feet. 

F. Z.S., fellow of the Zoological So¬ 
ciety. 

Ga., Georgia. 

Gal., gallon. 

G. C.B., grand cross of the Bath. 

G.C.M.G., grand cross of St. Michael 

and St. George. 

G.C.S.I., grand commander of the 
Star of India. 

G. P.O., general post-office. 

H. B.M.,his or her Britannic majesty. 

H.E.I.C.S., honorable East India Com¬ 
pany’s service. 

Hhd., hogshead. 

H.I.H., his or her imperial highness. 

H.M.S., his or her majesty’s ship. 

Hon., honorable. 

H.R., house of representatives. 

H.R.H., his (her) royal highness. 

H. S.H., his (her) serene highness. 

l a. , Iowa. 

l b. or Ibid., ibidem, in the same place. 

Id., idem, the same. 

i.e., id est, that is. 

I. H.S., Jesus hominum salvator, Jesus 
the Savior of men: originally it was 
IH2., the first three letters of xhsotx 
( Iesous ), Jesus. 

Incog., incognito, unknown. 

Inf., infra, below. 

I.N.R.I., Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudceo- 
rum, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the 
Jews. 

Inst., instant, or of this month; 
institute. 

I. O.U., I owe you. 

J. P., justice of the peace. 

Jr., junior. 

J. U.D., juris utriusque doctor, doctor 
both of the civil and the canon law. 

K. C., king’s counsel. 

K.C.B., knight commander of the 
Bath. 

K.C.M.G., knight commander of St. 
Michael and St. George. 


K.C.S.I., knight commander of the 
Star of India. 

K.G., knight of the Garter. 

K.G.C.B. knight grand cross of the 
Bath. 

K.P., knight of St. Patrick. 

K. T., knight of the Thistle. 

Kt. or Knt., knight. 

Ky., Kentucky. 

L. ,1., or £, pounds sterling. 

L.A., literate in arts. 

La., Louisiana. 

Lat., latitude. 

Lb. or lb., libra, a pound (weight). 
L.C.J., lord chief-justice. 

Ldp., lordship. 

L.D.S., licentiate in dental surgery. 
Lit. D., doctor of literature. 

L.L., Low Latin. 

L.L.A., lady literate in arts. 

LL.B., legum baccalaureus, bachelor of 
laws. 

LL.D., legum doctor, doctor of laws 
(that is, the civil and the canon law). 
LL.M., master of laws. 

Lon. or Long., longitude. 

L.R.C.P., licentiate Royal College of 
Physicians. 

L.R.C.S., licentiate of the Royal Col¬ 
lege of Surgeons. 

L.S.A., licentiate of the Society of 
Apothecaries. 

L. S.D., librae, solidi, denarii, pounds, 
shillings, pence. 

M. A., master of arts. 

Mass., Massachusetts. 

M.B., medicince baccalaureus, bachelor 
of medicine. 

M.C., member of Congress; master 
in surgery. 

M.D., medicince doctor, doctor of medi¬ 
cine. 

Md., Maryland. 

Me., Maine. 

M.E., mining engineer; Methodist 
Episcopal. 

Messrs., messieurs, gentlemen. 
M.F.H., master of fox-hounds. 
M.I.C.E., member of the Institution of 
Civil Engineers. 

Mile., mademoiselle. 

Mme., madame. 

Mo., Missouri. 

M.P., member of Parliament. 
M.R.C.S., member of the Royal Col¬ 
lege of Surgeons. 

M.R.C.V.S., member of the Royal Col¬ 
lege of Veterinary Surgeons. 

M. R.I.A., member of the Royal Irish 
Academy. 

MS., manuscript ; MSS., manuscripts. 
Mus. D., musicce doctor, doctor of 
music. 

N. , north. 

N.B., nota bene, take notice; also 
North Britain, New Brunswick. 

N.C., North Carolina. 

N.D., no date. 

Nem. con., nemine contradicente, one 
contradicting, unanimously. 

N.H., New Hampshire. 

N.J., New Jersey. 

No., numero, number. 

N.P., notary public. 

N.S., new style, Nova Scotia 
N.S.W., New South Wales. 

N.T., New Testament. 

N.Y., New York. 

N. Z., New Zealand. 

O. , Ohio. 

Ob., obiit, died. 




ABDEIIA 


ABERCROMBIE 


O 8., olrl stylo. 

O. T., Old Testament. 

Oxon.| Oxoniensie, of Oxford. 

O i. t ounce or ounces. 

Pa., Pennsylvania. 

P. C , privy-councilor. 

P.E., Protestant Episcopal. 

l’cr cent., per centum, l>y tho hundred. 
Ph.D., philosopher doctor, <loctor of 
philosophy. 

Pin*., pinxit, painted it. 

P.M., pout meridiem, afternoon. 

P.O., post-office. 

P.O.O., post-office order. 

P.P., parish priest. 

Pp., pages. 

P.P.C., pour prendre coiuji, to take 
leave. 

Prox., proximo ( mense ), next month. 

P. S., postscript. 

0.,question; queen. 
o.C., queen's counsel. 

O.E.D., quod erat demonstrandum, 
which was to be demonstrated. 

Q. E.F., quod erat. faciendum, wind) 
was to he done. 

On., query. 

Quant. miff., quantum su/ficit, as much 
ns is needful. 

O.V., quod ride, which see. 

R. . rex, regina, king, queen. 

U.A., royal academician; royal artil¬ 
lery. 

R.A.M., Royal Academy of Music. 
K.C., Roman Catholic. 

R.E., royal engineers. 

Rev., reverend. 

R.U.A., Royal Hibernian Academi¬ 
cian. 


R.I., Rhode Island. 

R.L.P., rcquicscat in pace, may ho rest 
in peace. 

R.M., royal marines. 

R.N.. royal na vy. 

R.S.A.. royal Scottish academician. 
U.S.V.P., rfpondee, s’il vows plait, 
reply, if you please. 

Rt. lion., right honorable. 

Rt. Wpful., right worshipful. 

R. V., revised version. 

S. , South. 

S. or St., saint. 

S.C., South Carolina. 

Sc., scilicet, namely, vis. 

S.R, Society of Jesus (Jesuits). 
S.P.C.K.. Society for Promoting Chris¬ 
tian Knowledge. 

S.P.Q.R., senatus populusque Ro- 
tnanus, the senate and people of Rome. 

S.S.C., solicitor before tho supreme 
courts. 

St., saint, street. 

S.T.D., sdcrir theologia? doctor, doctor 
of divinity. 

S. T.P., sacra theologies professor, pro¬ 
fessor of divinity. 

T. C.D.. Trinity College, Dublin. 

Hit., ultimo, last. 

U. P., United Presbyterian. 

TJ.S., United States. 

H.S.A., United States of America. 

U. S.N., United States navy. 

V. , vide, see; also versus, against. 
Va., Virginia. 

V.C., Victoria Cross. 

Viz., videlicet, to wit, or namely. 

V.P., vice president. 

V. S., veterinary surgeon. 

Vt., Vermont. 

W. . west . 

W.i., West Indies. 


W.S., writer to the signet. 

Xmas, Christmas. 

In LL.D., LL.B., etc., the letter is 
doubled, according to the Roman 
system, to show that tho abbreviation 
represents a plural noun. 

ABDE'RA, an ancient Greek city on 
the Thracian coast, the birthplace of 
Democritus (tho laughing philosopher), 
Anaxarchus, and Protagoras. Its in¬ 
habitants were proverbial for stupidity. 

ABDICATION, properly the volun¬ 
tary, but sometimes also the involuntary 
resignation of an office or dignity, and 
more especially that of sovereign power. 

ABDO'MEN, in man, the belly, or 
lower cavity of the trunk, separated from 
tho upper cavity or thorax by the dia¬ 
phragm or midriff, and bounded below 
by the bones of the pelvis. It contains 



the viscera belonging to the digestive 
and urinary systems. What are called 
tho abdominal regions will be under¬ 
stood from the accompanying cut, in 
which l is the epigastric region, 2 the 
umbilical, 3 the pubic, 4 4 the right and 
left hypochondriac, 5 5 the right and left 
lumbar, 0 0 right and left iliac. The 
name is given to the corresponding por¬ 
tion of the body in other animals. In 
insects it comprises the whole body be¬ 
hind the thorax, usually consisting of a 
series of rings. 

ABDOM INAL FISHES, a group of 
(lie soft-linnod fishes, having tins upon 
(lie abdomen, and comprising the her¬ 
ring, pike, salmon, carp, etc. 

ABDUC'TION, a legal term, generally 
applied to denote the offense of carrying 
off a female, either forcibly or by fraudu¬ 
lent representations. Such a delin¬ 
quency with regard to a man is styled 
kidnapping. There are various de¬ 
scriptions of abduction recognized in 
criminal jurisprudence, such as that of 
a child, of a n heiress, or of a wife. 

AB'DUL-HAM'ID, Sultan of Turkey, 
born in 1842, succeeded his brother 
Murad V., who was deposod on proof 
of his insanity in 1876. 

ABECEDARIAN, a term formed from 
the first, four letters of the alphabet, and 
applied to the followers of Storch, a 
German Anabaptist, in the sixteenth 
century, because they rejected all 
worldly knowledge, even the learning 
of the alphabet. 

A BECIC'ETT, Gilbert Abbot, Eng¬ 
lish writer, born near London, in 1811. 
lie wrote Comic History of England, 
Comic History of Rome, and Comic 
Blackstone, and between fifty and sixty 
plays, some of which still keep the stage, 
lie died in 1856. 


A BECKETT, Thomas. See Beckett. 

ABEL, properly Hebei, the second 
son of Adam. He was a shepherd, and 
was slain by his brother Cain from 
jealousy because his sacrifice Was 
accepted, while Cain’s was rejected 
Several of the fathers, among others 
SS. Chrysostom and Augustin, regard 
him as a type of Christ. 

ABELARD (ab'e-lard), or ABAILARD, 
Peter, a celebrated scholastic teacher, 
born near Nantes in Brittany, in 1079. 
He made extraordinary progress with 
his studies, and, ultimately eclipsing his 
teachers, he opened a school of scholastic 
philosophy near Paris, which attracted 
crowds of students from the neighbor¬ 
ing city. His success in the fiery de¬ 
bates which were then the fashion in the 
schools made him many enemies, among 
whom was Guillaume de Champeaux, 
his former teacher, chief of the cathe¬ 
dral school of Notre-Dame, and the 
most advanced of the Realists. Abelard 
succeeded his adversary in this school 
(in 1113), and under him were trained 
many men who afterward rose to 
eminence, among thenvbeing the future 
Pope Celestin II., Peter Lombard, and 
Arnold of Brescia. While he was at 
the height of his popularity, and in 
his fortieth year, he became infatuated 
with a passion for Heloise—then only 
eighteen years of age—niece of Fulbert, 
a canon of Paris. Obtaining a home in 
Fulbert’s house under the pretext of 
teaching Heloise philosophy, their inter¬ 
course at length Decame apparent, and 
Abelard, who had retired to Brittany, 
was followed by Heloise, who there gave 
birth to a son. A private marriage took 
place, and Heloise returned to her 
uncle’s house, but, refusing to make 
public her marriage (as likely to spoil 
Abelard’s career), she was subjected to 
severe treatment at the hands of her 
uncle. To save her from this Abelard 
carried her oil and placed her in a con¬ 
vent at Argenteuil, a proceeding which 
so incensed Fulbert that he hired ruffians, 
who broke into Abelard’s chamber and 
subjected him to a shameful mutilation. 
Abelard, filled with grief and shame, 
became a monk n the abbey of St. 
Denis, and Heloise took the veil. Abe¬ 
lard did not long survive, dying at St. 
Marcel, near ChAlon-sur-S&one, 1142. 
Heloise, who had become abbess of the 
Paraclete, had him buried there, where 
she herself was afterward laid by his 
side. 

ABELE (a-lxT), a name of the white 
poplar. 

A'BELITE, ABE'LIAN, a member of a 
religious sect in Africa which arose in 
the fourth century after Christ. They 
married, but lived in continence, after 
the manner, as they maintained, of 
Abel, and attempted to keep up the 
sect by adopting the children of others. 

ABELMOS'CHUS (-mos'kus), a genus 
of tropical plants of the mallow family. 
One species yields edible pods and also 
a valuable fiber. The fruit, called okra 
or ochra, is used in soups. 

AB'ERCROMBIE, John, M.D., a 
Scottish writer on medical and moral 
science, and an eminent physician, born 
in Aberdeen, 1781, died at Edinburgh 
in 1844. He graduated at the university 
of Edinburgh in 1803, and subsequently 









ABERDEEN 


ABRUZZI 


pursued his studies in London, returning 
to Edinburgh in 1804, where he ac¬ 
quired an extensive practice as a physi¬ 
cian. He is known from his Inquiries 
concerning the Intellectual Powers and 
his Philosophy of the Moral Feelings. 

ABERDEEN', a university city, and 
royal, municipal, and parliamentary 
burgh of Scotland, cap. of the county of 
same name, mainly on the north bank 
of the Dee at its entrance into the Ger¬ 
man Ocean, and between this river and 
the Don, with a part also on the south 
bank of the Dee, while the municipal 
limits include the adjacent Woodside. 
There are docks 34 acres in area, an 
extensive tidal harbor and basin, and a 
graving-dock. The shipping trade is 
extensive. The industries embrace 
wool, cotton, jute, linen, combs, soap, 
preserved provisions, chemicals, paper, 
shipbuilding, and especially the cutting 
and polishing of granite. The fishing 
industry is of great importance. Pop. 
(1901), 153,100.—The County of Aber¬ 
deen forms the northeastern portion of 
Scotland, and is bounded on the east 
and north by the North Sea. Area, 
1,251,451 acres. It is divided into six 
districts (Mar, Formartine, Buchan, 
Alford, Garioch, and Strathbogie), and 
is generally hilly, there being in the 
southwest some of the highest moun¬ 
tains in Scotland, as Ben Macdhui 
(4295 feet), Cairntoul (4245), Cairngorm 
(4090), Lochnagar, etc. Pop. 304,420. 

ABERRATION, in astronomy, the 
difference between the true and the 
observed position of a heavenly body, 
the result of the combined effect of the 
motion of light and the motion of the 
eye of the observer caused by the 
annual or diurnal motion of the earth; 
or of the motion of light and that of the 
body from which the light proceeds. 
When the auxiliary cause is the annual 
revolution of the earth round the sun 
it is called annual aberration, in conse¬ 
quence of which a fixed star may appear 
as much as 20" - 4 from its true position; 
when the auxiliary cause is the diurnal 
rotation of the earth on its axis it is 
called diurnal aberration, which amounts 
at the greatest to 0" - 3; and when the 
auxiliary cause is the motion of the 
body from which the light proceeds it 
is called planetary aberration. 

A'BIB, the first month of the Jewish 
ecclesiastical year, and the seventh of 
the civil year, corresponding to the 
latter part of March and the first of 
April. Also called Nisan. 

ABIOGENESIS (a : bI-o-jen'e-us), the 
doctrine or hypothesis that living mat¬ 
ter may be produced from non-living; 
spontaneous generation. 

ABJURA'TION, Oath of, an oath 
which by an English act passed in 1701 
had to be taken by all holders of public 
offices, clergymen, teachers, members 
of the universities, and lawyers, ad¬ 
juring and renouncing the exiled Stuarts: 
superseded in 1858 by a more compre¬ 
hensive oath, declaring allegiance to 
the present royal family.—Abjuration 
of the realm was an oath that a person 
guilty of felony, and who had taken 
sanctuary, might take to go-into exile, 
and not return on pain of death. 

AB'LATIVE, a term applied to a case 
of nouns, adjectives, and pronouns in 


Latin, Sanskrit, and some other lan¬ 
guages; originally given to the case in 
Latin because separation from (ab, from, 
latus, taken) was considered to be one 
of the chief ideas expressed by the case. 

ABOLITIONISTS, the name by which 
those opponents of slavery were desig¬ 
nated who were the most intense in their 
desire to secure the immediate emanci¬ 
pation of the blacks. Although dis¬ 
credited in many quarters, the aboli¬ 
tionists were in the end successful, from 
one point of view, in making slavery a 
national issue and in hastening the time 
of final decision as to its continuance. 

ABOMA'SUM, ABOMA'SUS, the fourth 
stomach of ruminating animals, next 
the omasum or third stomach. 

ABORIG'INES (ab-o-rij'i-nez), the 
name given in general to the earliest 
known inhabitants of a country, those 
who are supposed to have inhabited the 
land from the beginning [The singular 
of the word is Aboriginal, or sometimes 
Aborigine.] 

ABORTION, in medicine, the ex¬ 
pulsion of the foetus before it is capable 
of independent existence. This may 
take place at any period of pregnancy 
before the completion of the twenty- 
eighth week. A child born after that 
time is said to be premature. Abortion 
may be the result of the general debility 
or ill health of the mother, of a plethoric 
constitution, of special affections of the 
uterus, of severe exertions, sudden 
shocks, etc. Various medicinal sub¬ 
stances, generally violent emmena- 
gogues or drastic medicines, are believed 
to have the effect of provoking abortion, 
and are sometimes resorted to for this 
purpose. Attempts to procure abortion 
are punishable by law in all civilized 
states. The term is applied in botany 
to denote the suppression by non¬ 
development of one or more of the parts 
of a flower, which consists normally 
of four, whorls—namely, calyx, corolla, 
stamens, and pistil. 

ABOUKIR (a-bo-ker'), a small village 
on the Egyptian coast, 10 miles east of 
Alexandria. In Aboukir Bay took place 
the naval battle in which Nelson anni¬ 
hilated a French fleet on the night of 1st 
and 2d August, 1798, thus totally de¬ 
stroying the naval power of France in 
the Mediterranean. 

ABOUT (a-bo), Edmond Francois Val¬ 
entin, a French novelist and miscellan¬ 
eous writer, bom in 1828, died in 1885. 

ABRACADAB'RA, a word of eastern 
origin used in incantations. When 
written on paper so as to form a triangle, 
the first line containing the word in full, 
the one below it omitting the last letter, 
and so on each time until only one letter 
remained, and worn as an amulet it was 
supposed to be an antidote against 
certain diseases. 

ABRACADABRA 
ABRACADABR 
ABRACADAB 
ABRACADA 
A B R A C A D 
A B R A C A 
A B R A C 
A B R A 
A B R 
A B 
A 


A'BRAHAM, originally ABRAM, the 

reatest of the Hebrew patriarchs, was 
orn at Ur in Chaldea in 2153 b.c. 
according to Hales, in 1996 b.c. accord¬ 
ing to Ussher, while Bunsen says he lived 
2850 b.c. He migrated, accompanied 
by his wife Sarah and his nephew Lot, 
to Canaan, where he led a nomadic life, 
which extended over 175 years. His 
two sons Isaac and Ishmael were the 
progenitors of the Jews and Arabs 
respectively. 

ABRAHAM, Heights or Plains of. 

Qpn OnPnPP 

ABRAX'AS (or ABRASAX) STONES, 

the name given to stones or gems found 
in Syria, Egypt, and elsewhere, cut into 
almost every variety of shape, but 
generally having a human trunk and 
arms, with a cock’s head, two serpents’ 
tails for the legs, etc., and the word 
Abraxas or Abrasax in Greek characters 
engraved upon them. They appear to 
have been first used by the Gnostic sect. 

ABRIDGMENT. In the law of copy¬ 
right an abridgment is deemed a new 
work, and is not an infringement of the 
copyright. An abridgment is distin¬ 
guished in the law of copyright from a 
compilation. The former is a con¬ 
densation of the substance, while the 
latter is a reproduction in part, at 
least, of the language of the copy¬ 
righted article, and is held to be an 
infringement. 

ABROGATION, the repealing of a 
law by a competent authority. 

ABRO'MA, a genus of small trees, 
natives of India, Java, etc., one species 
of which has a bark yielding a strong 
white fiber, from which good cordage is 
made. 

ABRUPT', in botany, terminating 
suddenly, as if a part were cut short off. 

AB'RUS, a genus of plants, one species 
of which has round brilliant scarlet 
seeds, used to make necklaces and 
rosaries. Its root is sweetish and 
mucilaginous, and is used as a sub¬ 
stitute for licorice. The seeds yield 
a strong poison. 

ABRUZZI (a-brut'se), a division of 
Italy on the Adriatic, between Umbria 
and the Marches on the north, and 
Apulia on the south. It is united with 
Molise to form a compartimento, com¬ 
prising the four provinces of Aquila 
degU Abruzzi, Campobasso, Chieti, and 
Teramo. The seacoast of about 80 
miles does not possess a single harbor. 
The interior is rugged and mountainous, 
being traversed throughout by the Apen¬ 
nines. The lower parts consist of fertile 
plains and valleys, yielding corn, wine, 
oil, almonds, saffron, etc.; area, 6380 sq. 
miles; pop. 1,441,551. 

ABRUZZI, Prince Luigi Amadeo of 
Savoy-Aosta, Duke of the, an Italian 
traveler and arctic explorer, son of ex- 
King Amadeus of Spain, was born in 
Madrid in 1873, and studied at the naval 
college in Leghorn. In 1897 he attracted 
attention by making the first ascent of 
Mount St. Elias. On June 12, 1899, he 
set out on his voyage toward the north 
pole, his plan being to leave his ship, 
the Stella Polare, in harbor, and send 
northward a series of sledge expeditions. 
He spent one winter in the Bay of 
Teplitz, and would have remained a 
second naa nor a serious injury to 






ABSALOM 


ABYSSINIA 


the vessel compelled his return. While 
repairs were being made, one of his 
sledge parties, under the immediate 
direction of Captain Umberto Cagni, 
attained the latitude of 86° 33', 239.15 
statute miles from the pole. His explo¬ 
rations determined the northern bound¬ 
ary of Franz-Josef Land and the non¬ 
existence of Peterman’s Land. 

AB'SALOM, the third son of King 
David, whose romantic career makes 
him a prominent figure in Old Testa¬ 
ment history. 

ABSCONDTNG, the act of leaving 
the state or concealing oneself therein 
for a fraudulent purpose, such as 
hindering, delaying, or defrauding one’s 
creditors. It is not a common-law 
offense for one to go beyond the 
boundaries of his country, nor to treat 
his house as his castle, that is, as a 
place into which an officer has no right 
to break in order to serve civil process. 
But if a debtor went abroad or locked 
himself in his house to avoid the service 
of legal process, or if he was about to 
do either with like intent, the creditor 
was entitled, upon resorting to the 
proper proceedings, to seize his prop¬ 
erty. 

AB'SCESS, any collection of purulent 
matter or pus formed in some tissue or 
organ, of the body, and confined within 
some circumscribed area, of varying 
size, but always painful and often 
dangerous. 

ABSENTEE', the name which has 
been given to a person who possesses 
property in one country, and resides 
and spends his income in another. This 
practice is especially prevalent among 
Irish land-owners, and many political 
economists have ascribed much of the 
poverty and discontent in Ireland to 
absenteeism. 

ABSINTHE, a liqueur or aromatised 
spirit, prepared by pounding the leaves 
and flowering tops of various species of 
wormwood, with angelica root, sweet 
flag root, the leaves of dittany of Crete, 
star-anise fruit, and other aromatics, 
and macerating these in alcohol. After 
soaking for about eight days the com¬ 
pound is distilled, yielding an emerald- 
colored liquor, to which a proportion of 
an essential-oil, usually that of anise, is 
added. The chief seat of the manufac¬ 
ture is in the canton of Neufchatel, in 
Switzerland, although absinthe distil¬ 
leries are scattered generally throughout 
Switzerland and France. The liqueur 
is chiefly consumed in France, but there 
is also a considerable export trade to 
the United States of America. When 
taken habitually or in excess, its effects 
are very pernicious. It is a favorite 
drink of the Parisians. 

AB'SOLUTE, in a general sense, 
loosed or freed from all limitations or 
conditions. In politics, an absolute 
monarchy is that form of government 
in which the ruler is unlimited or un¬ 
controlled by constitutional checks. In 
modern metaphysics the Absolute rep¬ 
resents the unconditioned, infinite, and 
self-existent. 

ABSOLU'TION, remission of a pen¬ 
itent’s sins in the name of God. It is 
commonly maintained that down to the 
twelfth century the priests used only 
what is called the precatory formula, 


“May God or Christ absolve thee,” 
which is still the form in the Greek 
Church; whereas the Roman Catholic 
uses the expression “I absolve thee,” 
thus regarding the forgiveness of sins 
as in the power of the priest (the indic¬ 
ative form). This theory of absolution 
was confirmed by the Council of Trent. 
The passages of Scripture on which the 
Roman Catholic Church founds in lay¬ 
ing down its doctrine of absolution are 
such as Matt. xvi. 19 ;xviii. 18; John xx. 
23. Among Protestants absolution prop¬ 
erly means a sentence by which a per¬ 
son who stands excommunicated is re¬ 
leased from that punishment. 

ABSOR'BENTS, the system of mi¬ 
nute vessels by which the nutritive ele¬ 
ments of food and other matters are 
carried into the circulation of vertebrate 
animals. The vessels consist of two 
different sets, called respectively lac- 
teals and lymphatics. The former arise 
from the digestive tract, the latter from 
the tissues generally, both joining a 
common trunk which ultimately enters 
the blood-vessel system. Absorbents in 
medicines are substances such as chalk, 
charcoal, etc., that absorb or suck up 
excessive secretion of fluid or gas. 

ABSORP'TION, in physiology, one 
of the vital functions by which the ma¬ 
terials of nutrition and growth are ab¬ 
sorbed and conveyed to the organs of 
plants and animals. In vertebrate an¬ 
imals this is done by the lymphatics 
and lacteals, in plants chiefly by the 
roots. See Absorbents. 

ABUSE' OF PROC'ESS, the wrong¬ 
ful employment of a regular judicial 
proceeding. Courts of justice, refuse 
to lend themselves to the abuse of their 
procedure, and may, accordingly, stay 
or dismiss actions and strike out de¬ 
fenses which are manifestly frivolous or 
vexatious. 

AB'STRACT OF TI'TLE, a state¬ 
ment in writing of the successive con¬ 
veyances through which a person claims 
to own a parcel of land. A perfect ab¬ 
stract should furnish a complete history 
of the title sought to be transferred, 
showing the origin and nature of the 
vendor’s interest, all incumbrances and 
other interests, such as mortgages, 
easements, judgments, trusts, etc., 
which affect his title. In the United 
States the public records of conveyances 
are the principal source of information 
upon which the maker of the Abstract 
proceeds. 

AB'STINENCE. See Fasting, Tem¬ 
perance. 

ABSTRAC'TION, the operation of 
the mind by which it disregards part of 
what is presented to its observation in 
order to concentrate its attention on 
the remainder. It is the foundation of 
the operation of generalization, by 
which we arrive at general conceptions. 
In order, for example, to form the con¬ 
ception of a horse, we disregard the 
color and other peculiarities of the par¬ 
ticular horses observed by us, and at¬ 
tend only to those qualities which all 
horses have in common. In rising to 
the conception 'of an animal we disre¬ 
gard still more qualities, and attend 
only to those which all animals have in 
common with one another. 

ABSURDUM.Rkdcctio ad, a mode 


of demonstrating the truth of a propo¬ 
sition, by showing that its contradictory 
leads to an absurdity. It is much em¬ 
ployed by Euclid. 

ABT, FRANZ,born in Prussian Sax¬ 
ony, December 22, 1819 ; died March 31, 
1855. He was educated at Leipzig and 
became professor of music at Bernburg, 
Zurich and Weisbaden. He wrote the 
music of over two hundred popular songs. 

ABU'TILON, a genus of plants, some¬ 
times called Indian mallows, inhabiting 
the East Indies, Australia, Brazil, 
Siberia, etc. Several of them yield a val¬ 
uable hemp-like fiber. One, a trouble¬ 
some weed in the Middle United States, 
has been recommended for cultivation. 

ABU-BEKR, or Father of the Virgin, 
the father-in-law and first successor of 
Mohammed. His right to the succession 
was unsuccessfully contested by Ali, 
Mohammed’s son-in-law, and a schism 
took place, which divided the Moham¬ 
medans into the two great sects of Sun¬ 
nites and Shiites, the former maintain¬ 
ing the validity of Abu-Bekr’s and the 
latter that of Ali’s claim. 

ABUT'MENT, the part of a bridge 
which receives and resists the lateral 
outward thrust of an arch; the masonry, 
rock, or other solid materials from which 
an arch springs. 

ABY'DOS (1), an ancient city of Asia 
Minor, on the Hellespont, at the nar¬ 
rowest part of the strait, opposite 
Sestos. Leander, say ancient writers, 
swam nightly from Abydos to Sestos to 
see his loved Hero—a feat in swimming 
accomplished also by Lord Byron.—(2), 
an ancient city of Upper Egypt, about 
6 miles west of the Nile, now represented 
only by ruins of temples, tombs, etc. It 
was celebrated as the burying-place of 
the god Osiris, and its oldest temple was 
dedicated to him. Here, in 1818, was 
discovered the famous Abydos Tablet, 
now in the British Museum, and con¬ 
taining a list of the predecessors of 
Raineses the Great, which was supple¬ 
mented by the discovery of a similar 
historical tablet in 1864. 

ABYSSIN'IA, a country of eastern 
Africa, which, roughly speaking, may 
be said to extend from lat. 8° to 16° n. 
and Ion. 35° to 41° e.; having Nubia on 
the n.w., the Soudan on the w., the Red 
Sea littoral and the Dan&kil territory 
on the e., and the country of the Gallas 
on the s.; total area about 120,000 sq.m.; 
chief divisions Tigr6, Amhara, and Shoa. 
It is as a whole an elevated region, with 
a general slope to the northwest. The 
mountains in various parts of the coun¬ 
try rise to 12,000 and 13,000 feet, while 
some of the peaks are over 15,000 feet 
(Ras Dashan being 15,160), and are 
always covered with snow. The prin¬ 
cipal rivers belong to the Nile basin, the 
chief being the impetuous Tacazz6 (“the 
Terrible”), in the north, and the Abai in 
the south, the latter being really the 
upper portion of the Blue Nile. The 
principal lake is Lake Tzana or Dembea 
(from which issues the Abai), upward 
of 6000 feet above the sea, having a 
length of about 45 and a breadth of 35 
miles. Round this lake lies a fertile 
plain, emphatically called the granary 
of the country.—According to elevation 
there are several zones of vegetation. 
Within the lowest belt, which reaches 






ACACIA 


ACADEMY 


an elevation of 4800 feet, cotton, wild 
indigo, acacias, ebony, baobabs, sugar- 
canes, coffee-trees, date-palms, etc., 
flourish, while the larger animals are 
lions, panthers, elephants, rhinoceroses, 



Abyssinian priest. 


hippopotamuses, jackals, hyenas, bears, 
numerous antelopes, monkeys, and 
crocodiles. The middle zone, rising to 
9000 feet, produces the grains, grasses, 
and fruits of southern Europe, the 
orange, vine, peach, apricot, the bam¬ 
boo, sycamore-tree, etc. The principal 
grains are millet, barley, wheat, maize, 
and teff, the latter a small seed, a favor¬ 
ite breadstuff of the Abyssinia ns. Two, 
and in some places three, crops are 
obtained in one year. All the domestic 
animals of Europe, except swine, are 
known. There is a variety of ox with 
immense horns. The highest zone, 
reaching to 14,000 feet, has but little 
wood, and generally scanty vegetation, 
the hardier corn-plants only being 
grown; but oxen, goats, and long- 
wooled sheep find abundant pasture.— 
The climate is as various as the surface, 
but as a whole is temperate and agree¬ 
able; in some of the valleys the heat is 
often excessive, while on the mountains 
the weather is cold. In certain of the 



Abyssinian chief and soldiers. 


lower districts malaria prevails.—The 
chief mineral products are sulphur, iron, 
copper, coal, and salt, the latter serving 
to some extent as money.—There has 
been a great intermixture of races in 


Abyssinia. What may be considered 
the Abyssinians proper seem to have a 
blood-relationship with the Bedouin 
Arabs. The complexion varies from 
very dark through different shades of 
brown and copper to olive. The figure 
is usually symmetrical. Other races are 
the black Gallas from the south; the 
Falashas, who claim descent from Abra¬ 
ham, and retain many Jewish character¬ 
istics; the Agows, Gongas, etc. The 
great majority of the people profess 
Christianity, belonging, like the Copts, 
to the sect of the Monophysites. Their 
religion consists chiefly in the perform¬ 
ance of empty ceremonies, and gross 
superstition as well as ignorance pre¬ 
vails. The head of the church is called 
the Abuna (“our father”), and is conse¬ 
crated by the Coptic patriarch of Alex¬ 
andria. Geez or Ethiopian is the 
language of their sacred books: it has 
long ago ceased to be spoken. The 
chief spoken language is the Amharic; 
in it some books have been published. 
Mohammedanism appears to be gaining 
ground in Abyssinia, and in respect of 
morality the Moslems stand higher than 
the Christians. A corrupt form of 
Judaism is professed by the Falashas.— 
The bulk of the people are devoted to 
agriculture and cattle-breeding. The 
trade and manufactures are of small 
importance. A good deal of common 
cotton cloth and some finer woven 
fabrics are produced. Leather is pre¬ 
pared to some extent, silver filagree 
work is produced, and there are manu¬ 
factures of common articles of iron and 
brass, coarse black pottery, etc. The 
foreign trade is carried on through Zeila 
(British) and Djibouti (French) on the 
Gulf of Aden, and Massowa on the Red 
Sea (Italian), exports being hides, coffee, 
wax, gum, ivory, etc., imports textile 
fabrics, firearms, tobacco, etc. The 
Abyssinians were converted to Chris¬ 
tianity in the fourth century, by some 
missionaries from Alexandria. The 
title King of Kings was assumed by 
Johannes in 1881. Advantage was 
taken of the troubled state of Abyssinia 
by the Egyptians, who annexed Mas¬ 
sowa and the region adjacent, Abyssinia 
having been thus shut out from the sea. 
Hostilities were repeatedly carried on 
between Johannes and the Egyptians. 
Latterly the Italians gained and hold 
possession of Massowa and other terri¬ 
tory. Johannes died in 1889, and was 
succeeded by Menelek II., who admitted 
of an Italian protectorate over Abys¬ 
sinia; but quarrels and hostilities broke 
out, the Italians were defeated, and 
their protectorate ceased. The popula¬ 
tion is estimated at about 3,500,000. 

ACA'CIA, a genus of plants, consist¬ 
ing of trees or shrubs with compound 
pinnate leaves and small leaflets, grow¬ 
ing in Africa, Arabia, the East Indies, 
Australia, etc. The flowers, usually 
small, are arranged in spikes or globular 
heads at the axils of the leaves near the 
extremity of the branches. Several of 
the species yield gum-arabic and other 
gums; some have astringent barks and 
pods, used in tanning. An Indian species 
yields the valuable astringent called 
catechu; another, the wattle-tree of 
Australia, from 15 to 30 feet in height, 
is the most beautiful and useful of the 


species found there. Its bark contains 
a large percentage of tannin, and is 
hence exported. Some species yield 
valuable timber; some are cultivated 
for the beauty of their flowers. 



Acacia. 


ACAD'EMY, an association for the 
promotion of literature, science, or art; 
established sometimes by government, 
sometimes by the voluntary union of 
private individuals. The name Acad¬ 
emy was first applied to the philosoph¬ 
ical school of Plato, from the place where 
he used to teach, a grove or garden at 
Athens which was said to have belonged 
originally to the hero Academus. Acad¬ 
emies devote themselves either to the 
cultivation of science generally or to 
the promotion of a particular branch of 
study, as antiquities, language, or the 
fine arts. The most celebrated institu¬ 
tions bearing the name of academies, 
and designed for the encouragement of 
science, antiquities, and language re¬ 
spectively, are the French Acad4mie 
des Sciences (founded by Colbert in 1666), 
Academie des Inscriptions founded by 
Colbert in 1663), and Academie Fran- 
$aise (founded by Richelieu in 1635), 
all of which are now merged in the 
National Institute. The oldest of the 
academies instituted for the improve¬ 
ment of language is the Italian Acca- 
demia della Crusca (now the Floren¬ 
tine Academy), formed in 1582, and 
chiefly celebrated for the compilation 
of an excellent dictionary of the Italian 
language, and for the publication of 
several carefully prepared editions of 
ancient Italian poets. In Britain the 
name of academy, in the more dignified 
sense of the term, is confined almost 
exclusively to certain institutions for 
the promotion of the fine arts, such as 
the Royal Academy of Arts and the 
Royal Scottish Academy. The Royal 
Academy of Arts (usually called simply 
the Royal Academy) was founded in Lon¬ 
don in 1768, “for the purpose of culti¬ 
vating and improving the arts of paint¬ 
ing, sculpture, and architecture.” The 
number of academicians is now limited 
to forty-two, among whom are two 







ACADIA 


ACCOLADE 


engravers. In the United States there 
are hundreds of institutions, more or 
less noted, known as academies, as the 
American Academy of Political and So¬ 
cial Science, the New York Academy of 
Design, the Chicago Academy of Sci¬ 
ences, etc. 

ACA'DIA, the name formerly given 
to Nova Scotia. It received its first 
colonists from France in 1604, being 
then a possession of that country, but 
it passed to Britain, by the Peace of 
Utrecht, in 1713. In 1756, 18,000 of 
the French inhabitants were forcibly 
removed from their homes on account 
of their hostility to the British, an inci¬ 
dent on which is based Longfellow’s 
Evangeline. 

ACALE'PHA, a nettle, from their 
stinging properties, a term formerly 
used to denote the Medusae or jelly¬ 
fishes and their allies. 

ACANTHOP'TERI, ACANTHOP- 
TERYGII, a group of fishes, distin¬ 
guished by the fact that at least the 



Spines of acanthopteri. 

first rays in each fin exist in the form 
of stiff spines; it includes the perch, 
mullet, mackerel, gurnard, wrasse, etc. 

ACANTHUS, a genus of herbaceous 
plants or shrubs, mostly tropical, two 
species of which are characterized by 
large white flowers and deeply indented 



Acanthus of Corinthian capital. 


shining leaves.—In architecture the 
name is given to a kind of foliage decora¬ 
tion said to have been suggested by this 
plant, and much employed in Roman 
and later styles. 

ACAR'IDA, a division of the Arach- 
nida, including the mites, ticks, and 
water-mites. See Mite. 

ACARNA'NIA, the most westerly por¬ 
tion of northern Greece, together with 
iEtolia now forming a nomarchy with a 
pop. of 138,444. The Acarnanians of 
ancient times were behind the other 
Greeks in civilization, living by robbery 
and piracy. 

ACCA'DIANS, the primitive inhab¬ 
itants of Babylonia, who had descended 
from the mountainous region of Elam 
on the east, and to whom the Assyrians 
ascribed the origin of Chaldean civiliza¬ 
tion and writing. 

ACCELERATION, the increase of 
Velocity which a body acquires when 


continually acted upon by a force in the 
direction of its motion. A body falling 
from a height is one of the most common 
instances of acceleration.—Acceleration 
of the Moon, the increase of the moon’s 
mean angular velocity about the earth, 
the moon now moving rather faster than 
in ancient times. This phenomenon has 
not been fully explained, but it is known 
to be partly owing to the slow process of 
diminution which the eccentricity of the 
earth’s orbit is undergoing, and from 
which there results a slight diminution 
of the sun’s influence on the moon’s mo¬ 
tions.—Diurnal Acceleration of the Fixed 
Stars, the apparent greater diurnal mo¬ 
tion of the stars than of the sun, arising 
from the fact that the sun’s apparent 
yearly motion takes place in a direction 
contrary to that of his apparent daily 
motion. The stars thus seem each day 
to anticipate the sun by nearly 3 minutes 
56 seconds of mean time. 

AC'CENT, a term used in several 
senses. In English it commonly denotes 
superior stress or force of voice upon 
certain syllables of words, which dis¬ 
tinguishes them from the other syllables. 
Many English words, as as'pi-ra"tion, 
have two accents, a secondary and 
primary, the latter being the fuller or 
stronger. Some words, as in-com'pre- 
hen'-si-bil"i-ty. have two secondary 
or subordinate accents. When the full 
accent falls on a vowel, that vowel has 
its long sound, as in vo'cal; but when 
it falls on a consonant, the preceding 
vowel is short, as in hab'it. This kind 
of accent alone regulates English verse 
as contrasted with Latin or Greek verse, 
in which the meter depended on quantity 
or length of syllables. In books on elo¬ 
cution three marks or accents are gener¬ 
ally made use of, the first or acute (') 
showing when the voice is to be raised, 
the second or grave ('•), when it is to be 
depressed, and the third or circumflex 
(') when the vowel is to be uttered with 
an undulating sound. In some lan¬ 
guages there is no such distinct accent as 
in English (or German), and this seems 
to be now the case with French. (—) In 
music, accent is the stress or emphasis 
laid upon certain notes of a bar. The 
first note of a bar has the strongest 
accent, but weaker accents are given 
to the first notes of subordinate parts of 
the bars, as to the third, fifth, and 
seventh in a bar of eight quavers. 

ACCEPT'ANCE, in law, the act by 
which a person binds himself to pay a 
bill of exchange drawn upon him. No 
acceptance is valid unless made in 
writing on the bill, but an acceptance 
may be either absolute or conditional, 
that is, stipulating some alteration in 
the amount or date of payment, or 
some condition to be fulfilled previous 
to payment. 

AC'CESS, right of, the right of a 
private individual owning land on the 
shore of a body of water, to the free use 
of the shore, or the free access to the 
shore. 

ACCESSARY, or ACCES'SORY, in 

law, a person guilty of an offence by 
connivance or participation, either be¬ 
fore or after the act committed, as by 
command, advice, concealment, etc. 
An accessary before the fact is one who 
procures or counsels another to commit 


a crime, and is not present at its com¬ 
mission; an accessary after the fact is 
one who, knowing a felony to have been 
committed, gives assistance of any kind 
to the felon so as to hinder him from 
being apprehended, tried, or suffering 
punishment. An accessary before the 
fact may be tried and punished in all 
respects as if he were the principal. 
In high treason, all who participate 
are regarded as principals. 

AC'CIDENT, in law, an occurrence in 
which a person is hurt or harmed by 
another without intent or while law¬ 
fully engaged under proper precautions 
for the protection of others. 

ACCIDENTALS, notes introduced in 
the course of a piece of music in a dif¬ 
ferent key from that in which the 
passage they occur is principally written. 
They are represented by the sign of a 
sharp, flat, or natural immediately 
before the note which is to be raised or 
lowered. 

ACCIDENT INSURANCE, insurance 
protecting one against injury, disable¬ 
ment, or death from accident. It does 
not protect from injuries arising from 
quarrels, or intentionally inflicted in¬ 
jury, but only from such harm as comes 
from violence and is purely accidental, 
that is, when the harm is not due to 
lack of precaution. 

ACCIP'ITRES (ak-sip'i-trez), the name 
given by Linnaeus and Cuvier to the 



Head and foot Head and foot Head and foot 
of the of peregrine of American 
osprey. falcon. sparrow-hawk. 


rapacious birds now usually called Rap- 
tores, which see. 

ACCLIMATIZATION, the process of 
accustoming plants or animals to live 
and propagate in a climate different 
from that to which they are indigenous, 
or the change which the constitution of 
an animal or plant undergoes under new 
climatic conditions, in the direction of 
adaptation to those conditions. The 
systematic study of acclimatization has 
only been entered upon in very recent 
times, and the little progress that has 
been made in it has been more in the 
direction of formulating anticipative, if 
not arbitrary hypotheses, than of actual 
discovery and acquisition of facts. The 
term is sometimes applied to the case 
of animals or plants taking readily to a 
new country with a climate and other 
and other circumstances similar to 
what they have left, such as European 
animals and plants in America and New 
Zealand: but this is more properly 
naturalization than acclimatization. 

ACCOLADE (ak-o-lad'), the ceremony 
used in conferring knighthood, anciently 
consisting either in the embrace given by 
the person who conferred the honor of 
knighthood or in a light blow on the 
neck or the cheek, latterly consisting 












ACCOMMODATION BILL 


ACLINIC LINE 


in the ceremony of striking the candidate 
with a naked sword. 

ACCOMMODATION BILL, a bill of 
exchange drawn and accepted to raise 
money on, and not given, like a genuine 
bill of exchange, in payment of a debt, 
but merely intended to accommodate 
the drawer: colloquially called a kite. 

ACCOMMODATION LADDER, a light 
ladder hung over the side of a 6hip at 
the gangway to facilitate ascending 
from, or descending to, boats. 

ACCOM'PANIMENT, in music, is that 
part of music which serves for the sup¬ 
port of the principal melody (solo or 
obligato part). This can be executed 
either by many instruments, by a few, 
or by a single one. 

ACCOM'PLICE, an aider or abettor 
of crime, punishable either as principal 
or second in the crime. Intent to com¬ 
mit crime is of course understood. 
Testimony given by accomplices against 
other participators in the crime is 
usually regarded with suspicion and 
must be corroborated by other testi¬ 
mony or circumstances before it is 
regarded as convincing. 

ACCOR'DION, a keyed musical wind- 
instrument similar to the concertina, 
being in the form of a small box, con¬ 
taining a number of metallic reeds fixed 
at one of their extremities, the sides of 
the box forming a folding apparatus 
which acts as a bellows to supply the 
wind, and thus set the reeds in vibration, 
and produce the notes both of melody 
and harmony. 

ACCOUNT'ANT, one who keeps ac¬ 
counts; in the United States usually 
a bookkeeper. In other countries the 
term is used to designate an expert 
bookkeeper who inspects the accounts 
of banks, business houses, and other 
institutions at regular intervals. 

AC'CRA, a British settlement in 
Africa, in a swampy situation, cap. of 
Gold Coast, about 75 miles east of 
Cape Coast Castle. Exports gold-dust, 
ivory, gums, palm-oil; imports cottons, 
cutlery, etc. Pop. 20,000. 

ACCU'MULATOR, a name applied to 
a kind of electric battery by means of 
which electric energy can be stored and 
rendered portable, "in the usual form 
each battery forms a cylindrical leaden 
vessel, containing alternate sheets of 
metallic lead and minium wrapped in 
felt and rolled into a spiral wetted with 
acidulated water. On being charged 
with electricity the energy may be pre¬ 
served till required for use. 

ACCUSATIVE CASE, in Latin and 
some other languages, the term applied 
to the case which designates the object 
to which the action of any verb is 
immediately directed, corresponding, 
generally speaking, to the objective in 
English. 

A'CER, the genus of plants to which 
belong the maples. 

ACETAB'ULUM, an anatomical term 
applied to any cup-like cavity, as that 
of a bone to receive the protuberant end 
of another bone, the cavity, for instance, 
that receives the end of the thigh-bone. 

ACETATES (as'e-tats), salts of acetic 
acid. The acetates of most commercial 
or manufacturing importance are those 
of aluminium and iron, which are used 
in calico printing; of copper, which as 


verdigris is used as a color; and of lead, 
best known as sugar of lead. The 
acetates of potassium, sodium, and 
ammonium, of iron, zinc, and lead, and 
acetate of morphia, are employed in 
medicine. 

ACET'IC ACID, an acid produced 
by the oxidation of common alcohol, and 
of many other organic substances. Pure 
acetic acid has a very sour taste and 
pungent smell, burns the skin, and is 
poisonous. From freezing at ordinary 
temperatures (58° or 59°) it is known 
as glacial acetic acid. Vinegar is simply 
dilute acetic acid. Acetic acid is largely 
used in the arts, in medicine, and for 
domestic purposes. See Vinegar. 

ACET'IC ETHERS, compounds con¬ 
sisting of acetates of alcohol radicals. 
Common acetic ether is a colorless, 
volatile fluid, and is a flavoring con¬ 
stituent in many wines. It is made 
artificially by distilling a mixture of 
alcohol, oil of vitriol, and acetate of 
potash. 

ACET'YLENE, a highly inflammable 
hydrocarbon gas which can be simply 
made with calcic carbide and water, 
and is now coming into use as an 
illuminant. 

ACHAS'ANS, one of the four races 
into which the ancient Greeks were 
divided. In early times they inhabited 
a part of northern Greece and of the 
Peloponnesus. They are represented 
by Homer as a brave and warlike people, 
and so distinguished were they that he 
usually calls the Greeks in general 
Achaeans. Achaia with Elis now forms 
a nomarchy of the kingdom of Greece. 
Pop. 181,632. 

ACHARD (ah-art), Franz Karl, a Ger¬ 
man chemist, born 1753, died 1821, prin¬ 
cipally known by his invention (1789- 
1800) of a process for manufacturing 
sugar from beet-root. 

ACHEEN', or ATCHIN, a native state 
of Sumatra, with capital of same name, 
in the northwestern extremity of the 
island, now nominally under Dutch 
administration. Though largely moun¬ 
tainous, it has also undulating tracts and 
low fertile plains. By treaty with 
Britain the Dutch were prevented from 
extending their territory in Sumatra by 
conquest; but, this obstacle being 
removed, in 1871 they proceeded to 
occupy Acheen. It was not till 1879, 
however, after a great waste of blood 
and treasure, that they obtained a 
general recognition of their authority. 
But they have not been able to establish 
it firmly, and in 1885 were forced to 
evacuate part of the Acheenese territory, 
with considerable loss in men and guns. 
In the seventeenth century Acheen 
was a powerful state, and carried on 
hostilities successfully against the Por- 
tuguse, but its influence decreased with 
the increase of the Dutch power. The 
principal exports are rice and pepper. 
Area, 19,000 sq. miles; pop. 600,000. 

ACHILLES (a-kil'-ez), a Greek legen¬ 
dary hero, the chief character in Homer’s 
Iliad. His father was Peleus, ruler of 
Phthia in Thessaly, his mother the sea- 
goddess Thetis, In discussions on the 
origin of the Homeric poems the term 
Achilleid is often applied to those books 
(i. viii. and xi.-xxii.) of the Iliad in 
which Achilles is prominent, and which 


some suppose to have formed the 
original nucleus of the poem. 

ACHIMENES (a-kim'e-nez), a genus 
of tropical American plants, with scaly 
underground tubers, now cultivated in 
European greenhouses on account of 
their ornamental character. 

ACHLAMYDEOUS (ak-la-mid'i-us), in 
botany, wanting the floral envelopes, 
that is, having neither calyx nor corolla, 
as the willow. 

ACHOR (a'kor), a disease of infants, 
in which the head, the face, and often 
the neck and breast become incrusted 
with thin, yellowish or greenish scabs, 
arising from minute, whitish pustules, 
which discharge a viscid fluid. 

ACHROMAT'IC, in optics, trans¬ 
mitting colorless light, that is, not 
decomposed into the primary colors, 
though having passed through a re¬ 
fracting medium. A single convex lens 
does not give an image free from the 
prismatic colors, because the rays of 
different color making up white light 
are not equally refrangible, and thus do 
not all come to a focus together, the 
violet, for instance, being nearest the 
lens, the red farthest off. If such a lens 
of crown-glass, however, is combined 
with a concave lens of flint-glass—the 
curvatures of both being properly ad¬ 
justed—as the two materials have some¬ 
what different optical properties, the 
latter will neutralize the chromatic 
aberration of the former, and a satis¬ 
factory image will be produced. Tele¬ 
scopes, microscopes, etc., in which the 
glasses are thus composed are called 
achromatic. 

ACID, a name popularly applied to a 
number of compounds, solid, liquid, and 
gaseous, having more or less the qual¬ 
ities of vinegar (itself a diluted form of 
acetic acid), the general properties as¬ 
signed to them being a tart, sour taste, 
the power of changing vegetable blues 
into reds, of decomposing chalk and 
marble with effervescence, and of being 
in various degrees neutralized by alka¬ 
lies. 

ACIERAGE (a'se-er-aj), a process by 
which an engraved copper-plate or an 
electrotype from an engraved plate of 
steel or copper has a film of iron de¬ 
posited over its surface by electricity in 
order to protect the engraving from 
wear in printing. By this means an 
electrotype of a fine engraving which, 
if printed directly from the copper, would 
not yield 500 good impressions, can be 
made to yield 3000 or more; and when 
the film of iron becomes so worn as to 
reveal any part of the copper, it may be 
removed and a fresh coating deposited 
so that 20,000 good impressions may 
be obtained. 

ACIPENSER (as-i-pen'ser), the genus 
of cartilaginous ganoid fishes to which 
the sturgeon belongs. 

ACKNOWLEDGMENT, an admission, 
either in writing or by word of mouth, 
by a person that he owes a debt which, 
otherwise, might be covered by the 
statute of limitations. It is also used 
to designate an act by which one asserts 
that a document, statement, or other 
instrument is his own. 

ACLIN'IC LINE, the magnetic equa¬ 
tor, an irregular curve in the neighbor¬ 
hood of the terrestrial equator, where 




ACNE 


ACTIUM 


the magnetic needle balances itself hori¬ 
zontally, having no dip. 

ACNE (ak'ne), a skin disease, consist¬ 
ing of small hard pimples, usually on 
the face, caused by congestion of the 
follicles of the skin. 

ACOLYTES (ak'o-lits), in the ancient 
Latin and Greek Churches, persons of 
ecclesiastical rank next in order below 
the sub-deacons, whose office it was to 
attend to the officiating priest. The name 
is still retained in the Roman Church. 

ACONCAGUA (a-kan-ka'gwa), a pro¬ 
vince, a river, and a mountain of Chile. 
The peak of Aconcagua, whose summit 
is just within the Argentine Republic, 
rises to the height of 22,860 feet, and 
is probably the highest mountain of 
the western hemisphere. Area of prov., 
6224 sq. miles. Pop. 153,049. 

AC'ONITE, a genus of hardy her¬ 
baceous plants, represented by the well- 
known wolf’s-bane or monk’s-hood, and 
remarkable for their poisonous proper¬ 
ties and medicinal qualities, being used 
internally as well as externally in rheu¬ 
matism, gout, neuralgia, etc. 

ACONITINE, an alkaloid extracted 
from monk’s-hood and some other 
species of aconite; used medicinally, 
though a virulent poison. 

ACONQUIJA (a-kon-ke'M), a range 
of mountains in the Argentine Republic; 
the name also of a single peak, 17,000 
feet high. 

A'CORN, the fruit of the different 
kinds of oak. The acorn-cups of one 
species are brought from the Levant 
under the name of valonia, and used in 
tanning. 

ACOTYLE'DONS, plants not furnished 
with cotyledons or seed-lobes. They 
include ferns, mosses, seaweeds, etc., 
and are also called flowerless plants or 
cryptogams. 

ACOUSTICS (a-kou'stiks), the science 
of sound. It teaches the cause, nature, 
and phenomena of such vibrations of 
elastic bodies as affect the organ of 
hearing; the manner in which sound 
is produced, its transmission through 
air and other media, the doctrine of 
reflected sound or echoes, the proper¬ 
ties and effects of different sounds, 
including musical sounds or notes, 
and the structure and action of the 
organ of hearing, etc. The propa¬ 
gation of sound is analogous to that 
of light, both being due to vibrations 
which produce successive waves, and 
Newton was the first to show that its 
propagation through any medium de¬ 
pended upon the elasticity of that 
medium. Regarding the intensity, re¬ 
flection, and refraction of sound, much 
the same rules apply as in light. In 
ordinary cases of hearing the vibrating 
medium is air, but all substances capable 
of vibrating may be employed to propa¬ 
gate and convey sound. When a bell is 
struck its vibrations are communicated 
to the particles of air surrounding it, 
and from these to particles outside them, 
until they reach the ear of the listener. 
The intensity of sound varies inversely 
as the square of the distance of the body 
sounding from the ear. Sound travels 
through the air at the rate of about 1090 
feet per second; through water at the 
rate of about 4700 feet. Sounds may be 
musical or non-musical. A musical 


sound is caused by a regular series of 
exactly similar pulses succeeding each 
other at precisely equal intervals of 
time. If these conditions are not ful¬ 
filled the sound is a noise. Musical 
sounds are comparatively simple, and 
are combined to give pleasing sensations 
according to easy numerical relations. 
The loudness of a note depends on the 
degree to which it affects the ear; the 
pitch of a note depends on the number 
of vibrations to the second which pro¬ 
duce the note; the timber, quality or 
character of a note depends on the body 
or bodies whose vibrations produce the 
sound, and is due to the form of the 
paths of vibrating particles. The gamut 
is a series of eight notes, which are called 
by the names Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, 
Si, Dos, and the numbers of vibrations 
which produce these notes are respec¬ 
tively proportional to 24, 27, 30, 32, 36, 
40, 45, 48. The numerical value of the 
interval between any two notes is given 
by dividing one of the above numbers 
corresponding to the higher note by the 
number corresponding to lower note. 
The intervals from Do to each of the 
others are called a second, a minor third, 
a fourth, a fifth, a sixth, a seventh, and 
an octave respectively. The interval 
from La to D 02 is a minor third. An in¬ 
terval of | is a major tone; V 1 is a minor 
tone; is called a limma. The proper¬ 
ties of sound were mathematically in¬ 
vestigated by Bacon and Galileo, but it 
remained for Newton, Lagrange, Euler, 
Laplace, Helmholtz, etc., to bring the 
science to its present state. 

ACRE, a standard measure of land, 
consists of 4840 square yards, divided 
into 4 roods. 

ACRE (a'ker), a seaport of Syria, in 
Northern Palestine, on the Bay of Acre, 
early a place of great strength and im¬ 
portance. Taken from the Saracens un¬ 
der Saladin in 1191 by Richard I. of En¬ 
gland and Philip of France; bravely 
defended by the Turks assisted by Sir 
Sidney Smith in 1799 against Napoleon; 
in 1832, taken by Ibrahim Pasha; in 
1840, bombarded by a British, Austrian, 
and Turkish fleet, and restored to the 
Sultan of Turkey. Pop. 10,000. 

ACROBAT, one who performs on the 
trapeze, horizontal bar, or other appara¬ 
tus, or who, without appliances of any 
kind, is capable of performing expert 
gymnastics. Acrobats and acrobatism 
are very ancient. They were known, in 
a limited way, to the Greeks and the 
Romans and were familiar during the 
middle ages. Rope walking was a 
favorite act of acrobats and rope walk¬ 
ers are pictured on the walls of the 
excavated houses at Pompeii. 

ACROCORIN'THUS, a steep rock in 
Greece, nearly 1900 feet high, over¬ 
hanging ancient Corinth, and on which 
stood the acropolis or citadel, the sacred 
fountain of Pirene being also here. This 
natural fortress has proved itself of 
importance in the modern history of 
Greece. 

AC'ROGENS, a term applied to the 
ferns, mosses, and lichens (cryptogams), 
as growing by extension upwards, in 
contradistinction to endogens and ex¬ 
ogens. 

ACROP'OLIS, the citadel or chief 
place of a Grecian city, usually on an 


eminence commanding the town. That 
of Athens contained some of the finest 
buildings in the world, such as the 
Parthenon, Erechtheum, etc. 

ACROS'TIC, a poem of which the first 
or last, or certain other letters of the 
line, taken in order, form some name, 
motto, or sentence. A poem of which 
both first and last letters are thus 
arranged is called a double acrostic. In 
Hebrew poetry, the term is given to a 
poem of which the initial letters of the 
lines or stanzas were made to run over 
the letters of the alphabet in their order, 
as in Psalm cxix. 

ACT, in special senses: (1) In dramatic 
poetry, one of the principal divisions of 
a drama, in which a definite and coher¬ 
ent portion of the plot is represented; 
generally subdivided into smaller por¬ 
tions called scenes. The Greek dramas 
were not divided into acts. The dictum 
that a drama should consist of five acts 
was first formally laid down by Horace, 
and is generally adhered to by modern 
dramatists in tragedy. In comedy no 
such distinction is observed.—(2) Some¬ 
thing formally done by a legislative or 
judicial body; a statute or law passed.— 
(3) In universities, a thesis maintained 
in public by a candidate for a degree. 
See Act of God, of Parliament, of Settle¬ 
ment, etc. 

ACTAJ'ON, in Greek mythology, a 
great hunter, turned into a stag by 
Art&mis (Diana) for looking on her when 
she was bathing, and torn to pieces by 
his own dogs. 

ACTA SANCTORUM, a name applied 

to all collections of accounts of ancient 
martyrs and saints, both of the Greek 
and Roman Churches, more particularly 
to the valuable collection begun by 
John Bolland, a Jesuit of Antwerp, in 
1643, and which, being continued by 
other divines of the same order (Bol- 
landists), now extends to sixty volumes, 
the lives following each other in the 
order of the calendar. 

ACTIN'IA, the genus of animals to 
which the typical sea-anemones belong. 
See Sea-anemone. 

AC'TINISM, the property of those 
rays of light which produce chemical 
changes, as in photography, in contra¬ 
distinction to the light rays and heat 
rays. The actinic property or force be¬ 
gins among the green rays, is strongest 
in the violet rays, and extends a long 
way beyond the visible spectrum. 

ACTINOM'ETER, an instrument for 
measuring the intensity of the sun’s 
actinic rays. See Actinism. 

ACTINOZO'A (lit. ray-animals), a 
class of animals including sea-anemones, 
corals, etc., all having rayed tentacles 
round the mouth. 

ACTION, the mode of seeking redress 
at law for any wrong, injury, or depriva¬ 
tion. Actions are divided into civil and 
criminal, the former again being divided 
into real, personal, and mixed. 

AC'TIUM, a promontory on the west¬ 
ern coast of northern Greece, not far 
from the entrance of the Ambracian 
Gulf (Gulf of Arta), now called La 
Punta, memorable on account of the 
naval victory gained here by Octavianus 
(afterward the Emperor Augustus) 
over Antony and Cleopatra, September 
2, b.c. 31, in sight of their armies, en- 




ACT OF GOD 


ADAMS 


camped on the opposite shores of the 
Ambracian Gulf. Soon after the be¬ 
ginning of the battle Cleopatra fled with 
sixty Egyptian ships, and .Antony basely 
followed her, and fled with her to Egypt. 
The deserted fleet was not overcome 
without making a brave resistance. 
Antony’s land forces soon went over to 
the enemy, and the Roman world fell to 
Octavius. 

ACT OF GOD, a legal term defined as 
“a direct, violent, sudden, and irresisti¬ 
ble act of nature, which could not, by 
any reasonable cause, have been fore¬ 
seen or resisted.” No one can be legally 
called upon to make good loss so arising. 

ACT OF PARLIAMENT, a law or 
statute proceeding from the parliament 
of the United Kingdom passed in both 
houses, and having received the royal 
assent. Before it is passed it is a bill 
and not an act. Acts are either public 
or private, the former affecting the 
whole community, the latter only special 
persons and private concerns. The 
whole body of public acts constitutes 
the statute law. An act of parliament 
can only be altered or repealed by the 
authority of parliament. 

ACT OF SETTLEMENT, an act passed 
by the English parliament in 1700, by 
which the succession to the throne cf the 
three kingdoms, in the event of King 
William and Queen Anne dying without 
issue, was settled on the Princess Sophia, 
electress of Hanover, and the heirs of her 
body being Protestants. The Princess 
Sophia was the youngest daughter of 
Elizabeth, queen of Bohemia, daughter 
of James I. By this act George I., son 
of the Princess Sophia, succeeded to the 
crown on the death of Queen Anne. 

ACT OF TOLERATION, an act of 



of England, on condition of their taking 
the oaths of supremacy and allegiance, 
and repudiating the doctrine of tran- 
substantiation, were relieved from the 
restrictions under which they had for¬ 
merly lain with regard to the exercise of 
their religion according to their own 
forms. 

ACT OF UNIFORMITY, an English 
act passed in 1662, enjoining upon all 
ministers to use the Book of Common 
Prayer on pain of forfeiture of their liv¬ 
ings. See Nonconformists. 

ACTOR, one who represents some 
part or character on the stage. Actresses 
were unknown to the Greeks and 
Romans in the earliest times, men or 
boys always performing the female 
parts. They appeared under the Roman 
empire, however. Charles II. first en¬ 
couraged the public appearance of 
actresses in England; in Shakespeare’s 
time there were none. See Drama. 

ACTS OF THE APOSTLES, one of the 
books of the New Testament, written 
in Greek by St. Luke, probably in a.d. 
63 or 64. It embraces a period of about 
thirty years, beginning immediately 
after the resurrection, and extending to 
the second year of the imprisonment of 
St. Paul in Rome. Very little informa¬ 
tion is given regarding any of the apos¬ 
tles, excepting St. Peter and St. Paul, 
and the accounts of them are far from 
being complete. 


AC'TUARY, an accountant whose 
business is to make the necessary 
computations with regard to a basis for 
life assurance, annuities, reversions, etc. 

ACU'LEUS, in botany, a prickle, or 
sharp-pointed process of the epidermis, 
as distinguished from a thorn or spine, 
which is of a woody nature. 

ACUPRES'SURE, a means of arrest¬ 
ing bleeding from a cut artery intro¬ 
duced by Sir James Simpson in 1859, 
and consisting in compressing the 
artery above the orifice, that is, on 
the side nearest the heart, with the 
middle of a needle introduced through 
the tissues. 

ACUPUNC'TURE, a surgical opera¬ 
tion, consisting in the insertion of nee¬ 
dles into certain parts of the body for 
alleviating pain, or for the cure of differ¬ 
ent species of rheumatism, neuralgia, 
eye diseases, etc. It is easily performed, 
gives little pain, causes neither bleeding 
nor inflammation, and seems at times of 
surprising efficacy. 

ADAGIO (a-da'jo), a musical term, ex¬ 
pressing a slow time, slower than an¬ 
dante and less so than largo. 

ADAIR, John, American statesman 
and soldier, born in South Carolina in 
1759, died 1840. He lived many years 
in Kentucky, took part in the Indian 
wars toward the end of the 17th century, 
was a member of the Kentucky conven¬ 
tion of 1792, and was a U. S. senator 
from 1805 to 1806. He was governor 
of Kentucky from 1820 to 1824, and a 
member of congress from 1831 to 1832. 
He was present at the Battle of New 
Orleans, where he commanded the Ken¬ 
tucky troops. 

ADAM and EVE, the names given in 
Scripture to our first parents, an account 
of whom and their immediate descend¬ 
ants is given in the early chapters of 
Genesis. Cain, Abel, and Seth are all 
their sons that are mentioned by name; 
but we are told that they had other sons, 
as well as daughters, and that Adam 
finally died at the age of 930 years. 
There are numerous Rabbinical addi¬ 
tions to the Scripture narrative, of an 
extravagant character, such as the 
myth of Adam having a wife before Eve, 
named Lilith, who became the mother 
of giants and evil spirits. Other legends 
or inventions are contained in the 
Koran. 

ADAM DE LA HALE, an early French 
writer and musician; born 1240, died 
1287. His Jeu de Robin et de Marion 
may be regarded as the first comic opera 
ever written. 

AD'AMANT, an old name for the 
diamond; also used in a vague way to 
imply a substance of impenetrable hard- 
ness. 

ADAMAN'TINE SPAR, a name of the 
mineral corundum or of a brownish 
variety of it. 

AD'AMITES, a name of sects or 
religious bodies that have appeared at 
various times: so called because both 
men and women were said to appear 
naked in their assemblies, either to 
imitate Adam in the state of innocence 
or to prove the control which they pos¬ 
sessed over their passions. 

ADAMS Alvin, American business 
man and capitalist, founder of the 
Adams Express Company. He was a 


native of Andover, Vt.; bom in 1804 
and died in 1877. 

ADAMS, Charles Baker, American 
scientist, born at Dorchester, Mass., in 
1814, graduated at Amherst, became 

E rofessor of natural history at Middle- 
ury College, Vt., in 1838, and in 1847 
to his death in 1853 was professor of 
zoology and astronomy at Amherst. 

ADAMS, Charles Fallen, American 
poet, author of Leedle Yawcob Strauss 
and Other Poems (1878), and Dialect 
Ballads. He was born at Dorchester, 
Vt., in 1842, and served on the Union 
side in the civil war. 

ADAMS, Charles Francis, American 
statesman, son of President John 
Quincy Adams, born at Boston in 1807. 
died 1886. He studied law with Daniel 
Webster, but did not practice, preferring 



Charles F. Adams. 


literary work and the study of diplo¬ 
macy and history. From 1841 to 1846 
he was a member of the Massachusetts 
legislature, and 1848 became the editor 
of the famous Boston Whig. Having 
been chairman of the Free Soil conven¬ 
tion in 1848 he was nominated for vice- 
president, and after several years of 
retirement in literary work he entered 
congress in 1858. In 1861 he was made 
American minister to England. On his 
return in 1868 he was elected to the 
presidency of Harvard, went to Geneva 
in 1871 to settle the Alabama claims, 
and on his return retired into private 
life for the purpose of completing his 
work of editing the writings of John 
Quincy Adams. 

ADAMS, Charles Francis, Jr., Ameri¬ 
can author and financier, born in Bos¬ 
ton in 1835. Having served in the civil 
war, he entered the railroad business, 
was president of the Southern Pacific 
railroad (1884 to 1890;, and from 1893 
to 1895 he was chairman of the Massa¬ 
chusetts Park Commission. He is the 
author of several works on railroad 
growth and management. 

ADAMS, Charles Kendall, American 
historian and educator, born at Derby, 
Vt., in 1835, died in 1902. In 1861 he 
was graduated at the University of 




ADAMS 


ADDA 


Michigan, where he taught until 1867. 
He was president of Cornell University 
from 1885 to 1892, in which latter year 
he became president of the University 
of Wisconsin. He is the author of 
numerous works dealing with European 
and American history. 

ADAMS, Henry, American author 
and historian, son of Charles Francis 
Adams, bom at Boston in 1838 and 
graduated at Harvard in 1858. He was 
engaged for many years on his nine- 
volume work, History of the United 
States from 1801 to 1817. He is also 
the author of several important his¬ 
torical monographs. 

ADAMS, Herbert Baxter, American 
historian and educator, born at Am¬ 
herst in 1850, died 1901. He was asso¬ 
ciate professor of history at Johns Hop¬ 
kins University and wrote a series of 
monographs on American history of 
great value. 

ADAMS, Isaac, an American inventor, 
bom at Rochester, N. H., in 1803. He 
invented the printing-press named for 
him. He died in 1883. 

ADAMS, John, second president of 
the United States, was born at Brain¬ 
tree (now Quincy), Mass., 19th October, 
1735. He was educated at Harvard 
University, ano adopted the law as a 





profession. On 13th May, 1776, he 
seconded the motion for a declaration 
of independence proposed by Lee of 
Virginia, and was appointed a mem¬ 
ber of committee to draw it up. The 
declaration was actually drawn up by 
Jefferson, but it was Adams who fought 
it through congress. In 1778 he went to 
France on a special mission, and for nine 
years resided abroad as representative 
of his country in France, Holland, and 
England. After taking part in the 
peace negotiations he was appointed, in 
1785, the first ambassador of the United 
States to the court of St. James. He 
was recalled in 1788, and the following 
year elected vice-president of the re¬ 
public under Washington. In 1792 he 
was reelected vice-president, and at the 
following election in 1797 he became 


president in succession to Washington. 
His term of office proved a stormy one, 
which broke up and dissolved the fed¬ 
eralist party. His reelection in 1801 
was again opposed by the efforts of 
Hamilton, which ended in effecting the 
return of the republican candidate 
Jefferson. Thus it happened that when 
Adams retired from office his influence 
and popularity with both parties were 
at an end, and he sunk at once into the 
obscurity of private life. He had the 
consolation, however, of living to see 
his son president. He died 4th July, 
1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the 
declaration of independence, and on the 
same day as Jefferson. 

ADAMS, John Couch, English astron¬ 
omer, born 1819, died 1892, studied at 
Cambridge, and was senior wrangler in 
1843. His investigations into the irreg¬ 
ularities in the motion of the planet 
Uranus led him to the conclusion that 
they must be caused by another more 
distant planet, and the results of his 
labors were communicated in Septem¬ 
ber and October, 1845, to Professor 
Challis and Airy the astronomer royal. 
The French astronomer Leverrier had 
by this time been engaged in the same 
line of research, and had come to sub¬ 
stantially the same results, which, being 
published in 1846, led to the actual dis¬ 
covery of the planet Neptune by Galle 
of Berlin. In 1858 Adams was ap¬ 
pointed Lowndean professor of astron¬ 
omy and geometry at Cambridge. 

ADAMS, John Quincy, sixth president 
of the United States, son of John Adams, 
second president, was bom 11th July, 
1767. Accompanying his father to 
Europe he received part of his education 
there, but graduated at Harvard in 
1788. Having adopted the legal pro¬ 
fession, in 1791, he was admitted tc the 
bar. In 1794 Washington appointed 
him minister to the Hague. He after¬ 
ward was sent to Berlin, and also on 
a mission to Sweden. In 1798 he re¬ 
ceived a commission to negotiate a 
treaty of commerce with Sweden. On 
the accession of Jefferson to the pres¬ 
idency in 1801 he was recalled. The 
federalist party had sufficient influence 
in Massachusetts to elect him to the 
senate in 1803. In 1809 he went as am¬ 
bassador to Russia. He assisted in 
negotiating the peace of 1814 with Eng¬ 
land, and was afterward appointed 
resident minister at London. Under 
Monroe as president he was sercetary of 
state, and at the expiration of Monroe’s 
double term of office he succeeded him 
in the presidency (1825). He was not 
very successful as president, and at the 
end of his term (1829) he was not re¬ 
elected. In 1831 he was returned to 
congress by Massachusetts, and con¬ 
tinued to represent this state till his 
death, his efforts being now chiefly on 
behalf of the abolitionist party. He 
died 21st February, 1848. 

ADAMS, Maude, an American actress, 
born at Salt Lake City in 1872. Miss 
Adams has appeared with great success 
as Lady Babbie in the Little Minister, 
in Rostand’s l’Aiglon, and in other 
prominent productions. 

ADAMS, Samuel, an American states¬ 
man, second cousin of President John 
Adams, was born in Boston, Sept. 27, 


1722, and was educated at Harvard 
College. He was one of the signers of 
the declaration of 1776, which he labored 
most indefatigably to bring forward. 
He sat in congress eight years, in 1789 
-94 was lieutenant-governor of Massa¬ 
chusetts, in 1794-97 governor, when he 
retired from public life. He died Oct. 
2, 1803. 

ADAMS, William Taylor, an Ameri¬ 
can author who, under the pen name 
of “Oliver Optic,” is one of the best 
known and most popular of American 
juvenile story tellers. He was born at 
Medway, Mass., 1822, and began the 
publication of his stories in 1853. He 
died in 1897. 

ADAM’S APPLE, the popular name 
of the prominence seen in the front of 
the throat in man, and which is formed 
by the portion of the larynx known as 
the thyroid cartilage. It is much smaller 
and less visible in females than in males, 
and is so named from the idle notion 
that it was caused by a piece of the for¬ 
bidden fruit having stuck in Adam’s 
throat. 

ADAM’S PEAK, one of the highest 
mountains in Ceylon, 45 m. east-south¬ 
east of Colombo, conical, isolated, and 
7420 feet high. On the top, a rocky area 
of 64 feet by 45, is a hollow in the rock 
5 feet long bearing a rude resemblance 
to a human foot, which the Brahmans 



k) cl. cAclcLtyJ 


believe to be the footprint of Siva, the 
Buddhists that of Buddha, the Moham¬ 
medans that of Adam. Devotees of all 
creeds here meet and present their offer¬ 
ings (chiefly rhododendron flowers) to 
the sacred footprint. The ascent is very 
steep, and toward the summit is 
assisted by steps cut and iron chains 
riveted in the rock. 

A'DAR, the twelfth month of the He¬ 
brew sacred and sixth of the civil year, 
answering to part of February and part 
of March. 

ADDA (ancient Addua), a river of 
north Italy, which, descending from 
the Rhaetian Alps, falls into Lake Como, 
and leaving this joins the Po, after a 
course of about 170 miles. 

ADDA, a species of lizard, more com¬ 
monly called skink. 







ADDAX 


ADIRONDACK MOUNTAINS 


AD'DAX, a species of antelope of the 
size of a large ass, with much of its 
make. The horns of the male are about 
4 feet long, beautifully twisted into a 
wide-sweeping spiral of two turns and 



Head ot Addax. 


a half, with the points directed out¬ 
ward. It has tufts of hair on the fore¬ 
head and throat, and large broad hoofs. 
It inhabits the sandy regions of Nubia 
and Kordofan, and is also found in 
Caffraria. 

ADDER, a name often applied to the 
common viper, as well as to other kinds 
of venomous serpents. See Viper. 

ADDER’S-TONGUE, a species of fern, 
whose spores are produced on a spike, 
supposed to resemble a serpent’s tongue. 

ADDER’S-WORT, name of snake¬ 
weed or bistort, from its supposed virtue 
in curing the bite of serpents. 

ADDICKS, John Edward, American 

E olitician, capitalist, and promoter, 
orn in Philadelphia in 1841. In 1884 
he began the organization of gas com¬ 
panies in Boston and elsewhere, and in 
1895 he was a candidate for United 
States senator from Delaware. De¬ 
feated at that time, he prevented the 
election of his opponent. The vacancy 
was not filled before the expiration of 
the term of the other senator, so that 
Delaware was for a time^without repre¬ 
sentation. 

AD'DINGTON, Henry, Viscount Sid- 
mouth; born 1757, died 1844. Entered 
parliament, 1783, as a warm supporter 
of Pitt. Was elected speaker of the 
House of Commons, 1789, and in 1801 
invited by the king to form an adminis¬ 
tration, chiefly signalized by the conclu¬ 
sion of the Peace of Amiens. 

ADDISON, Joseph, an eminent Eng¬ 
lish essayist, son of the Rev. Lancelot 
Addison, afterward dean of Litchfield, 
born at Milston, Wiltshire, 1st May, 
1672, died 17th June, 1719. He was 
educated at the Charterhouse, where he 
became acquainted with Steele, and 
afterward at Oxford. He held a fellow¬ 
ship from 1697 till 1711, and gained 
much praise for his Latin poetry and 
other contributions to classical liter¬ 
ature. He secured as his earliest patron 
the poet Dryden, who inserted some of 
his verses in his Miscellanies in 1693. A 
translation of the fourth Georgic, with 
the exception of the story of Aristaeus, 
by Addison, appeared in the same collec¬ 
tion in 1694, and he subsequently trans¬ 
lated for it two and a half books of Ovid. 
Dryden also prefixed his prose essay on 
Virgil’s Georgies to his own translation 
of that poem, which appeared in 1697. 
He contributed a number of papers to 
the Tatler, either wholly by himself or 


in conjunction with Steele, thus found¬ 
ing the new literary School of the Essay¬ 
ists. For the Spectator he wrote 274 
papers all signed by one of the four let¬ 
ters C. L. L. O. His tragedy of Cato 
was translated into French, Italian, 
German and Latin. Of his style as 
a writer so much has been said that 
nothing remains to say but to quote the 
dictum of Johnson, “Whoever wishes to 
attain an English style, familiar but 
not coarse, and elegant but not osten¬ 
tatious, must give his days and nights 
to the volumes of Addison.” 

ADDISON’S DISEASE (from Dr. Ad¬ 
dison, Guy’s Hospital, London, who 
traced the disease to its source), a fatal 
disease, the seat of which is the two 
glandular bodies placed one at the front 
of the upper part of each kidney, and 
called supra-renal capsules. It is char¬ 
acterized by anaemia or bloodlessness, 
extreme prostration, and the brownish 
or olive-green color of the skin. Death 
usually results from weakness, and com¬ 
monly within a year. 

ADDUC'TOR, a muscle which draws 
one part of the body toward another: 
applied in zoology to one of the muscles 
which bring together the valves of the 
shell of the bivalve molluscs. 

ADE, George, an American humorist 
and playwright. He was born at Kent- 
land, Ind., in 1866, graduated at Purdue 
university in 1887, and was for many 
years a writer for Chicago newspapers. 
His first work of note was his Fables in 
Slang, which ran through a long series 
of publications, and disclosed a power 
of satire rare in American literature. Mr. 
Ade more recently has written a large 
number of comedies and comic opera 
libretti which have been very popular. 

ADEE, Alvey Augustus, American 
diplomat, born at Astoria, N. Y., in 
1842. He was secretary of legation at 
Madrid in 1870 and in 1878 chief of the 
diplomatic bureau at Washington. 
From 1882 to 1886 he was third 
assistant secretary of state and served 
as acting secretary of state in 1900. 

ADELAIDE (ad'e-lad), the capital of 
South Australia, 6 miles east from Port 
Adelaide (on St. Vincent Gulf), its port, 
with which it is united by railway, 
founded in 1837, and named after the 
queen of William IV. Situated on a 
large plain, it is built nearly in the form 
of a square, with the streets at right 
angles, and is divided into North and 
South Adelaide, separated by the river 
Torrens, which is crossed by several 
bridges, and by means of a dam is 
converted into a fine sheet of water. 
Adelaide is connected by railway with 
Melbourne, and is the terminus of the 
overland telegraph to Port Darwin. 
It has a large trade. Pop. (incl. sub¬ 
urbs), about 165,000. 

ADELUNG (ad'e-lung), Johann Chris¬ 
toph, a German philologist; born 1732, 
died 1806. In 1759 he was appointed 
professor in the Protestant academy at 
Erfurt, and two years after removed to 
Leipzig, where he applied himself to 
the works by which he made so great 
a name, particularly his German dic¬ 
tionary, Grammatisch-kritisches Wort- 
erbuch der hochdeutschen Mundart 
(Leipzig, 1774-86), and his Mithridates, 
a work on general philology. In 1787 he 


was appointed librarian of the public 
library in Dresden—an office which he 
held till his death. 

A'DEN, a seaport town and territory 
belonging to Britain, on the southwest 
coast of Arabia, in a dry and barren 
district, the town being almost entirely 
closed in by an amphitheater of rocks, 
and possessing an admirable harbor. 
Occupying an important military posi¬ 
tion, Aden is strongly fortified and 
permanently garrisoned. It is of im¬ 
portance also as a coaling station for 
steamers, and carries on a great amount 
of commerce, forming an entrepot and 
place of transshipment for goods valued 
at $20,000,000 a year. The peninsula 
on which it stands somewhat resembles 
the rock of Gibraltar, and could be 
rendered as formidable. The total area 
of the settlement is 70 square miles. 
It is attached to the Bombay Presidency. 
Pop. 43,974. 

ADENANTHE'RA, a genus of trees 
and shrubs, natives of the East Indies 
and Ceylon. A. pavonina is one of the 
largest and handsomest trees of India, 
and yields hard solid timber called red 
sandalwood. The bright scarlet seeds, 
from their equality in weight (each, 4 
grains), are used by goldsmiths in the 
East as weights. 

ADENI'TIS, in medicine, inflamma¬ 
tion of one or more of the lymphatic 
glands 

ADHESION, the tendency of two 
bodies to stick together when put in 
close contact, or the mutual attraction of 
their surfaces; distinguished from co¬ 
hesion, which denotes the mutual 
attraction between the particles of a 
homogeneous body. Adhesion may 
exist between two solids, between a 
solid and a fluid, or between two fluids. 
A plate of glass or of polished metal 
laid on the surface of water and attached 
to one arm of a balance will support 
much more than its own weight in the 
opposite scale from the force of adhe¬ 
sion between the water and the plate. 
From the same force arises the tendency 
of most liquids, when gently poured 
from a jar, to run down the exterior 
of a vessel or along any other surface 
they meet. 

ADIAN'TUM, a genus of ferns; the 
maidenhair fern. 

AD'IPOSE TISSUE, the cellular tissue 
containing the oily or fatty matter of 
the body. It underlies the skin, sur- 



Addipose tissue. 


rounds the large vessels and nerves, 
invests the kidneys, etc., and some¬ 
times accumulates in large masses. 

ADIRON DACK MOUNTAINS, in the 

! U. States, a group belonging to the 





ADIT 


ADMIRALTY ISLAND 


Appalachian chain extendig from then 
n.e. corner of the state of New York 
to near its center. The scenery is wild 
and grand, diversified by numerous 
beautiful lakes, and the whole region 
is a favorite resort of sportsmen and 
tourists. 

AD'IT, a more or less horizontal 
opening, giving access to the shaft of a 
mine. It is made to slope gradually 
from the farthest point in the interior 
to the mouth, and by means of it the 
rincipal drainage is usually carried on. 
ee Mine. 

AD'JECTIVE, in grammar, a word 
used to denote some quality in the noun 
or substantive to which it is accessory. 
The adjective is indeclinable in English 
(but has degrees of comparison), and 
generally precedes the noun, while 
in most other European languages it 
follows the inflections of the sub¬ 
stantive, and is more commonly placed 
after it, though in German it precedes 
it, as in English. 

AJUDICA'TION, in English law, is 
the decree of the court in bankruptcy 
declaring a person bankrupt. 

ADJUST'MENT, in marine insurance, 
is the settling of the amount of the loss 
which the insurer is entitled under a 
particular policy to recover, and if the 
policy is subscribed by more than one 
underwriter, of the amounts which 
the underwriters respectively are liable 
to pay. 

AD'JUTANT, an officer appointed to 
each regiment or battalion, whose duty 
is to assist the commander. He is 
charged with instruction in drill, and 
all the interior discipline, duties, and 
efficiency of the corps. He has the 
charge of all documents and corre¬ 
spondence, and is the channel of com¬ 
munication for all orders. 

ADJUTANT-BIRD, a large grallatorial 
or wading bird of the stork family, 
native of the warmer parts of India, 
where it is known as Hurgila or Argala. 
It stands about five feet high, has an 



enormous bill, nearly bare head and 
neck, and a pouch hanging from the 
under part of the neck. It is one of the 
most voracious carnivorous birds known, 
and in India, from its devouring all sorts 
of carrion and noxious animals, is pro¬ 
tected by law. From underneath the 
wings are obtained those light downy 


feathers known as marabou feathers, 
from the name of an allied species of 
bird inhabiting western Africa, and also 
producing them. 

ADJUTANT-GENERAL is the chief 

staff-officer of an army, charged with 
the execution of all orders relating to 
the recruitment, equipment, and effi¬ 
ciency of the troops, and who distributes 
to them the orders of the day. 

ADLER, Felix, founder of the Society 
for Ethical culture, American reformer 
and lecturer, born in Germany Aug. 13, 
1851. He came to the United States in 
1857, accompanying his father, who was 



Prof. Felix Adler. 


called to the pulpit of the Temple 
Emanuel at New York. Dr. Adler 
was educated at Columbia College and 
at Heidelberg, where he received the 
degree of Ph.D. in 1873. When he or¬ 
ganized the Society for Ethical Culture 
he was professor of Hebrew and Oriental 
Literature at Cornell University. 

ADMINISTRATION, in politics, the 
executive power or body, the ministry 
or cabinet. 

ADMINTSTRATOR, in law, the per¬ 
son to whom the goods of a man dying 
intestate are committed by the proper 
authority, and who is bound to account 
when required. 

AD'MIRAL, the commander of a 
sqadron or fleet of war ships, or of the 
whole naval force of a country. The 
office of admiral varies in its functions 
and grades in different countries. 

In the United States Navy the grades 
of admiral, vice-admiral, and rear- 
admiral were established by act of 
congress, primarily for the purpose of 
conferring exceptional distinction upon 
the great naval commander, Captain 
David Glasgow Farragut. The lowest 
of these grades, that of rear-admiral, 
was established in 1862, as was also that 
of commodore; though the latter had 
previously existed as a courtesy title 
without authority of law. The number 
of rear-admirals on the active list was 
limited to nine. In 1864 the President 
was authorized to appoint one of the 


rear-admirals a vice-admiral. Under 
the laws, Captain Farragut became 
the first commodore, first rear-admiral, 
and first vice-admiral. In 1899 the 
number of rear-admirals was increased 
to eighteen and the grade of commodore 
on the active list abolished. The act of 
1899 fixed the pay of flag officers as 
follows: Admiral, $13,500 at sea or on 
shore; senior nine rear-admirals, $7500 
while at sea, or on shore duty beyond 
seas, and $6375 while on shore duty; 
junior nine rear-admirals, $5500 while 
at sea, or on shore duty beyond seas, 
and $4675 while on shore duty. The 
pay of officers on the retired list is 
seventy-five per centum of their active 
pay at time of retirement. The number 
in 1902 on this list was forty-three. 
The flag of the admiral is a rectangular 
blue flag with four white stars, and is 
flown at the main; that of the vice- 
admiral, flown at the fore, is a similar 
flag, with three stars. The flag of a 
rear-admiral, flown at the mizzen, is 
similar in shape, has two stars, and is 
usually blue in color, but in case two 
or more rear-admirals are in company 
the senior flies a blue flag, the second 
in rank a red flag, and the junior a 
white flag. 

AD'MIRALTY, that department of 
the government of a country that is at 
the head of its naval service. In Britain 
the lords commissioners of the admiralty 
were formerly seven, but are now five in 
number, with the addition of a civil lord, 
at the head being of first lord, and four 
others being naval lords. The first lord 
is always a member of the cabinet, and 
it is he who principally exercises the 
powers of the department. 

ADMIRALTY CHARTS are charts 
issued by the hydrographic department 
of the admiralty of Britain; they are 
prepared by specially appointed sur¬ 
veyors and draughtsmen, and, besides 
being supplied to every ship in the fleet, 
are sold to the general public at prices 
much less than their cost. In connection 
with these charts there are published 
books of sailing directions, lists of 
lights, etc. The navigating charts are 
generally on the scale of half an inch to 
a mile, and show all the dangers of the 
coasts with sufficient distinctness to 
enable the seaman to avoid them; the 
charts of larger size exhibit all the 
intricacies of the coast. 

ADMIRALTY COURT, a court which 
takes cognizance of civil and criminal 
causes of a maritime nature, including 
captures in war made, and offenses 
committed, on the high seas, and has 
to do with many matters connected 
with maritime affairs. In England 
the admiralty court was once held be¬ 
fore the lord high admiral, and at a 
later period was presided over by his 
deputy or the deputy of the lords com¬ 
missioners. It now forms a branch of the 
probate, divorce, and admiralty division 
of the High Court of Justice. There is 
a separate Irish admiralty court. In 
Scotland admiralty cases are now 
prosecuted in the Court of Session, 
or in the sheriff court. In the United 
States admiralty cases are taken up in 
the first instance by the district courts. 

ADMIRALTY ISLAND, an island 
belonging to the United States off the 










ADMIRALTY ISLANDS 


ADULTERATION 


northwest coast of North America, 80 
or 90 miles long and about 20 broad, 
covered with fine timber and inhabited 
by Sioux Indians. 

ADMIRALTY ISLANDS, a cluster of 
islands, north of New Guinea, in Bis¬ 
marck Archipelago, now belonging to 
Germany. The largest is about 60 miles 
in length; the rest are much smaller. 

AD'NATE, in botany, applied to a 
part growing attached to another and 
principal part by its whole length, as 
stipules adnated to the leaf-stalk. 

ADOBE (a-do'ba), the Spanish name 
for a brick made of loamy earth, con¬ 
taining about two-thirds fine sand and 
one-third clayey dust, sun-dried; in com¬ 
mon use for building in Mexico, Texas, 
and Central America. 

ADOLPHUS OF NASSAU, elected Em¬ 
peror of Germany, 1292. In 1298 the 
college of electors transferred the crown 
to Albert of Austria, but, Adolphus re¬ 
fusing to abdicate, a war ensued, in 
which he fell, after a heroic resistance, 
July 2, 1298. 

ADONAI (ad'o-ni), a name of Good 
among the Jews. See Jehovah. 

ADO'NIS, a mythological personage, 
originally a deity of the Phoenicians, but 
borrowed into Greek mythology. He 
was represented as being a great favorite 
of Aphrodite (Venus), who accompanied 
him when engaged in hunting, of which 
he was very fond. He received a mortal 
wound from the tusk of a wild boar, and 
when the goddess hurried to his assist¬ 
ance she found him lifeless, whereupon 
she caused his blood to give rise to the 
anemone. The worship of Adonis, which 
arose in Phoenicia, latterly was widely 
spread round the Mediterranean. The 
name Adonis is akin to the Hebrew 
Adonai, Lord. 

ADOP'TION, the admission of a 
stranger by birth to the privileges of a 
child. Among the ancient Greeks and 
Romans, and also some modern na¬ 
tions, adoption is placed under legal 
regulation. In many of the states adop¬ 
tion is regulated by law. 

ADRIAN, the name of six popes. The 
first, a Roman, ruled from 772 to 795; 
a contemporary and friend of Charle¬ 
magne. He expended vast sums in 
rebuilding the walls and restoring the 
aqueducts of Rome.—ADRIAN II., a 
Roman, was elected pope in 867, at the 
age of seventy-five years. He died in 
872, in the midst of conflicts with the 
Greek Church.—ADRIAN III., a Roman, 
elected 884, was pope for one year and 
four months only. He was the first pope 
that changed his name on the occasion 
of his exaltation.—ADRIAN IV., orig¬ 
inally named Nicolas Breakspear, the 
only Englishman that ever occupied the 
papal chair, was born about 1100, and 
died 1159. He issued the famous bull 
(1158) granting the sovereignty of Ire¬ 
land, on condition of the payment of 
Peter’s pence, to Henry II.—ADRIAN 
V , of Genoa, settled, as legate of the 
pope, the dispute between King Henry 
III. of England and his nobles, in favor 
of the former; but died a;month after his 
election to the papal chair (1276).— 
ADRIAN VI., born at Utrecht in 1459, 
was elected to the papal chair, January 
9, 1522. He tried to reform abuses in 
the church, but opposed the zeal of 


Luther with reproaches and threats, and 
even attempted to excite Erasmus and 
Zuinglius against him. Died 1523, after 
a reign of one year and a half. 

A'DRIAN, a town of the United 
States, in Michigan, 70 miles w.s.w. of 
Detroit. Its extensive water-power is 
employed in works of various kinds. 
Pop. 10,000. 

A'DRIAN, Publius JHius Hadrianus 
See Hadrian. 

ADRIANO'PLE, an important city of 
Turkey in Europe. Adrianople received 
its present name from the Roman em¬ 
peror Adrian (Hadrian). In 1361 it was 
taken by Amurath I., and was the resi¬ 
dence of the Turkish sovereigns till the 
conquest of Constantinople in 1453. In 
1829 it was taken by the Russians, and 
here was then concluded the peace of 
Adrianople, by which Russia received 
important accessions of territory in the 
Caucasus and on the coast of the Black 
Sea. The Russians occupied it also in 
1878. Pop. 60,000. 

ADRIAN’S (or HADRIAN’S) WALL. 
See Roman Walls. 

ADRIATIC SEA, or GULF OF VEN¬ 
ICE, an arm of the Mediterranean, 
stretching in a northwesterly direction 
from the Straits of Otranto, between 
Italy and the Turkish and Austrian 
dominions. Length, about 480 miles; 
average breadth, about 100; area, about 
60,000 square miles. The rivers which 
it receives, particularly the Po, its prin¬ 
cipal feeder, have produced, and are 
still producing, great geological changes 
in its basin by their alluvial deposits. 
Hence Adria, between the Po and the 
Adige, which gives the sea its name, 
though once a flourishing seaport, is 
now 17 miles inland. The principal 
trading ports on the Italian side are 
Brindisi, Bari, Ancona, Sinigaglia, and 
Venice; on the east side Ragusa, Fiume, 
Pirano, Pola, and Trieste. 

ADULA'RIA, a very pure, limpid, 
translucent variety of the common fel¬ 
spar, called by lapidaries moonstone, on 
account of the play of light exhibited by 
the arrangement of its crystalline struc¬ 
ture. It is found on the Alps, but the 
best specimens are brought from Ceylon. 

ADUL'LAM, Cave of, a cave to which 
David fled when persecuted by Saul, 
and whither he was followed by “every 
one who was in distress, in debt, or dis¬ 
contented” (1 Sam. xxii. 1, 2). 

ADULTERA'TION, a term not only 
applied in its proper sense to the fraud¬ 
ulent mixture of articles of commerce, 
food, drink, drugs, seeds, etc., with 
noxious or inferior ingredients, but also 
by magistrates and analysts to acciden¬ 
tal impurity, and even in some cases to 
actual substitution. The chief objects 
of adulteration are to increase the weight 
or volume of the article, to give a color 
which either makes a good article more 
pleasing to the eye or else disguises an 
inferior one, to substitute a cheaper 
form of the article, or the same sub¬ 
stance from which the strength has been 
extracted, or to give it a false strength. 
—Among the adulterations which are 
practiced for the purpose of fraudulently 
increasing the weight or volume of an 
article are the following: Bread is adul¬ 
terated with alum or sulphate of copper, 
which gives solidity to the gluten of 


damaged or inferior flour; with chalk or 
carbonate of soda to correct the acidity 
of such flour; and with boiled ricef'br 
potatoes, which enables the bread to 
carry more water, and thus to produce 
a larger number of loaves from a given 
quantity of flour. Wheat flour is adul¬ 
terated with other inferior flours, as the 
flour from rice, bean, Indian-corn, pota¬ 
to, and with sulphate of lime, alum, etc. 
Milk is usually adulterated with water. 
The adulterations generally present in 
butter consist of an undue proportion of 
salt and water, lard, tallow, and other 
fats; when of poor quality it is frequent¬ 
ly colored with a little annatto, and, at 
times, with the j’uice of carrots. Genuine 
butter should not contain less than 80 
per cent of butter-fat. Cheese is also 
colored with annatto and other sub¬ 
stances. Tea is adulterated (chiefly in 
China) with sand, iron-filings, chalk, 
gypsum, China clay, exhausted tea 
leaves, and the leaves of the sycamore, 
horse-chestnut, and plum, while color 
and weight are added by black-lead, in¬ 
digo, Prussian-blue (one of the deleteri¬ 
ous ingredients used by the Chinese in 
converting the lowest qualities of black 
into green teas), gum, turmeric, soap¬ 
stone, catechu, and other substances. 
Coffee is mingled with chicory, roasted 
wheat, roasted beans, acorns, mangel- 
wurzel, rye-flour, and colored with 
burned sugar and other materials. 
Chicory is adulterated with different 
flours, as rye, wheat, beans, etc., and 
colored with ferruginous earths, burned 
sugar, Venetian red, etc. Cocoa and 
chocolate are mixed with the cheaper 
kinds of arrow-root, animal matter, 
corn, sago, tapioca, etc. Sugar (moist) 
may be adulterated to some extent with 
sand and flour. Tobacco is mixed with 
sugar and treacle, aloes, licorice, oil, 
alum, etc., and such leaves as rhubarb, 
chicory, cabbage, burdock, coltsfoot, 
besides excess of salt and water. Snuffs 
are adulterated w r ith carbonate of am¬ 
monia, glass, sand, coloring matter, etc. 
Confections are adulterated with flour 
and sulphate of lime. Preserved vege¬ 
tables are kept green and poisoned by 
salts of copper. The acridity of mustard 
is commonly reduced by flour, and the 
color of the compound is improved by 
turmeric. Pepper is adulterated with 
linseed-meal, flour, mustard husks, etc. 
Color is given to pickles by salts of cop¬ 
per, acetate of copper, etc. Ale is adul¬ 
terated with common salt, grains of 
paradise, quassia, and other bitters, 
sulphate of iron, alum, etc. Porter and 
stout are mixed with sugar, treacle, salt, 
and an excess of water. Brandy is 
diluted with water, and burned sugar 
is added to improve the color; some¬ 
times bad whisky is flavored and colored 
so as to resemble brandy, and sold under 
its name. Gin is mixed with excess of 
water, and flavoring matters of various 
kinds, with alum and tartar, are added. 
Rum is diluted with water, and the 
flavor and color are kept up by the addi¬ 
tion of cayenne and burned sugar. For 
champagne gooseberry and other in¬ 
ferior wines are often substituted. Port 
is manufactured from red Cape and 
other inferior wines, the body, flavor, 
strength, and color being produced by 
gum-dragon, the washings of brandy 




ADULTERY 


EON 


casks, and a preparation of German 
bilberries. Cheap brown sherry is mixed 
with Cape and other low-priced brandies 
and is flavored with the washings of 
brandy casks, sugar-candy, and bitter 
almonds. Pale sherries are produced 
by gypsum, by a process called plaster¬ 
ing, which removes the natural acids as 
well as the color of the wine. Other 
wanes are adulterated with elderberry, 
logwood, Brazil-wood, cudbear, red 
beetroot, etc., for color; with lime or 
carbonate of lime, carbonate of soda, 
carbonate of potash, and litharge, to 
correct acidity; with catechu, sloe- 
leaves, and oak-bark for astringency; 
with sulphate of lime and alum for re¬ 
moving color; with cane-sugar for giving 
sweetness and body; with alcohol for 
fortifying; and with ether, especially 
acetic ether, for giving bouquet and 
flavor.—Medicines, such as jalap, opium, 
rhubarb, chinchona bark, scammony, 
aloes, sarsaparilla, squills, etc., are 
mixed with various foreign substances. 
Castor-oil has been adulterated with 
other oils; and inferior oils are often 
mixed w T ith cod-liver oil. Cantharides 
are often mixed with golden-beetle and 
also artifically-colored glass.—The adul¬ 
teration of seeds is largely practised 
also, the seed which forms the adulter¬ 
ant being of course of the most worth¬ 
less kind that can be had. Thus turnip- 
seed is mixed with rape, wild mustard, 
or charlock, which are steamed and 
kiln-dried to destroy their vitality, so 
as to evade detection in the progress of 
growth; old and useless turnip-seed is 
also used fraudulently mixed with fresh 
seeds. Clover is also much mixed with 
plantain and mere weeds. 

ADUL'TERY, the voluntary sexual 
intercourse of a married person with any 
other than the offender’s husband or 
wife; when committed between two 
married persons, the offense is called 
double, and when between a married 
and a single person, single adultery. The 
Mosaic, Greek, and early Roman law 
only recognized the offense when a 
married woman was the offender. By 
the Jewish law it was punished with 
death. A man can obtain a dissolution 
of his marriage on the ground of his 
wife’s adultery, and a wife can obtain a 
judicial separation on the ground of her 
husband’s adultery, or a dissolution of 
the marriage if the offense is coupled 
with cruelty, desertion, or bigamy. In 
the United States the punishment of 
adultery has varied materially at dif¬ 
ferent times. It is, however, very sel¬ 
dom punished criminally. 

AD VALO'REM, a term applied to 
customs or duties levied according to 
the worth of the goods, as sworn to by 
the owner, and not according to num¬ 
ber, weight, measure, etc. 

ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE AS¬ 
SOCIATIONS, organizations to encour¬ 
age scientific research in all of its 
departments. The most prominent 
associations for the advancement of 
science are those of the United States, 
Great Britain, and France. Those of the 
two last mentioned countries are now 
consolidated and occasionally hold in¬ 
ternational meetings, the first of which 
took place at Paris in 1900. The Ameri¬ 
can Association for the Advancement of 


Science, now one of the most noted 
scientific societies of America, was 
founded in 1847 as an outgrowth of the 
association of American geologists and 
naturalists. The association is organ¬ 
ized in ten sections, each of which holds 
its own convention at the annual meet¬ 
ing of the association during the sum¬ 
mer. The sections embrace the follow¬ 
ing departments of science: A, mathe¬ 
matics and astronomy; B, physics; C, 
chemistry; D, mechanical science and 
engineering; E, geology and geography; 
F, zoology ; G, botany ;H, anthropology 
and experimental medicine. The asso¬ 
ciation also serves as a center for the 
meeting of a number of important 
special scientific societies which have 
become connected with it. The asso¬ 
ciation publishes annually a volume of 
proceedings, and in 1901 became affili¬ 
ated with the journal Science, making 
it the semi-official organ of the society. 
The membership of the society is about 
3,000. The British Association for the 
Advancement of Science was founded 
in the city of York in 1831, under the 
leadership of David Brewster and with 
the cooperation of many of the most 
prominent men of the time. The annual 
meetings of the association are held for 
a w r eek each summer, and consist mainly 
of papers read before the several sec¬ 
tions of the society and of conferences 
following them. 

AD'VENT, the name applied to the 
holy season which occupies the four or, 
according to the Greek Church, six 
weeks preceding Christmas, and which 
forms the first portion of the ecclesias¬ 
tical year, as observed by the Angli¬ 
can, the R. Catholic and the Greek 
Church. 

AD'VENTISTS, a small religious sect 
of the United States, who believe in the 
speedy coming of Christ, and generally 
practice adult immersion.—There is also 
a sect called Seventh-day Adventists, w’ho 
hold that the coming of Christ is at hand 
and maintain that the Sabbath is still 
the seventh day of the week. 

AD'VERB, one of the parts of speech 
used to limit or qualify the signification 
of an adjective, verb, or other adverb; 
as, very cold, naturally brave, much 
more clearly, readily agreed. Adverbs 
may be classified as follows: 1, adverbs 
of time, as, now, then, never, etc. ; 2, of 
place, as, here, there, where, etc. ; 3, of 
degree, as, very, much, nearly, almost, 
etc.; 4, of affirmation, negation, or doubt, 
as, yes, no, certainly, perhaps, etc.; 5, of 
manner, as, well, badly, clearly, etc. 

ADVERTISEMENT, a notice given to 
individuals or the public of some fact, 
the announcement of which may affect 
either the interest of the advertiser or 
that of the parties addressed. The 
vehicle employed is generally special 
bills or placards and notices inserted in 
newspapers and periodicals, and the 
profit derivable from advertisements 
forms the main support of the news¬ 
paper press. 

AD'VOCATE, a lawyer authorized to 
plead the cause of his clients before a 
court of law. It is only in Scotland that 
this word seems to denote a distinct 
class belonging to the legal profession, 
the advocates of Scotland being the 
pleaders before the supreme courts. 


ADVOCA'TUS DIAB'OLI (Devil's ad¬ 
vocate), in the Roman Catholic Church, 
a functionary who, when a deceased per¬ 
son is proposed for canonization, brings 
forward and insists upon all the weak 
points of the character and life of the 
deceased, endeavoring to show that he 
is not worthy of sainthood. The oppo¬ 
site side is taken by the Advocatus Dei, 
God’s advocate. 

ADZ, a cutting instrument used for 
chipping the suiface of timber, some¬ 
what of a mattock shape, and having a 
blade of steel forming a portion of a 
cylindrical surface, with a cutting edge 
at right angles to the length of the 
handle. • 

EGAG'RUS, a wild species of ibex 
found in troops on the Caucasus, and 
many Asiatic mountains, believed to be 
the original source of at least one variety 
of the domestic goat. 

EGEAN SEA (e-je'an), that part of the 
Mediterranean which washes the eastern 
shores of Greece, the southern coast of 
Turkey, and the western coast of Asia 
Minor. See Archipelago. 

E'GILOPS, a genus of grasses, very 
closely allied to wheat, and somewhat 
remarkable from the alleged fact that 
by cultivation one of the species be¬ 
comes a kind of wheat. 

EGINA (e-ji'na), a Greek island in the 
Gulf of Egina, south of Athens, trian¬ 
gular in form; area about 32 square 
miles; pop. 8200. 

EGIS (e'jis), the shield of Zeus, ac¬ 
cording to Homer, but according to later 
writers and artists a metal cuirass or 
breastplate, in which was set the head of 
the Gorgon Medusa, and with which 
Athena (Minerva) is often figured as 
being protected. 

ENE'AS, the hero of Virgil’s Eneid, 
a Trojan, who, according to Homer, was, 
next to Hector, the bravest of the war¬ 
riors of Troy. His son, .Eneas Sylvius, 
was the ancestor of the kings of Alba 
Longa, and of Romulus and Remus, the 
founders of the city of Rome. 

EOLIAN HARP, or EOLUS’ HARP, 
a musical instrument, generally con¬ 
sisting of a box of thin fibrous wood, to 
which are attached from eight to fifteen 
fine catgut strings or wires, stretched on 
low bridges at each end, and tuned in 
unison. Its length is made to correspond 
with the size of the window or other 
aperture in which it is intended to be 
placed. When the wind blows athwart 
the strings it produces very beautiful 
sounds, sweetly mingling all the har¬ 
monic tones, and swelling or diminish¬ 
ing according to the strength or weak¬ 
ness of the blast. 

EOLIANS, one of the four races into 
which the ancient Greeks were divided, 
originally inhabiting the district of 
Eolis, in Thessaly, from which they 
spread over other parts of Greece. 

E'OLUS, in Greek mythology, the 
god of the winds, which he kept con¬ 
fined in a cave in the Eolian Islands, 
releasing them-jwhen he wished or was 
commanded by the superior gods. 

E'ON, a Greek word signifying life, 
an age, and sometimes eternity, but used 
by the Gnostics to express spirits or 
powers that had emanated from the 
Supreme Mind before the beginning of 
time. 




^PYORNIS 


AFGHANISTAN 


-flSPYOR'NIS, a genus of gigantic 
birds whose remains have been found 
in Madagascar, where it is supposed to 
have lived perhaps not longer than 200 
years ago. It had three toes, and is 
classed with the cursorial birds (ostrich, 
etc.). Its eggs measured 14 inches in 
length, being about six times the bulk 
of those of the ostrich. The bird which 
laid them may well have been the roc of 
Eastern tradition. 

A'ERATED BREAD, bread which re¬ 
ceives its sponginess or porosity from 
carbonic acid supplied artificially, and 
not produced by the fermentation 
caused by leaven or yeast. 

A'ERATED WATERS, waters im¬ 
pregnated with carbonic acid gas, and 
forming effervescing beverages. Some 
mineral waters are naturally aerated, 
as Vichy, Apollinaris, Rosbach, etc.; 
others, especially such as are used for 
medicinal purposes, are frequently aer¬ 
ated to render them more palatable and 
exhilarating. Water simply aerated, 
or aerated and flavored with lemonade 
or fruit syrups, is largely used, especially 
in summer, as a refreshing beverage. 
There are numerous varieties of appara¬ 
tus for manufacturing aerated waters. 

AERODYNAM'ICS, a branch of physi¬ 
cal science, which treats of the prop¬ 
erties and motions of elastic fluids (air, 
gases), and of the appliances by which 
these are exemplified. This subject is 
often explained in connection with 
hydrodynamics. 

AEROE, or ARROE (ar'eu-e), an 
island of Denmark, in the Little Belt, 
15 miles long by 5 broad, with 12,000 
inhabitants. Though hilly, it is very 
fertile. 

A'EROLITE, a meteoric stone, me¬ 
teorite, or shooting-star. See Meteoric 
Stones. 

AERONAUT'ICS. See Airships. 

AEROSTATIC PRESS, a simple con¬ 
trivance for rendering the pressure of the 
atmosphere available for extracting 
the coloring matter from dye-woods and 
similar purposes 

AEROSTAT'ICS, that branch of phys¬ 
ics which treats of the weight, pressure, 
and equilibrium of air and gases. See 
Air, Air-pump, Barometer, Gas, etc. 

7ESCHINES (es'ki-nez), a celebrated 
Athenian orator, the rival and oppo¬ 
nent of Demosthenes, was born 390 b.c. 
and died in 314. Three of his orations 
are extant. 

jESCHYLUS (es'ki-lus), the first in 
time of the three great tragic poets of 
Greece, born at Eleusis, in Attica, b.c 
525, died in Sicily 456. Before he gained 
distinction as a dramatist he had highly 
distinguished himself at the battle of 
Marathon (490), as he afterward did at 
Artemisium, Salamis, and Platsea. He 
first gained the prize for tragedy in b.c. 
484. The Persians, the earliest of his 
extant pieces, formed part of a trilogy 
which gained the prize in b.c. 472. 
In b.c. 468 he was defeated by Sopho¬ 
cles, and then is said to have gone to 
the court of Hiero, king of Syracuse. 
.Esehylus may be called the creator of 
Greek tragedy, both from the splendor 
of his dramatic writings, and from the 
scenic improvements and accessories he 
introduced. Till his time only one actor 
had appeared on the stage at a time, 


and by bringing on a second he was 
really the founder of dramatic dialogue. 

-iESCULA'PIUS, the god of medicine 
among the Greeks and latterly adopted 
by the Romans, usually said to have 
been a son of Apollo. He was wor¬ 
shiped in particular at Epidaurus, in 
Peloponnesus, where a temple with a 
grove was dedicated to him-. 

jES'CULUS, the genus of plants to 
which belongs the horse-chestnut. 

Ai'SOP, the Greek fabulist, is said to 
have been a contemporary of Croesus and 
Solon, and thus probably lived about 
the middle of the sixth century b.c. 
But so little is known of his life that his 
existence has been called in question. 
He is said to have been originally a 
slave, and to have received his freedom 
from a Samian master, Iadmon, No 
works of ^Esop are extant, and it is 
doubtful whether he ever wrote any. 
The supposition is that his fables were 
delivered orally and perpetuated by rep¬ 
etition. Such fables are spoken of both 
by Aristophanes and Plato. 

■ESTHET'ICS, the philosophy of the 
beautiful; the name given to the 
branch of philosophy or of science 
which is concerned with that class of 
emotions, or with those attributes, real 
or apparent, of objects generally com¬ 
prehended under the term beauty, and 
other related expressions. The term 
aesthetics first received this application 
from Baumgarten (1714-1762), a Ger¬ 
man philosopher, who was the first 
writer to treat systematically on the 
subject, though the beautiful had 
received attention at the hands of 
philosophers from early times. 

.ESTIVATION, a botanical term 
applied to the arrangement of the parts 
of a flower in the flower-bud previous to 
the opening of the bud.—The term is 
also applied to the summer sleep of 
animals. See Dormant State. 

iE'THRIOSCOPE, an instrument for 
measuring radiation toward a clear sky, 
consisting of a metallic cup with a 
highly-polished interior of paraboloidal 
shape, in the focus of which is placed one 
bulb of a differential thermometer, the 
other being outside. The inside bulb at 
once begins to radiate heat when exposed 
to a clear sky, and the extent to which 
this takes place is shown by the scale 
of the thermometer. The aethrioscope 
also indicates the presence of invisible 
aqueous vapor in the atmosphere, 
radiation being less than when the air 
is dry. 

ET'NA. See Etna. 

AFFIDA'VIT, a written statement of 
facts upon oath or affirmation. Affi¬ 
davits are generally made use of when 
evidence is to be laid before a judge or 
a court, while evidence brought before 
a jury is delivered orally. The person 
making the affidavit signs his name at 
the bottom of it, and swears that the 
statements contained in it are true. 
The affidavit may be sworn to in open 
court, or before a magistrate or other 
duly qualified person. 

AFFIN'ITY, in chemistry, the force 
by which unlike kinds of matter com¬ 
bine so intimately that the properties 
of the constituents are lost, and a com¬ 
pound with new properties is produced. 
Of the force itself we know little or 


nothing. It is not the same under all 
conditions, being very much modified 
by circumstances, especially temper¬ 
ature. The usual effect of increase of 
temperature is to diminish affinity and 
ultimately to cause the separation of a 
compound into its constituents; and 
there is probably for every compound 
a temperature above which it could 
not exist but would be broken up. 
Where two elements combine to form 
a compound heat is almost always 
evolved, and the amount evolved serves 
as a measure of the affinity. In order 
that chemical affinity may come into 
play it is necessary that the substances 
should be in contact, and usually one 
of them at least is a fluid or a gas. 
The results produced by chemical com¬ 
bination are endlessly varied. Color, 
taste, and smell are changed, destroyed, 
or created; harmless constituents pro¬ 
duce strong poisons, strong poisons pro¬ 
duce harmless compounds. 

AFFINITY, in law, is that degree of 
connection which subsists between one 
of two married persons and the blood 
relations of the other. It is no real 
kindred (consanguinty). A person can¬ 
not, by legal succession, receive an 
inheritance from a relation by affinity; 
neither does it extend to the nearest 
relations of husband and wife so as to 
create a mutual relation between them. 
The degrees of affinity are computed 
in the same way as those of consanguin¬ 
ity or blood. All legal impediments 
arising from affinity cease upon the 
death of the husband or wife, excepting 
those which relate to the marriage of 
the survivor. 

AFFIRMATION, a solemn declara¬ 
tion by Quakers and others, who object 
to taking an oath, in confirmation of 
their testimony in courts of law, or 
of their statements on other occasions 
on which the sanction of an oath is 
required of other persons. 

AFGHANISTAN (af-gan'i-stan), that 
is, the land of the Afghans, a country 
in Asia, bounded on the east by the 
N. W. Frontier Prov., etc., on the south 
by Beluchistan, on the west by the 
Persian province of Khorasan, and on 
the north by Bokhara and Russian 
Turkestan. Recently the boundary 
from the Oxus to the Persian frontier 
was surveyed and marked off by a 
Russian and British commission; farther 
east to the Chinese frontier it was settled 
in 1895. The area may be set down at 
about 280,000 sq. miles. The popula¬ 
tion is estimated at between 4,000,000 
and 5,000,000. Afghanistan consists 
chiefly of lofty, bare, uninhabited table¬ 
lands, sandy barren plains, ranges of 
snow-covered mountains, offsets of the 
Hindu Kush or the Himalayas, and 
deep ravines and valleys. Many of the 
last are well watered and very fertile, 
but about four-fifths of the whole sur¬ 
face is rocky, mountainous, and unpro¬ 
ductive. There are numerous practica¬ 
ble avenues of communication between 
Afghanistan and India, among the most 
extensively used being the famous 
Khyber Pass, by which the river Cabul 
enters the Punjab; the Gomul Pass, also 
leading to the Punjab; and the Bolan 
Pass on the south, through which the 
route passes to Sind. Of the rivers the 




AFRICA 


AFRICA 


largest is the Helmund, which flows in 
a south-westerly direction more than 
400 miles, till it enters the Hamoon or 
Seistan swamp. Next in importance 
are the Cabul in the northeast, which 



Afghans. 


drains to the Indus, and the Hari Rud 
in the northwest, which, like other 
Afghan streams, loses itself in the sand. 
The climate is extremely cold in the 
higher, and intensely hot in the lower 
regions, yet on the whole it is salubrious. 
The most common trees are pines, oaks, 
birch, and walnut. In the valleys 
fruits, in the greatest variety and abun¬ 
dance, grow wild. The principal crops 
are wheat, forming the staple food of the 
people; barley, rice, and maize. Other 
crops are tobacco, sugar-cane, and cot¬ 
ton. The chief domestic animals are the 
dromedary, the horse, ass, and mule, the 
ox, sheep with large fine fleeces and 
enormous fat tails, and goats; of wild 
animals there are the tiger, bears, leop¬ 
ards, wolves, jackal, hyena, foxes, etc. 
The chief towns are Cabul (the capital), 
Kandahar, Ghuzni, and Herat. The 
inhabitants belong to different races, 
but the Afghans proper form the great 
mass of the people. They are allied in 
blood to the Persians, and are divided 
into a number of tribes, among which 
the Duranis and Ghiljis are the most 
important. The Afghans are bold, 
hardy, and warlike, fond of freedom and 
resolute in maintaining it, but of a rest¬ 
less, turbulent temper, and much given 
to plunder. Tribal dissensions are con¬ 
stantly in existence, and seldom or 
never do all the Afghans pay allegiance 
to the nominal ruler of their country. 
Their language is distinct from the Per¬ 
sian, though it contains a great number 
of Persian words, and is written, like 
the Persian, with the Arabic characters. 
In religion they are Mohammedans of 
the Sunnite sect. The history of 
Afghanistan is mainly modern. The 
British have attempted to control the 
country and its ruler, called the Ameer, 
since 1839. The present Ameer is 
friendly to Britain, but he has been 
tound very difficult to restrain from 
intrigues with Russia. He is virtually 
autocrat of his domains. 

AF'RICA, one of the three great 
divisions of the Old World, and the 


second in extent of the five principal 
continents of the globe, forming a vast 
peninsula joined to Asia by the Isthmus 
of Suez. It is of a compact form, with 
few important projections or indenta¬ 
tions, and having therefore a very small 
extent of coast-line (about 16,000 miles, 
or much less than that of Europe) in 
proportion to its area. This continent 
extends from 37° 20' n. lat. to 34° 50' 
s. lat., and the extreme points, Cape 
Blanco and Cape Agulhas, are nearly 
5000 miles apart. From west to east, 
between Cape Verde, Ion. 70° 34' w., and 
Cape Guardafui, Ion. 51° 16' e., the dis¬ 
tance is about 4600 miles. The area is 
estimated at 11,500,000 square miles, 
or more than three times that of Europe. 
The islands belonging to Africa are not 
numerous, and, except Madagascar, 
none of them are large. They include 
Madeira, the Canaries, Cape Verde Is¬ 
lands, Fernando Po, Prince’s Island, 
St. Thomas, Ascension, St. Helena, 
Mauritius, Bourbon, the Comoros, So¬ 
cotra, etc. 

The most striking feature of northern 
Africa is the immense tract known as the 
Sahara or Great Desert, which is in¬ 
closed on the north by the Atlas Moun¬ 
tains (greatest height, 12,000 to 13,000 
feet), the plateau of Barbary and that 
of Barca, on the east by the mountains 
along the west coast of the Red Sea, on 
the west by the Atlantic Ocean, and on 
the south by the Soudan. The Soudan, 
which lies to the south of the Sahara, 
and separates it from the more elevated 
plateau of southern Africa, forms a belt 
of pastoral country across Africa, and 
includes the countries on the Niger, 
around Lake Tchad (or Chad), and east¬ 
ward to the elevated region of Abys¬ 
sinia. Southern Africa as a whole is 
much more fertile and well watered than 
northern Africa, though it also has a 
desert tract of considerable extent (the 
Kalahari Desert). 

The Nile is the only great river of 
Africa which flows to the Mediterranean. 
It receives its waters primarily from the 
great lake Victoria Nyanza, which lies 
under the equator, and in its upper 
course is led by tributary streams of 
great size, but for the last 1200 miles of 
its course it has not a single affluent. 
It drains an area of more than 1,000,000 
square miles. The Indian Ocean re¬ 
ceives numerous rivers; but the only 
great river of South Africa which enters 
that ocean is the Zambesi, the fourth in 
size of the continent, and having in its 
course the Victoria Falls, one of the 
greatest waterfalls in the world In 
southern Africa also, but flowing west¬ 
ward and entering the Atlantic, is the 
Congo, which takes origin from a series 
of lakes and marshes in the interior, is 
fed by great tributaries, and is the first 
in volume of all the African rivers, 
carrying to the ocean more water than 
the Mississippi. Unlike most of the 
African rivers, the mouth of the Congo 
forms an estuary. Of the other Atlantic 
rivers, the Senegal, the Gambia, and the 
Niger are the largest, the last being 
third among African streams. 

With the exception of Lake Tchad 
there are no great lakes in the northern 
division of Africa, whereas in the num¬ 
ber and magnificence of its lakes the 


southern division almost rivals North 
America. Here are the Victoria and 
Albert Nyanza, Lakes Tanganyika, 
Nyassa, Shirwa, Bangweolo, Moero, and 
other lakes. Of these the Victoria and 
Albert belong to the basin of the Nile; 
Tanganyika, Bangweolo, and Moero to 
that of the Congo; Nyassa, by its affluent 
the Shir4, to the Zambesi. Lake Tchad 
on the borders of the northern desert 
region, and Lake Ngami on the bor¬ 
ders of the southern, have a remark¬ 
able resemblance in position, and in the 
fact that both are drained by streams 
that lose themselves in the sand. 

The climate of Africa is mainly in¬ 
fluenced by the fact that it lies almost 
entirely within the tropics. In the 
equatorial belt, both north and south, 
rain is abundant and vegetation very 
luxuriant, dense tropical forests prevail¬ 
ing for about 10° on either side of the 
line. To the north and south of the 
equatorial belt the rainfall diminishes, 
and the forest region is succeeded by an 
open pastoral and agricultural country. 
This is followed by the rainless regions 
of the Sahara on the north and the 
Kalahari Desert on the south, extending 
beyond the tropics, and bordering on 
the agricultural and pastoral countries 
of the north and south coasts, which lie 
entirely in the temperate zone. The low 
coast regions of Africa are almost every¬ 
where unhealthful, the Atlantic coast 
within the tropics being the most fatal 
region to Europeans. 

Among mineral productions may be 
mentioned gold, which is found in the 
rivers of western Africa (hence the name 
Gold Coast), and in southern Africa, 
most abundantly in the Transvaal; 
diamonds have been found in large 
numbers in recent years in the south; 
iron, copper, lead, tin, and coal are also 
found.—Among plants are the baobab, 
the date-palm (important as a food plant 
in the north), the doum-palm, the oil- 
palm, the wax-palm, the shea-butter 
tree, trees yielding caoutchouc, the 
papyrus, the castor-oil plant, indigo, 
the coffee-plant, heaths with beautiful 
flowers, aloes, etc. Among cultivated 
plants are wheat, maize, millet, and 
other grains, cotton, coffee, cassava, 
ground-nut, yam, banana, tobacco, 
various fruits, etc. As regards both 
plants and animals, northern Africa, 
adjoining the Mediterranean, is dis¬ 
tinguished from the rest of Africa in its 
great agreement with southern Europe.— 
Among the most characteristic African 
animals are the lion, hyena, jackal, 
gorilla, chimpanzee, baboon, African 
elephant (never domesticated, yielding 
much ivory to trade), hippopotamus, 
rhinoceros, giraffe, zebra, quagga, ante¬ 
lopes in great variety and immense num¬ 
bers.—Among birds are the ostrich, the 
secretary-bird or serpent-eater, the 
honey-guide cuckoo, sacred ibis, guinea 
fowl.—The reptiles include the crocodile, 
chameleon, and serpents of various 
kinds, some of them very venomous.— 
Among insects are locusts, scorpions, 
the tsetse-fly whose bite is so fatal to 
cattle, and white-ants. 

The great races of which the popula¬ 
tion of Africa mainly consists are the 
Hamites, the Semites, the Negroes, and 
the Bantus. To the Semitic stock be- 





































Ul -k&u-A' 

.■ e,, S yj 


PORTUGA 

LUbon 


Bokhara 


Sardinia 


spin r 
l .Sea 


..Tabriz 


£7*w9c*Bon ^LjolCiiy 

^Vl'unis 0 ^ 

■an'crt^V 1 '* 4 Malta Q) 

vf° x 

,abiss“V.v' 

<wy, o/ 

M isratah^V Sidra 
P-yP : ■«<*' ' o ! (V s * —r »^ 
Misda 


! Cadiz i 
Strait of'Gibraltar 
/ Tangier^ 

/ Larnsli/^ 
/ Rabatv^Ti 

M«W^V C 

Mogado^T |SM 

r* nvxJl lrfio 


Q Teheran 


Crete 


rf/Shott JeryfC, 
aggurto * v ' 
o Guerrara* 1 
^ 0 W argla \ ; : 


Kabul ®. 


/Beirut / \ 

P ® Damascus 
•Acre / \ 

0 Jeyusalem \ 


/Madeira 

Islands^* 

{Port.) 


T>em aft 


AFGHANISTAN' 


fBengazla— 

Morsa. Tobruk, 

b-Vr c a/ 


ilsthtnua of S» 


Bust; 


Vie 'l '" f " 1 
\p G n adatne^^ 


li / El-Golea' 


/ Jarabub 


Ain Taaba 


la ,(p Gizeb 

,/ N. Medinet-el-FajumloJ 
Siwa Oasis J,] (j y j»J| 
‘-it*-' Minien\ 

i£p y a\ri Assist 


Sokna 

"*f‘"** 


HammadafeLJIomra >. 

A .JlJ >, 


Kelat ® \ 

'.BALUCHISTAN; 


° El-Biodh 


TRirOL I* 

V,.H* I 

8ebkba Oasis • 

PEZZAN / 


,1ns ala 


Desert of Tgidi 
• • or Gicli 


Tabta-V^ 

Girgefi^ 

Eeneb 


Murzuk* 


o Gatrun / 

.„v. . 

'cancer 


Oman- 


SPANISH 


Yambo-el-Babr 


C.Durnford 


Assuao, 


®S« 


\ Muscat 


Korosko A 


Taudeul ° 


TERRITORY 
A d r a r. *■•• 
o 

Shingeri o r*- 


%|/ ** VTatsili-*, 
'\/ w Ahdggar 


'Bardai 


Tar so ‘.l/ltt 


El-Juf Desert 


C Blanco 


lAbu Hatned 


•sj / - Arawan o A S a \ 

/ w » 1 » u o 

FR/EKCH TERUIXO 

/ Timbuktu 

/El Hodh ^ 

/ Kaasambara [fr 


Y eggeba Oasis 


C.Mirik 


Marsa .11 ali 


N„*. A T R 

in-tellust Q 
I (ASBENl 

r / ° 

/ Agades . 


. Berber 

egyptia: 


BORK 


BRITISH- 

_Abu-Klea o 

Gaiii°/F 

imdurroan <AL 
Kllartum*^ 


Ulbbela Oasis 


issowah \ 

*1 


.Sana 


SUDAN' 


Makalle 


Abeshr ®j 


KANEM' 
C-\Lake 


Robeh 3 




/ Sansandig'/f w 

J . .! ’’'“^Wa»adug\i ^ 

Bamaku 9/^.4.* i T ^. . . . o 

\ •, VV l r il b » > _ / 


'El-Pasher- 


Barma 


F. U R jEI ,gbe do i 
powaiaha! kqkY)OPAN, 
“Karra J <sj ; 

..—Shekaa F L ho d a 


lObok:, 

Jibuti 

OtZeila 


Mashcna 


Massenya 1 W A 


KcbbUKano o 


BerberA 


Doloo 


’Tim bo. 


7 V BRITISH ( ■" 

' \ 80MAU COAST 

.Harar Ybotkctorat^^ 


Lokobec 




TERRITOR] 


’Bis|an^u?u T 

Kc 


\ r f NIGER 

}iNf^o^l or . in 

Ybcpkiita" 


Konakry < 

Freetown 


/■(ASHANTI 


fSIERRA 

\ LEONE 

<v '^V^J 


Dembo o 


Lokoja 


Wukari 


Jurdlhattaa 


’Dar'Banda 


Adamawa 


LIBERIA! \ 

v Vy <4^ 

Harper 


lAsaba' 


JIonro^ia^[ 
Great Bass^ 


AMERCjN 

Towd. Njgaumde(e 
(ajmfiAm Mt.\ \ 
■i-Kainerun /|, 

' Gross Batanga 


s '*^._‘Ndoruroa. 

, -Abdallah . , o'*- 

y v ~'9. 

_oBopiokandi. J_'__ J 

Mbima Amadi "W 


Lake 


jj Sfefanie^L. 


^^vlrand Drewin 

C.Palmaa 


Jiiaht o£)§, 
^ L Fernando Po 

TH-llfH 

(Port.) . f 

„ Libreville 


Madisha 


■ambuya 


Igarrowa 
RuwerizmHti) 
^Stanley Fall^ 


A^tw^EiT 

orville \ 


^UGANDA] 
Sglengo n 


;/Np.) 

Baraka 


EQUATOR 


/ yKismayu 

Port,Durnford 


Albert Edi 


'outbid 


St.ThomaaX 


) L)'ZuTnba 
S v. 

'\)L.Leopold lit* 


>KinmduiVyai 

L.Kwu 


{Port.) C.Lope* > 
•Annobon I. 


...... 0:E )l 

i__iC TangaS 

yjVZjjabariis 

Lake^\ Li r : n ,. Pani!ai11 /. 

^Ta w.flr a n yi k a 

LeastIaxR-LCA 

vr^L .Leopold or Rikwct { 
^fo ALqr.corn'' c 


Saulspoort 3 

RUST EjN B T 


IriugboCk. 


-^PoT-Tiir/sa Bay 
. ’'Melinde 
Mombasar 
Pemba L" 
Zanzibar R 

Zanzibar 

Dar-es-Salaam 

1 Mafia. T. 
dilwa Kivinje' 
Kilwa Kisiwani, 


AS V A A L 

We t/^r 1 a 

c AVallmanstha! 

j_T R A N/S > 

'iT[f re r-'M ine 


ng'ntinfw 


Sankuru ’C 
V_Luebo 


SnVmanp Sjl _S-~ 
^ 1 fas t A”a a) 


•Manyauga 


.ustenburg_ 


Albertville °\ 
Bauduiuville o 


j.-Salvadori 


dVIiddelburg" 


^Much] 


.Pnnslo’ 


Komatie 


Eucoje- 


.Ambriz' 

»Loamla 


srf&y 


AldabrajCs.(Br.) 


^ iBrackPau 


issumi 


roerol 


Steynsdorpj/ / 
1 ' 

|C?C*^'—7 


J oli;i/imesb htto?" 

.POTCMFSTROOM,, W ’ 1 U 

— ^^4^Potcbef3troom*iy7 

e n jx r ^ k r 

.I’ttal /p\ 


\Klipstapfl<Mt. 

e"r^ 


Jt/I 

i S- i 

I ChitamboB^' 


Novo Rcdondol <. 

I Bengucla^^P ,0 


pERCy \ 
ileidel)>erg l 


-*A f — Eafwiifeolo' 

/ N Qr.ttL^^ 

BKI^TEM. 

•Zadnb e zia 


‘ Olumbo* 


llapotschan 


. Derby £- 


TONG A 
lapoy / . 

s l srs wj 


ST A N* D E irirtrN 
;tanilerton^w-v_ 


Rcitzburg_ 


m t anbek a- 
‘iet 


'o \Kipungo 


Lialui 


.Zumbo 


Mossamedes 


Vte^ 

KBOONSTAI 


Vi \Y', 

/XTr^V A ota-irS TR (IO|Ta^ 

Cr i akker s t r >q in * 

-Vrede / — c - s , 

’Laings' Nec ftkCKaiJestovn' '^a 

■;^D V. ^ ^ ; 

Er Ma iypft: 1 1 ^T^S^TRECHT v Ekl 
M '? \Y r > l s3A l 

fl \ Y (NEWCasSTLE^ 3^, V RT HEID 


Lake/koi 


iS yH urn be 


lAu® 611 \ ^~r 

' y "-""’D am a ralati d'^* x ^ s | 

... g Eimi y r 

OgdeA^ l ^Franzfputein tyc 
OkAsondye O 0kandyo3e 
Wilh VSO IT H • TOST^j Rigtfontein. 

«ph l Bcohuana-^ 1 

FS -• M r indh oe k! land 


E- ’'.nitao 


South ^Zambezia Mnshona 


Mozatn bique 


tfaW/l 


Usibebu 


(ReitzT 


Tdimauaudral'ozan: 


[Sofnla 

Xhilo&oe 


\ Makurikari^f^b •’/m a tjabt 

jgaetfontem ^ pa ^ h ^^rS? 

,au. 4^Sloj£b^ng£Vl^i ^ 
ahari&f*Desert _ // • COLONY. 


Melamed 

RRISMITIP, 
^■J-Harriapiith / 


A’enters! 


^Dunjuee 


Rorkea 


Tullear' 


KSG Lucia. 
Buy 


y VYaugaiudrano 


luhambane 


'mlandclaj 


ireat Namaqualandl 


AFRICA L 

eraaba o\’ y . 

S .o BetbMiy"' 


_jClUjX>urenyo Marquez 
i/i y De layup Bay 


ij^'^yoolsSoi 

aux Sources 
3utSeV' 15 *A 

Wf r?;J»r 

V » J. AN — 

Ht.lliQiants/Castlei%---_ 

A sJ-Zs. iS, A.r ^Lios 


louambi 


C.Ste.Marie 


J,)hannestlurs 

- Vryburggr' ^S. 
Kurumano / 


o^Weenen, 
^stcourt Aj 
,. E ^ G review 


►-NEktme 


ngra.Pequena 


v A N 

r li&^CThlotai 
^^Ficksburg; ‘ 

St^Jr Machacha 
- n coo f 


British 

Territory lietween 
JOHANXESBUKG 

AND 

INDIAN OCEAN. 


-EfTj^ee.T3o\jT/ 

*" w^\P e L y^ kang< ' r 

'✓ ill vOjroutfield 
' n N.\\,J Ybn 1 1 am 

^k,)WD urban 
—At'} Port Natal 
JJMZI_ 


dermaritzburg 


Port Nolloth 


loniforr 


/Durban. 

fokstad 


Clan will 


'Harri 


East London 
jtow'n 


t° n 1/ Bu'ah%ans*$ 4 


HEOMAN^l 


Table BayQ 

Cape Town y 
Cape oX Good Hoj>e 


Azores 

no (Port.) 


Canary Islands - c 
/ p (Sp-) 0 

81a.Crux Jc TeLcrtfli*^ 

1 C Las pSrnas /C.Juby / 

f D r/a a 

C.Bojador 


C- Cape Verde / 

p , / St.Louis ^ 

Islands / I 

WlPortJ / KN'VV Bake! 

CiYerde«< SENEGAL j YT* 

.‘V^'.ETAr^. _ K.v'EE- 

iBnfburst ' 


Longitude West S0° Irom Greenwich 10 


EQUATOR 


Amirante Is. 
^ CSr.) 

c' E A 


, Mikindani. 

C. Delgado 

C/mber 

0 <3 w ■' j/c^Autseranana 

^HellValle*)( 

fozambique 

.. Mojanga -/l^TV^IaqdJitaarn 

& I .'O'' r^ p f to 40<t<i »wvjri ^ fyiMaoeoar* 

i ro .a / -'^I.Ste.SIadO 
. ^ iFeneriYe 

j •£> truths ofkhe Zambezi V 4* 1 ^o/Tamatave 

J=r^L-^yo\nde | ^AHtananari TO 

cyM^rosika 

ab ifA 


Pori Louis Mauritius I. 

<9St.Denis ( tj r ) 

7 Reunion I, 

ihl (Fr.) 


Maspdr&no 
taoa 


AFRICA. 

Capitals thus*: ® Railroads j* 

Canals thus: « 

Scale of Statute Miles. 

0 *1QQ 2p0 390 490 5QQ 600 7QP SpO 9Q0 

6 30 MILES TO ONE INCH. 


| i Drifish | L Italian. | i TurAttsh 

1 1 French 1 | Portuguese 1 1 Belgian* copyright^ i899 , by the matthewO-^iortiirup COl^/ 


Kilometers. 

g00 400 6Q0 80Q ip OQ 


[ ■ 1 German. 1 \ Svanish j I Independent States 


eufEAto, il Xi 


40° Longitude 


East 50° from Greenwich 60° 


Rodriguez I. 













































































































































































HUNTING BIG GAME IN AFRICAN WILDS 



An East African Rhinoceros 


Head of a Large Rhinoceros 


Enormous Buffalo Head 



Vermin in East Africa—a l^eopard 


A Fine Lion Shot in British East Africa 


An East African Tusker near Port Florence 




great herds of zebras, gazelles, giraffes, ostriches, hippopotami, lions and elephants roam 


A1 THEIR pleasure 

















AGAMEMNON 


AGATE 


long the Arabs, who form a considerable 
portion of the population in Egypt and 
along the north coast, while a portion of 
the inhabitants of Abyssinia are of the 
same race (though the blood is con¬ 
siderably mixed). The Hamites are 
represented by the Copts of Egypt, the 
Berbers, Kabyles, etc., of northern 
Africa, and the Som&li, Dan&kil, etc., of 
eastern Africa. The Negro races occupy a 
vast territory in the Soudan and cen¬ 
tral Africa, while the Bantus occupy 
the greater part of southern Africa from 
a short distance north of the equator, 
and include the Kaffres, Bechuanas, 
Swahili, and allied races. In the ex¬ 
treme southwest are the Hottentots and 
Bushmen (the latter a dwarfish race), 
distinct from the other races as well as, 
probably, from each other. In Mada¬ 
gascar there is a large Malay element. 
To these may be added the Fulahs on 
the Niger and the Nubians on the Nile 
and elsewhere, who are of a brownish 
color, and are often regarded as dis¬ 
tinct from the other races, though some¬ 
times classed with the Negroes. In 
religion a great proportion of the in¬ 
habitants are heathens of the lowest 
type; Mohammedanism numbers a large 
number of adherents in North Africa, 
and is rapidly spreading in the Soudan; 
Christianity prevails only among the 
Copts, the Abyssinians, and the natives 
of Madagascar, the latter having been 
converted in recent times. Elsewhere 
the missionaries seem to have made but 
little progress. Over great part of the 
continent civilization is at a low ebb, 
yet in some parts the natives have 
shown considerable skill in agriculture 
and various mechanical arts, as in weav¬ 
ing and metal working. Of African 
trade two features are the caravans that 
traverse great distances, and the trade 
in slaves that still widely prevails, and 
is accompanied by an immense amount 
of bloodshed. Among articles exported 
from Africa are palm-oil, diamonds, 
ivory, ostrich feathers, wool, cotton, 
gold, esparto, caoutchouc, etc. The 
population is estimated at 170,000,000. 
Of these a small number are of European 
origin—French in Algeria, British and 
Dutch at the southern extremity. 

Great areas in Africa have recently 
been apportioned among European 
powers as protectorates or spheres of 
influence. Among states still more or 
less independent are Morocco, Abys¬ 
sinia, Bornu, Waday, Bagirmi, Liberia. 
To Britain belong the Cape Colony, 
Natal, and the recently independent 
Orange River Colony and Transvaal, 
with Rhodesia, etc., farther north, a 
region in eastern Africa extending from 
the sea to Lake Victoria and the head¬ 
waters of the Nile, Sierra Leone; and 
other settlements on the west coast, 
Mauritius, etc.; to France belong Algeria 
and Tunis, Senegambia, part of Sahara, 
territory north of the Lower Congo, 
Madagascar, etc.; the Portuguese possess 
Angola on the west coast and Mozam¬ 
bique on the east; Germany has con¬ 
siderable tracts on the east, the south¬ 
west and the western coasts; to Turkey 
nominally belong Egypt, Barca, and 
Tripoli; Italy has a territory on the Red 
Sea, and part of Somaliland; Spain has 
a part of the coast of the Sahara; the 


Congo Free State is under the king of 
Belgium; Zanzibar is now a British pro¬ 
tectorate. 

Africa has an ancient history and was 
colonized by the Greeks and the Ro¬ 
mans. Modern exploration began with 
Mungo Park in 1795 and has continued 
down to present times through the 
labors of Lander, Overweg, Barth, 
Speke, Livingstone, and Stanley. 

AGAMEM'NON, in Greek mythology, 
son of Atreus, King of Mycenae and 
Argos, brother of Menelaus, and com¬ 
mander of the allied Greeks at the siege 
of Troy. Returning home after the fall 
of Troy, he was treacherously assassin¬ 
ated by his wife, Clytemnestra, and 
her paramour, JEgisthus. He was 
the father of Orestes, Iphigenia, and 
Electra. 

AGAMOGENESIS (-jen'e-sis), the pro¬ 
duction of young without the congress 
of the sexes, one of the phenomena of 
alternate generation. See Generation. 

AGANIPPE (-nip'e), a fountain on 
Mount Helicon, in Greece, sacred to the 
Muses, which had the property of in¬ 
spiring with poetic fire whomever drank 
of it. 

AGAPE (ag'a-pe), in ecclesiastical his¬ 
tory, the love-feast or feast of charity, 
in use among the primitive Christians, 
when a liberal contribution was made 
by the rich to feed the poor. 

AGAPEMONE (ag-a-pem'o-ne), the 
name of a singular conventual establish¬ 
ment which has existed at Spaxton, near 
Bridgewater, Somersetshire, since 1859, 
the originator of it being a certain Henry 
James Prince, at one time a clergyman 
of the Church of England, who called 
himself the Witness of the First Resur¬ 
rection. The life spent by the inmates 
appears to be a sort of religious epicure¬ 
anism. 

A'GAR-A'GAR, a dried seaweed of 
the Asiatic Archipelago, much used in 
the East for soups and jellies, and also 
by the paper and silk manufacturers of 
eastern Asia as an ingredient in some 
classes of their goods. 

AGAR'IC, a large and important 
genus of fungi, characterized by having 
a fleshy cap or pileus, and a number of 
radiating plates or gills on which are 
produced the naked spores. The ma¬ 
jority of this species are furnished with 
stems, but some are attached to the 
objects on which they grow by their 
pileus. Over a thousand species are 
known, and are arranged in five sections 
according as the color of their spores is 
white, pink, brown, purple, or black. 
Many of the species are edible, like the 
common mushroom, and supply a 
delicious article of food, while others 
are deleterious and even poisonous. 

AGARIC MINERAL, or MOUNTAIN- 
MEAL, one of the purest of the native 
carbonates of lime, found chiefly in the 
clefts of rocks and at the bottom of 
some lakes in a loose or semi-indurated 
form resembling a fungus. The name 
is also applied to a stone of loose con¬ 
sistence found in Tuscany, of which 
bricks may be made so light as to float 
in water, and of which the ancients are 
supposed to have made their floating 


bricks. It is a hydrated silicate of mag¬ 
nesium, mixed with lime, alumina, and 
a small quantity of iron. 

AGASSIZ (ag'as-e), Louis John Ru¬ 
dolph, an eminent naturalist, born 1807, 
died 1873, son of a Swiss Protestant 
clergyman at Motiers, near the eastern 
extremity of the Lake of Neufch&tel. 



L. Agassiz. 


His attention was first specially directed 
to ichthyology by being called on to de¬ 
scribe the Brazilian fishes brought to 
Europe from Brazil by Martius and Spix. 
His researches led him to propose a new 
classification of fishes, which he divided 
into four classes, distinguished by the 
characters of the skin, as ganoids, 
placoids, cycloids, and ctenoids. His 
system has not been generally adopted, 
but the names of his classes have been 
used as useful terms. In 1836 he began 
the study of glaciers, and in 1840 he 
published his Etudes sur les Glaciers, in 
1847 his Syst^me Glaciaire. From 1838 
he had been professor of natural history 
at Neufch&tel, when in 1846 pressing 
solicitations and attractive offers in¬ 
duced him to settle in America, where 
he was connected as a teacher first with 
Harvard University, Cambridge, and 
latterly with Cornell University as well 
as Harvard. After his arrival in Amer¬ 
ica he engaged in various investigations 
and explorations, and published numer¬ 
ous works. In 1865-66 he made zoolog¬ 
ical excursions and investigations in 
Brazil, which were productive of most 
valuable results. Agassiz held views on 
many important points in science differ¬ 
ent from those which prevailed among 
the scientific men of the day, and in 
particular he strongly opposed the 
evolution theory. 

AGASSIZ (ag'a-se), Mount, an extinct 
volcano in Arizona, U. S., 10,000 feet 
in height; a place of summer resort, 
near the Great Canon of the Colorado. 

AG'ATE, a siliceous semi-pellucid 
compound mineral, consisting of bands 
or layers of various colors blended to¬ 
gether, the base generally being chal¬ 
cedony, and this mixed with variable 
proportions of jasper, amethyst, quartz, 
opal, heliotrope, and carnelian. The 
varying manner in which these materials 





AGATHARCHUS 


AGNOSTICS 


are arranged causes the agate when 
polished to assume some characteristic 
appearances, and thus certain varieties 
are distinguished, as the ribbon agate, 
the fortification agate, the zone agate, 
the star agate, the moss agate, the 
clouded agate, etc. 

AGATHAR'CHUS, a Greek painter, 
native of Samos, the first to apply the 
rules of perspective to theatrical scene¬ 
painting; flourished about 480 b.c. 

AGATHOCLES (a-gath'o-klez), a Sici¬ 
lian Greek, one of the boldest adventur¬ 
ers of antiquity, born 361 b.c. By his 
ability and energy, and being entirely 
unscrupulous, he raised himself from 
the position of a potter to that of sov¬ 
ereign of Syracuse and master of Sicily. 
Wars with the Carthaginians were the 
chief events of his life. He died (was 
poisoned) at the age of seventy-two, or, 
as some say, ninety-five. 

AGAVE (a-ga've), a genus of plants 
(which includes the daffodil and nar¬ 
cissus), popularly known as American 
aloes. They are generally large, and 
have a massive tuft of fleshy leaves with 



a spiny apex. They live for many years 
—ten to seventy, according to treat¬ 
ment—before flowering. When this 
takes place the tall flowering stem 
springs from the center of the tuft of 
leaves, and grows very rapidly until it 
reaches a height of 15, 20, or even 40 
feet, bearing toward the end a large 
number of flowers. The best-known 
species, is the common American aloe, 
introduced into Europe 1561, and now 
extensively grown in the warmer parts 
of the continent as well as in Asia 
(India in particular). This and other 
species yield various important prod¬ 
ucts. The sap when fermented yields 
a beverage resembling cider, called by 
the Mexicans pulque. The leaves are 
used for feeding cattle; the fibers of the 
leaves (called pita, sisal hemp, or hene- 
quen) are formed into thread, cord, and 
ropes; an extract from the leaves is used 
as a substitute for soap; slices of the 
withered flower-stem are used as razor- 
strops. 

AGE, a period of time representing 
the whole or a part of the duration of 


any individual thing or being, but used 
more specifically in a variety of senses. 
In law age is applied to the periods of 
life when men and women are enabled 
to do that which before, for want of 
years and consequently of judgment, 
they could not legally do. Full age in 
male or female is twenty-one years, 
which age is completed on the day pre¬ 
ceding the anniversary of a person’s 
birth, who till that time is an infant, 
and so styled in law. 

The term is also applied to designate 
the successive epochs or stages of civili¬ 
zation in history or mythology. Hesiod 
speaks of five distinct ages: 1. The 
golden or Saturnian age, a patriarchal 
and peaceful age. 2. The silver age, 
licentious and wicked.- 3. The brazen 
age, violent, 'savage, and warlike. 4. 
The heroic age, which seemed an approx¬ 
imation to a better state of things. 5. 
The iron age, when justice and honor 
had left the earth. The term is also 
used in such expressions as the dark 
ages, the middle ages, the Elizabethan 
age, etc. 

The Archaeological Ages or Periods 
are three—the Stone Age, the Bronze 
Age, and the Iron Age—these names 
being given in accordance with the ma¬ 
terials chiefly employed for weapons, 
implements, etc., during the particular 
period. The Stone Age of Europe has 
been subdivided into two—the Palaeo¬ 
lithic or earlier, and Neolithic or later. 
The word age in this sense has no refer¬ 
ence to the lapse of time, but simply 
denotes the stage at which a people has 
arrived in its progress toward civiliza¬ 
tion; thus there are races still in their 
stone age. 

AGENT, one who acts for another. 
In law, an agent is always supposed to 
be acting by authority from his prin¬ 
cipal, and the relation is held to imply 
a contract between the two. Briefly 
the law as to agents may be stated as 
follows: A principal is liable for all the 
acts of his agent as if these acts had 
been done by himself, whether these 
acts be authorized or not. But, if the 
third party enters into a contract with 
the agent under the agent’s own name, 
the principal is not held liable, unless 
the acts of the agent be included under 
the scope of the authority received 
from the principal. 

AGERATUM (a-jer’a-tum), a genus 
of composite plants of the warmer parts 
of America, one species of which is a 
well-known flower-border annual with 
dense lavender-blue heads. 

AGESILAUS (a-jes-i-la'us), a king of 
Sparta, born in 442 b.c., and elevated 
to the throne after the death of his 
brother Agis II. He acquired renown 
by his exploits against the Persians, 
Thebans, and Athenians. Though a 
vigorous ruler, and almost adored by 
his soldiers, he was of small stature and 
lame from his birth. He died in Egypt 
in the winter of 361-360 b.c. Xeno¬ 
phon, Plutarch, and Cornelius Nepos 
are among his biographers. 

AGGLOM'ERATE, in geology, a col¬ 
lective name for masses consisting of 
angular fragments ejected from vol¬ 
canoes. When the mass consists of 
fragments worn and rounded by water 
it is called a conglomerate. 


AGGREGATE, a term applied in 

geology to rocks composed of several 
different mineral constituents capable 
of being separated by mechanical means, 
as granite, where the quartz, felspar, 
and mica can be separated mechani¬ 
cally. In botany it is applied to flowers 
composed of many small florets having 
a common undivided receptacle, the 
anthers being distinct and separate, the 
florets commonly standing on stalks, 
and each having a partial calyx. 

AGINCOURT (a-zhan-kor), a village 
of northern France, department Pas 
de Calais, famous for the battle of 
October 25, 1415, between the French 
and English. Henry V., king of Eng¬ 
land, eager to conquer France, landed 
at Harfleur, took the place by storm, 
and wished to march through Picardy 
to Calais, but was met by a French 
army under the ^Constable d’Albert. 
The English numbered about 15,000 
men, while the French numbers are 
variously stated at from 50,000 to 
150,000. The confined nature and soft¬ 
ness of the ground were to the disad¬ 
vantage of the French, who were drawn 
up in three columns unnecessarily deep. 
The English archers attacked the first 
division in front and in flank, and soon 
threw them into disorder. The second 
division fled on the fall of the Due 
d’Alengon, who was struck down by 
Henry himself, and the third division 
fled without striking a blow. Of the 
French 10,000 were killed, including the 
Constable d’Albert, with six dukes and 
princes. The English lost 1600 men 
killed, among them the Duke of York, 
Henry’s uncle. After the battle the 
English continued their march to Calais. 

AGIO (a'ji-o), the difference between 
the real and the nominal value of money, 
as between paper money and actual 
coin: an Italian term originally. 

AG'NATES, in the civil law relations 
on the male side, in opposition to cog¬ 
nates, relations on the female side. 

AGNES, St., a saint, who, according 
to the story, suffered martyrdom be¬ 
cause she steadfastly refused to marry 
the son of the prefect of Rome, and ad¬ 
hered to her religion in spite of repeated 
temptations and threats, a.d. 303. She 
was first led to the stake, but as the 
flames did not injure her she was be¬ 
headed. Her festival is celebrated on 
the 21st of January. 

AGNES, St., the most southerly of the 
Scilly Islands. A lighthouse was erected 
here as early as 1680; another on the 
Wolf Rock near the island was com¬ 
pleted in 1858. 

AG'NI, the Hindu god of fire, one of 
the eight guardians of the world, and 
especially the lord of the southeast 
quarter. He is celebrated in many of the 
hymns of the Rig Veda. He is often 
represented as of a red or flame color, 
and rides on a ram or a goat. He is still 
worshiped as the personification of fire. 

AGNOSTICS (ag-nos'tiks), a modern 
term applied to those who disclaim any 
knowledge of God or of the origin of the 
universe, holding that the mind of man 
is limited to a knowledge of phenomena 
and of what is relative, and that, there¬ 
fore, the infinite, the absolute, and the 
unconditioned, being beyond all experi¬ 
ence, are consequently beyond its range. 









AVERAGE SIZE OF FARMS 



PROPORTION OF IMPROVED LAND tO TOTAL AREA 



I- 175 PER CENT AND OVER 














VALUE OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS 



I-1 TILLAGE 

mm PASTURE 









AGRICULTURE 

PRODUCTION OF GRAIN PER ACRE 
» * USMlLS - - 

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ooden plow of the Egyptians. 






















ANOTHER VIEW OF THE PLOW. 

















































































































































































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MODERN METHODS OF FARMING. 


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harvesting machines are need throughout the whole of the civil,,,'i SJS <Iamage thc cr 0 P' 1 hese Amencan-mn 


throughout 


the civilized world. 


field is 
ade 




















AGNUS CASTUS 


AGRIPPINA 


AGNUS CASTUS, a shrub, a native of 
the Mediterranean countries, with white 
flowers and acrid, aromatic fruits. It had 
anciently the imagined virtue of pre¬ 
serving chastity—hence the term castus. 

AGNUS DEI (de'I), a term applied to 
Christ in John i. 29, and in the Roman 
Catholic liturgy a prayer beginning with 
the words “Agnus Dei,” generally sung 
before the communion. The term is also 



commonly given to a medal, or more 
frequently a cake of wax, consecrated by 
the pope, stamped with the figure of a 
lamb supporting the banner of the cross; 
supposed to possess great virtues, such 
as preserving those who carry it in faith 
from accidents, etc. 

AGON'IC LINE, in terrestrial mag¬ 
netism a name applied to the line which 
joins all the places on the earth’s surface 
at which the needle of the compass 
points due north and south, without 
any declination. This line, which 
varies from time to time, at present 
passes through S. America and N. 
America to the Magnetic North Pole, 
thence to the White Sea, south through 
the Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean, and 
Australia to the Southern Magnetic 
Pole. 

AGOUARA (a-gu-a'ra), a name given 
to the crab-eating racoon of S. America. 

AGOUTA (a-go'ta), an insectivorous 
mammal peculiar to Hayti, of the tanrec 
family, somewhat larger than a rat. It 
has the tail devoid of hair and covered 
with scales, the eyes small, and an elon¬ 
gated nose like the shrews. Another 
species belongs to Cuba. 

AGRA (a/gra), a city of India, in the 
United Provinces, on the right bank of 
the Jumna, 841 miles by rail from Cal¬ 
cutta. It has various interesting struc¬ 
tures, among which are the imperial 
palace, a mass of buildings erected by 
several emperors; the Moti Masjid or 
Pearl Mosque; the mosque called the 
Jama Masjid (a cenotaph of white mar¬ 
ble); and, above all, the Taj Mahal, a 
mausoleum of the seventeenth century, 
built by the Emperor Shah Jehan to his 
favorite queen, of white marble, adorned 
throughout with exquisite mosaics. 
Agra has a trade in grain, sugar, etc., 
and some manufactures, including beau- 
™ inlaid mosaics. It was founded in 
1566 by the Emperor Akbar, and was 
a residence of the following emperors 
tor over a century. Pop. 188,022. The 
A gra division has an area of 10,139 sq. 
tnfles, and a pop. of 5,248,121. 


AGRAM, or ZAGRAB, a city n the 
Austrian Empire, capital of the prov. 
Croatia and Slavonia, near the river 
Save; contains the residence of the ban 
or governor of Croatia and Slavonia, 
government buildings, cathedral (being 
the see of a Roman Catholic archbishop), 
university, theater, etc.; carries on 
an active trade, and manufactures to¬ 
bacco, leather and linens. Pop. 
61,002. H 

AGRARIAN LAWS, laws enacted in 
ancient Rome for the division of the 
public lands, that is, the lands belonging 
to the state. As the territory of Rome 
increased the public land increased, the 
land of conquered peoples being always 
regarded as the property of the con¬ 
queror. The right to the use of this 
public land belonged originally only to 
the patricians or ruling class, but 
latterly the claims of the plebeians on 
it were also admitted, though they were 
often unfairly treated in the sharing of 
it. Hence arose much discontent among 
the plebeians, and various remedial laws 
were passed with more or less success. 
Indeed an equitable adjustment of the 
land question between the aristocracy 
and the common people was never 
attained. / 

AGRIC'OLA, Cneius Julius, lived 
from a.d. 37 to 93, a Roman consul 
under the Emperor Vespasian, and 
governor in Britain, the greater part of 
which he reduced to the dominion of 
Rome; distinguished as a statesman 
and general. His life, written by his 
son-in-law, the historian Tacitus, gives 
the best extant account of Britain in 
the early part of the period of the Ro¬ 
man rule. 

AGRIC'OLA, Georg, born in Saxony 
1490, died at Chemnitz 1555, German 
physician and mineralogist. Though 
tinged with the superstitions of his age, 
he maple the first successful attempt to 
reduce mineralogy to a science, and 
introduced many improvements in the 
art of mining. 

AG'RICULTURE is the art of culti¬ 
vating the ground, more especially with 
the plow and in large areas or fields, in 
order to raise grain and other crops for 
man and beast; including the art of 
preparing the soil, sowing and planting 
seeds, removing the crops, and also the 
raising and feeding of cattle or other 
live stock. This art is the basis of all 
other arts, and in all countries coeval 
with the first dawn of civilization. At 
how remote a period it must have been 
successfully practiced in Egypt, Meso¬ 
potamia, and China we have no means of 
knowing. Egypt was renowned as a 
corn country in the time of the Jewish 
patriarchs, who themselves were keepers 
of flocks and herds rather than tillers 
of the soil. Naturally little is known of 
the methods and details of agriculture 
in early times. Among the ancient 
Greeks the implements of agriculture 
were very few and simple. Cato, the 
censor, who was celebrated as a states¬ 
man, orator, and general, derived his 
highest honors from having written 
a voluminous work on agriculture. 

The Romans introduced their agri¬ 
cultural knowledge among the Britons, 
and during the most flourishing period 
of the Roman occupation large quanti-> 


ties of com were exported from Britain 
to the Continent. 

The first English treatise on hus¬ 
bandry and the best of the early works 
on the subject was published in the reign 
of Henry VIII. (in 1534), by Sir A. Fitz- 
herbert, judge of the Common Pleas. 

The American colonists received their 
agricultural methods from the English, 
but the United States has, during the 
last half century, outstripped the world 
in the art of agriculture. The govern¬ 
ment has vastly increased the efficiency 
of the American farmer by the establish¬ 
ment of experiment stations, of which 
there are now scores supported at a 
large annual outlay. They employ 
over 1,000 persons in administration 
and inquiry, and issue annual re 
ports and bulletins. With few excep¬ 
tions, they are departments of the ag¬ 
ricultural colleges established under 
the land-grant act (Morrill Act) of 1862, 
and are independent of each other as 
regards the planning and conduct of 
their operations. They are united in a 
national system through the Association 
of American Agricultural Colleges and 
Experiment Stations and the Office of 
Experiment Stations in the United 
States Department of Agriculture. This 
summarizes the accounts of the work of 
the stations and kindred institutions 
throughout the world in the periodical 
known as the Experiment Station Rec¬ 
ord, and gives popular r(sum(s of their 
investigations in the Farmers’ Bulletins 
series of the department, under the 
general title of Experiment Station 
Work. It also directly manages the 
stations in Alaska, Hawaii, and Porto 
Rico, 

AGRIGENTUM (-jen'tum), an an¬ 
cient Greek city of Sicily (the modern 
Girgenti), founded about 580 b. c., and 
long one of the most important places 
on the island. Extensive ruins of splen¬ 
did temples and public buildings yet 
attest its ancient magnificence. 

AG'RIMONY, a genus of plants, con¬ 
sisting of slender perennial herbs found 
in temperate regions. Common agri¬ 
mony, was formerly of much repute as 
a medicine in England. Its leaves and 
root-stock are astringent, and the latter 
yields a yellow dye. 

AGRIPPA, Cornelius Henry, bom in 
1486, at Cologne, he devoted himself to 
science, and became famous as a magi¬ 
cian and alchemist, and was involved in 
disputes with the church. 

AGRIPPA, Herod. See Herod Agrippa. 
AGRIPPA, Marcus Vipsanius, a Ro¬ 
man statesman and general, the son-in- 
law of Augustus; born b.c. 63, died 
b.c. 12. He was praetor in b.c. 41; con¬ 
sul in 37, 28, and 27; aedile in 33; and 
tribune from 18 till his death. He com¬ 
manded the fleet of Augustus in the 
battle of Actium. To him Rome is in¬ 
debted for three of her principal aque¬ 
ducts, the Pantheon, and several other 
works of public use and ornament. 

AGRIPPI'NA, the name of several 
Roman ladies: 1. The youngest daugh¬ 
ter of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, and 
wife of C. Germanicus; a heroic woman 
adorned with great virtues. Tiberius, 
who hated her for her virtues and popu¬ 
larity, banished her to the island of 
Pandataria, where she starved herself 









AGROSTIS 


AINSWORTH 


to death in a.d. 33.-2. A daughter of 
the last mentioned, and the mother of 
Nero, by Domitius Ahenobarbus. Her 
third husband was her uncle, the Em¬ 
peror Claudius, whom she subsequently 
poisoned to secure the government of the 
empire through her son Nero. After 
ruling a few years in her son’s name he 
became tired of her ascendency, and 
caused her to be assassinated (a.d. 60). 

AGROS'TIS, a genus of grasses, con¬ 
sisting of many species, and valuable 
as pasture-grasses. The bent-grasses 
belong to the genus. 

AGUA (ag'wa), an active volcano of 
Central America, in Guatemala, rising 
to the height of 15,000 feet. It has 
twice destroyed the old city of Guate¬ 
mala, in its immediate vicinity. 

AGUARDIENTE (a-gwar-de-en'te), a 
popular spirituous beverage of Spain 
and Portugal, a kind of coarse brandy, 
made from red wine, from the refuse of 
the grapes left in the wine-press, etc., 
generally flavored with anise; also a 
Mexican alcoholic drink distilled from 
the fermented juice of the agave. 

AGUAS CALIENTES (ag'was ka-le- 
cn'tas), a town 270 miles n.w. of Mexico, 
capital of the state of its own name, 
named from the thermal .springs near 
it; has manufactures of cottons and a 
considerable trade. Pop. 25,000. 

AGUE (a'gu), a kind of fever, which 
may be followed by serious conse¬ 
quences, but generally is more trouble¬ 
some than dangerous. According to the 
length of the interval between one 
febrile paroxysm and another, agues are 
denominated quotidian when they occur 
once in twenty-four hours, tertian when 
they come on every forty-eight hours, 
quartan when they visit the patient 
once in seventy-two hours. Ague arises 
from marsh miasmata, a temperature 
above 60° being, however, apparently 
required to produce it. To cure the 
disease and prevent the recurrence, 
quinine and various other bitter and 
astringent drugs are given with com¬ 
plete success in the majority of 

C&S6S. 

AGUESSEAU (a-ges-o), Henri Fran- 
$ois d’, a distinguished French jurist and 
statesman, born at Limoges in 1668; 
was in 1690 advocate-general at Paris, 
and at the age of thirty-two procureur- 
g6n6ral of the parliament. He risked 
disgrace with Louis XIV. by success¬ 
fully opposing the famous papal bull 
Unigenitus. He was made chancellor 
in 1717. He died in 1751. 

AGUILAR (a-gi-lar'), Grace, an Eng¬ 
lish writer, born at Hackney 1816, died 
at Frankfort 1847. 

AGUINALDO (a-ge-nal'do), Emilio, a 
Filipino chief who led the natives of the 
Philippine Islands in the insurrections 
against Spain and the United States. 
Aguinaldo received a good education 
from the Dominican friars and was mayor 
®f Cavite Viejo when the insurrection of 
1896 broke out. After the defeat of the 
Spanish power and the sale of the 
islands to the United States,Aguinaldo 
held out for the independence of the 
Filipinos and led the native army against 
the Americans. He was captured 
March 23,-1901 by General Frederick 
Funston and took the oath of allegiance 
& few days subsequently, 


AGULHAS (a-gyl'yas), Cape, a prom¬ 
ontory, forming the most southern 
extremity of Africa, about 90 miles 
southeast of the Cape of Good Hope, 
rising to 455 feet above the sea, with 
a lighthouse. 

A'HAB, the seventh king of Israel 
succeeded his father Omir 928 b.c., and 
reigned twenty years. At the instiga¬ 
tion of his wife Jezebel he erected a tem¬ 
ple to Baal, and became a cruel perse¬ 
cutor of the true prophets. He was 
killed by an arrow at the siege of 
Ramoth-Gilead. 

AHASUE'RUS, in Scripture history, 
a king of Persia, probably the same as 
Xerxes, the husband of Esther, to whom 
the Scriptures ascribe a singular deliver¬ 
ance of the Jews from extirpation.— 
Ahasuerus is also a Scripture name for 
Cambyses, the son of Cyrus (Ezra iv. 6), 
and for Astyages, king of the Medes 
(Dan. ix. 1). 

A'HAZ, the twelfth king of Judah, 
succeeded his father Jotham, 742 b.c. 
Forsaking the true religion he gave him¬ 
self up completely to idolatry, and plun¬ 
dered the temple to obtain presents for 
Tiglath-pileser, king of Assyria. 

AHAZI'AH: 1. Son of Ahab and 
Jezebel, and eighth king of Israel, died 
from a fall through a lattice in his palace 
at , Samaria after reigning two years 
(b.c. 896, 895).—2. Fifth king of Judah, 
and nephew of the above. He reigned 
but one year, and was slain (b.c. 884) 
by Jehu. 

AHMEDABAD, or AHMADABAD 

(a-mad-a-bad), a town of India, presi¬ 
dency of Bombay, in district of its own 
name, on the left bank of the Sabarmati, 
310 miles north of Bombay. Pop. 185,- 
889.—Area of dist. 3949 sq. m.; pop. 
795 094. 

AHMEDNAG'AR, a town of India, 
presidency of Bombay, in district of its 
own name, of commonplace appearance, 
surrounded by an earthen wall. Pop. 
(including military), 42,032.—Area of 
dist. 6645 sq. m.; pop. 837,774. 

AHMED SHAH, bom 1724, died 1773, 
founder of the Dur&ni dynasty in 
Afghanistan. On the assassination of 
Nadir he proclaimed himself shah, and 
set about subduing the provinces sur¬ 
rounding his realm. Among his first 
acts was the securing of the famed Koh- 
i-noor diamond, which had fallen into 
the hands of his predecessor. He 
crossed the Indus in 1748, and his con¬ 
quests in northern India culminated in 
the defeat of the Mahrattas at Panipat 
(6th Jan. 1761). Affairs in his own 
country necessitated his withdrawal 
from India, but he extended his empire 
vastly in other directions far beyond 
the limits of modern Afghanistan. He 
was succeeded by his son Timur. 

AID, a subsidy paid in ancient feudal 
times by vassals to their lords on certain 
occasions, the chief of which w'ere: 
when their lord was taken prisoner and 
required to be ransomed, when his 
eldest son was to be made a knight, and 
when his eldest daughter was to be 
married and required a dowry. From 
the Norman Conquest to the fourteenth 
century the collecting of aids by the 
crown was one of the forms of taxation, 
being latterly regulated by parlia¬ 
ment. 


AIDE-DE-CAMP (ad-de-kiin), a mili¬ 
tary officer who conveys the orders of 
a general to the various divisions of the 
army on the field of battle, and at other 
times acts as his secretary and general 
confidential agent. 

AIDIN (a-i-den'), or GUZEL HISSAR, 

a town in Asiatic Turkey, about 60 miles 
southeast of Smyrna. Pop. 35,000. 

AIGRETTE', a term used to denote 
the feathery crown attached to the seeds 
of various plants, such as the thistle, 
dandelion, etc.—It is also applied to any 
head-dress in the form of a plume, 
whether composed of feathers, flowers, 
or precious stones. 

AI'KIN, John, M.D., an English mis¬ 
cellaneous w T riter, born 1747, died 1822. 
His General Biographical Dictionary 
was begun in 1799 and finished in 1815. 
He was editor of the Monthly Magazine 
from 1796 till 1806. 

AI'KIN, Lucy, daughter of the pre¬ 
ceding, was born in 1781, and died 1864. 
In 1818 appeared her Memoirs of the 
Court of Queen Elizabeth, a very pop¬ 
ular work. She afterward produced 
similar works on the reigns of James I. 
(1822) and Charles I. (1833), and a Life 
of Addison (1843). 

AILAN'TO, Ailanthus, a large and 
handsome tree, with pinnate leaves one 
or two feet long, is a native of China, 
but has been introduced into Europe 
and North America, where it is in favor 
for its elegant foliage. A species of silk¬ 
worm, the ailanthus silkworm feeds on 
its leaves, and the material produced, 
though wanting the fineness and gloss of 
mulberry silk, is produced at less cost, 
and is more durable. The wood is hard, 
heavy, glossy, and susceptible of a fine 
polish. 

AIN (an), a southeastern frontier 
department of France, mountainous in 
the east (ridges of the Jura), flat or un¬ 
dulating in the west, divided into two 
nearly equal parts by the river Ain, a 
tributary of the Rhone; area, 2239 
square miles. Capital, Bourg. Pop. 
364,408. 

AINMILLER (in'mil-er), Max Eman¬ 
uel, a German artist who may be re¬ 
garded as the restorer of the art of glass¬ 
painting; born 1807, died 1870. As in¬ 
spector of the state institute of glass¬ 
painting at Munich he raised this art to 
a high degree of perfection by the new 
or improved processes introduced by 
him. 

AINOS (I'noz), the native name of an 
uncivilized race of people inhabiting the 
Japanese island of Yesso, as also Sag- 
halien, and the Kurile Islands, and be¬ 
lieved to be the aboriginal inhabitants 
of Japan. They do not average over 5 
feet in height, but are strong and active. 
They are very hairy, wear matted 
beards, and have black hair which they 
allow to grow till it falls over their 
shoulders. Their complexion is dark 
brown, approaching to black. They 
worship the sun and moon, and pay 
reverence to the bear. They support 
themselves by hunting and fishing. 

AINSWORTH, William Harrison, an 
English novelist; born 1805, died 1882. 
He was the son of a Manchester solicitor 
and intended for the profession of law, 
but devoted himself to literature. He 
wrote Rookwood (1834), Jack Sheppard 





AIR 


AIR-PUMP 


(1839), and about forty other novels, 
including Guy Fawkes, Tower of London, 
Windsor Castle, Lancashire Witches, 
Flitch of Bacon, etc. 

AIR, the gaseous substance of which 
our atmosphere consists, being a me¬ 
chanical mixture of 79.19 per cent by 
measure of nitrogen and 20.81 per cent 
of oxygen. The latter is absolutely 
essential to animal life, while the pur¬ 
pose chiefly served by the nitrogen 
appears to be to dilute the oxygen. 
Oxygen is more soluble in water than 
nitrogen, and hence the air dissolved in 
water contains about 10 per cent more 
oxygen than atmospheric air. The 
oxygen therefore available for those 
animals which breathe by gills is some¬ 
what less diluted with nitrogen, but it 
is very much diluted with water. For 
the various properties and phenomena 
connected with air see such articles as 
Atmosphere, Airpump, Barometer, Com¬ 
bustion, Respiration, etc. 

AIR, in music, a continuous melody, 
in which some lyric subject or passion is 
expressed. The lyric melody of a single 
voice, accompanied by instruments, is 
its proper form of composition. Thus 
we find it in the higher order of musical 
works; as in cantatas, oratorios, operas, 
and also independently in concertos.— 
Air is also the name often given to the 
upper or most prominent part in a con¬ 
certed piece, and is thus equivalent to 
treble, soprano, etc. 

AIR BEDS AND CUSHIONS, often 
used by the sick and invalids, are com¬ 
posed of india-rubber or of cloth made 
air-tight by a solution of india-rubber, 
and when required for use filled with air, 
■which thus supplies the place of the 
usual stuffing materials. They tend to 
prevent bed-sores from continuous lying 
in one position. They are also cheap 
and easily transported, as the bed or 
cushion, when not in use, can be packed 
in small compass, to be again inflated 
with air when wanted. 

AIR-B LADDER. See Swimming- 
bladder. 

AIR-BRAKE, an American invention 
used on railroads in the United States. 
It consists of an automatic device by 
which air, stored on the train, is applied 
to the work of pressing the brake on all 
wheels. The air-brake was invented in 
1869 by George Westinghouse, Jr., who 
has improved it to a high state of per¬ 
fection. The very high passenger train 
speeds of recent years led Mr. Westing- 
house, in 1897, to place on the market a 
high-speed brake. This brake is de¬ 
signed to use very high air-pressure 
when the brake is applied with the train 
at full speed, which pressure is gradually 
reduced by an automatic reducing valve 
on the brake cylinder as the speed 
diminishes. This brake has not been 
extensively used. Tests made with the 
regular high-speed brake attached to a 
fifty-car train showed the following 
among other results: Emergency stop 
of train running at 40 miles per hour 
made in about 675 feet, in 20 seconds; 
breaking the train in two at a speed of 
from 20 to 25 miles per hour, the two 
sections stopped at distances of from 
32 feet to 180 feet apart; applying 
brakes with train standing to show rapid¬ 
ity of action, all brakes applied within 


two seconds; comparison of emergency 
air-brake stop and hand-brake stop at 
20 miles per hour: air-brake stop in 158 
to 194 feet, hand-brake stop in 1000 feet 
to 1720 feet; service stop test to deter¬ 
mine time of release of brakes, all 
brakes released in four seconds. Several 
forms of air-brake besides the Westing- 
house have been employed to some ex¬ 
tent in America, but they are exactly 
similar in their principles of operation. 

AIR-CELLS, cavities in the cellular 
tissue of the stems and leaves of plants 
which contain air only, the juices of the 
plants being contained in separate ves¬ 
sels. They are largest and most numer¬ 
ous in aquatic plants, the gigantic leaves 
of which are buoyed up on the surface of 
the water by their means.—The minute 
cells in the lungs of animals are also 
called air-cells. There are also air-cells in 
the bodies of birds. They are connected 
with the respiratory system, and are 
situated in the cavity of the thorax and 
abdomen, and sometimes extend into 
the bones. They are most fully devel¬ 
oped in birds of powerful and rapid 
flight, such as the albatross. 

AIR-ENGINE, an engine in which air 
heated, and so expanded, or compressed 
air is used as the motive power. A 
great many engines of the former kind 
have been invented, some of which have 
been found to work pretty well where 
no great power is required. They may 
be said to be essentially similar in con¬ 
struction to the steam-engine, though 
of course the expansibility of air by 
heat is small compared with the expan¬ 
sion that takes place when water is con¬ 
verted into steam. Engines working by 
compressed air have been found very 
useful in mining, tunneling, etc., and 
the compressed air may be conveyed to 
its destination by means of pipes. In 
such cases the waste air serves for venti¬ 
lation and for reducing the oppressive 
heat. 

AIR-GUN, an instrument for the pro¬ 
jection of bullets by means of condensed 
air, generally either in the form of an 
ordinary gun, or of a pretty stout walk¬ 
ing-stick, and about the same length. 
A quantity of air being compressed into 
the air-chamber by means of a condens¬ 
ing syringe, the bullet is put in its place 
in front of this chamber, and is pro¬ 
pelled by the expansive force of a cer¬ 
tain quantity of the compressed air, 
which is liberated on pressing the trigger. 

AIR-PLANTS, or EPIPHYTES, are 
plants that grow upon other plants or 
trees, apparently without receiving any 
nutriment otherwise than from the air. 
The name is restricted to flowering 
plants (mosses or lichens being excluded) 
and is suitably applied to many species 
of orchids. The conditions necessary to 
the growth of such plants are excessive 
heat and moisture, and hence their chief 
localities are the damp and shady tropi¬ 
cal forests of Africa, Asia, and America. 
They are particularly abundant in Java 
and tropical America. 

AIR-PUMP, an apparatus by means 
of which air or other gas may be re¬ 
moved from an inclosed space; or for 
compressing air within an inclosed 
space. An ordinary suction-pump for 
water is on the same principle as the 
air-pump; indeed, before water reaches 


the top of the pipe the air has been 
pumped out by the same machinery 
which pumps the water. An ordinary 
suction-pump consists essentially of a 
cylinder or barrel, having a valve open- 



Fig. 1. air-pump (sectional view). 


ing from the pipe through which water 
is to rise and a valve opening into the 
outlet pipe, and a piston fitted to work 
in the cylinder (the outlet valve may be 
in the piston). (See Pump.) The 
arrangement of parts in an air-pump is 
quite similar. The barrel of an air- 
pump fills with the air which expands 
from the receiver (that is, the vessel 
from which the air is being pumped), 
and consequently the quantity of air 
expelled at each stroke is less as the 
exhaustion proceeds, the air getting 
more and more rarefied. Suppose that 
the receiver (so called because it receives 
objects to be experimented on) is ex¬ 
actly as large as the barrel; by the first 
stroke there is just half the air removed, 
by the second there is one-fourth, by the 
third there is an eighth, and so on. Sup¬ 
pose the barrel is $ of the receiver as to 
volume. On raising the piston the air 
which filled the receiver now fills both 
barrel and receiver, so that J is removed 
at the first stroke, £ of the remaining f is 
removed at the second stroke—that is 
t 3 ? , and \ of T 9 g at the third stroke, and 
so on. Fig. 1 represents the essential 
parts of a good air-pump in section, e 
is the receiver, f is a mercurial pres¬ 
sure-gauge, which indicates the extent 
of exhaustion; r is a cock by means of 
which air may be readmitted to the re¬ 
ceiver or by means of which the re¬ 
ceiver may be shut off from the pump- 



barrel. s is the inlet valve of the bar¬ 
rel ; and, inasmuch as the tension of the 
air in the receiver after some strokes 
would not be sufficient to lift a valve, 
this valve is opened by means of the rod 































AIRSHIP AND FLYING MACHINE 


AIRSHIP AND FLYING MACHINE 


which passes up through the piston. 
The outlet valve s is kept down by a 
light spiral spring; it opens when, on the 
space diminishing in the barrel by the 
descent of the piston, the contained air 
has a sufficient pressure. Fig. 2 shows 
a similar pump in perspective (a double- 
barreled pump); p is the plate on which 
the receiver is placed, h the pressure- 
gauge, e the readmission cock. The 
pressure-gauge is merely a siphon barom¬ 
eter inclosed in a bell-shaped vessel of 
glass communicating with the receiver. 
This barometer consists of a bent tube 
containing mercury, one end being 
closed, the other open. As the air is 
exhausted the smaller is the difference 
between the height of the mercury in the 
two branches of the tube, and a com¬ 
plete vacuum would be indicated if the 
mercury stood at the same level in both. 
—Air-pumps for compressing air are 
constructed on the same principle but 
act the reverse way.—Many interesting 
experiments may be made with the air- 
pump. If an animal is placed beneath 
the receiver, and the air exhausted, it 
dies almost immediately; a lighted can¬ 
dle under the exhausted receiver im¬ 
mediately goes out. Air is thus shown 
to be necessary to animal life and to 
combustion. A bell, suspended from a 
silken thread beneath the exhausted 
receiver, on being struck cannot be 
heard. If the bell be in one receiver 
from which the air is not exhausted, but 
which is within an exhausted receiver, 
it still cannot be heard. Air is there¬ 
fore necessary to the production and to 
the transmission of sound. A shriveled 
apple placed beneath an exhausted re¬ 
ceiver becomes as plump as if quite 
fresh, being thus shown to be full of 
elastic air. The air-pump was invented 
by Otto von Guericke, burgomaster of 
Magdeburg about the year 1654. 

AIRSHIP and FLYING MACHINE, 
vehicles lor navigating the atmospheric 
air, the first being buoyed up by bal¬ 
loons filled with gas, hydrogen prefer¬ 
ably ; the second being constructed on 
the principles of a bird’s wing. The 
earliest successful balloon was that 
made by the brothers Etienne and Jo¬ 
seph Montgolfier, in France, who in 1782 
succeeded in causing a silk bag of 50 
cubic feet to rise to the ceiling of a 
room, and in 1783, in the presence of an 
immense crowd, a balloon 35 feet in 
diameter rose to a height of 1500 feet. All 
successful attempts at aerial navigation 
until 1907-8 were balloons. The gases 
employed being either hydrogen or or¬ 
dinary coal gas. The former when pure 
is between 14 and 15 times lighter than 
atmospheric air and the latter generally 
about 2 1-2 times lighter. According to 
the principles of Archimides bodies im¬ 
mersed in a fluid are buoyed upwards 
with a force equivalent to the weight 
of the fluid displaced by them. If their 
own weight is not sufficient to counter¬ 
balance this force, that is if they are 
lighter than this fluid they rise upward 
with a force equal to the difference be¬ 
tween the weight of the displaced fluid 
and their own weight. Thus the balloon 
rises in the air in the same way that a 
cork rises in the water. Thus for in¬ 
stance if a balloon occupies as much 
space as 1000 pounds of air, but weighs 


itself 600 pounds, it will be impelled up¬ 
wards with a force of 400 pounds. 

Balloons are made of silk or cotton, 
the pieces sewn together and all of it 
varnished to prevent the escape of gas. 
A network of cord extends over the 
varnished cloth supporting a hoop from 
which a car is suspended by 6 or more 
strong ropes about 4 feet long. Inside 
the car are sand bags for ballast and the 
grappling iron tied to the end of a long 
rope for anchoring the balloon at the 
end of the descent. At the top of the 
balloon there is a valve made of wood 
from one to three feet in diameter. 
This is kept closed by a spring but is 
opened or closed by a rope running 
down into the car. When the balloon¬ 
ist wishes to ascend he throws some 
of the ballast over the side of the car. 
If he wishes to descend he opens the 
valve and the place of the escaping gas 
is taken by air whose heavier weight 
increases the weight of the balloon. 
Later balloons have been provided with 
steering apparatus by which the direc¬ 
tion of their flight can be l-egulated at 
will and not be left to wind. 

It is said that as early as 1306 success¬ 
ful balloon ascents were made by the 



Balloon above the clouds. 

Chinese, but the first European bal¬ 
loonist was Guszman who made the as¬ 
cent at Lisbon in 1709, using heated air. 
The first hydrogen balloon was made 
by Black of Edinburg in 1767. Various 
experiments were made in Paris by the 
Mongolfiers, and in May, 1783, a balloon 
was sent up 100 ft. carrying a cage with 
a sheep, a cock and a duck. These 
w r ere the first aerial travellers. Nov. 
21, 1783, Pilatre des Rosieros with the 
Marquis d’ Arlands were the first hu¬ 
man passengers in a balloon, remain¬ 
ing in the air 25 minutes. 

The highest balloon ascent recorded 
was one of seven miles made from 
Wolverhampton, Eng. Sept. 5, 1862, by 
Glazier and Coxwell. At this great 
height the cold was intense, the ther¬ 
mometer standing at 12 F. The barom¬ 
eter fell 7 inches, as compared with 29 
at the surface of the earth. When the 
balloon was 29,000 feet high, Glaisher 


became insensible, and remained so for 
seven minutes. Coxwell at this height 
had mounted into the ring to adjust the 
valve-line, when his hands became 
frozen, and he had to open the valve by 
seizing the line with his teeth. He too 
was nearly insensible. Up totheheight 
of 5 miles the aeronauts experienced no 
difficulty in breathing, except when 
some exertion was made. Perfect still¬ 
ness and silence reigns six miles above 
the earth but a railway train in motion 
can be heard at a height of 4 miles. 

The development of the balloon has 
been chiefly for its utilization in war. 
Balloon corps are attached to the armies 
of the leading nations. They were first 
used in France in 1794 for the purpose 
of observing the enemy. During the 
siege of Paris, 1870-71, the balloon was 
extensively employed. For military 
purposes attempts have been made to 
construct dirigible balloons. The first 
notable dirigible flight was that of 
Renaud in 1884 when in a cigar shaped 
balloon wfith a powerful motor and a 
front screw he traversed an oblong 
course of 5 miles in 23 minutes. Notable 
successes in dirigible balloons have 
been since achieved by Santos Dumont, 
Count de la Vaux, Count Almirigo and 
Lebaudy,—the latter made a successful 
flight of more than 80 miles in 1906. At 
the race of the American Federation of 
Aero Clubs, held at Chicago, July 4, ’08, 
Dr. F. D. Fielding’s balloon, traveled 
*95 miles, landing at West Sheffoi-d, 
Quebec, 

Attempts to imitate the flight of birds 
by mechanical contrivances antedate 
the balloon by several hundred years. 
The first propei-ly authenticated account 
of an artificial wing was given by Borelli 
in 1670, and his investigations and ex¬ 
periments furnished the principal basis 
for experiments until 1867. In this year 
Professor J. B. Pettigrew T , an English 
scientist, published the results of an 
elaborate and careful series of studies 
made by him upon the flight of birds, 
which wrought a revolution in the con¬ 
struction of flying machines. For thirty 
years, however, inventors struggled 
without absolute success. 

The first aeroplane types of flying 
machines were designed by Maxim and 
Langley in 1891 to ’96. The work of in¬ 
ventors and scientists along the line of 
motor-driven, flying machines has 
shown steady progress. The motors 
have been made stronger and lighter, 
problems of rising and alighting safely 
solved, and additional scientific knowl¬ 
edge of aerial conditions has been gained. 
The general and most popular design is 
that of the simple aeroplane, supported 
by air, through which it is propelled by 
detached force. There were many ex¬ 
periments along these lines and those 
of 1907 were notable, but not until 1908 
could it be fairly said that the flying by 
means of machines heavier than the at¬ 
mosphere had become an accomplished 
fact. The experiments in that direction 
in former years were completely eclip¬ 
sed in 1908 by Wilbur and Orville 
Wright, Henry Farman, and Leon Del- 
agrange and others working on both 
sides of the Atlantic. For a time France 
appeared to lead in aviation, but that 
was because the Americans worked more 














































AIRSHIPS AND AEROPLANES 



1 . Count Zeppelin and his airship above the town of Zurich. 
Photographed in mid air 

2. A school at which men are taught to fly 

3. A scene aboard a flying machine 


4. Wilbur Wright flying at dusk on the occasion of his great 
flight in 1908. 

5. Wilbur Wright takes the first woman to fly. as a passenger 

6. The first exhibition of aeroplanes and airships ever held 

7. Orville and Wilbur Wright and their famous aeroplane 
































Four-cylinder gasoline motor, 16 h.p., for (2.) Count de la Vaulx's airship. 3. Bleriot's aeroplane, ready for flight- 4. Motor and propeller of Santos-Dumont’s aeroplane. 





























































AIRSHIP AND FLYING MACHINE 


AIRSHIP AND FLYING MACHINE 


orless in secret while the exploits of the 
Frenchmen were widely advertised. At 
the close of the year it was generally 
acknowledged that the Wright brothers 
of Dayton, 0., were far in the lead of all 
the rest. 

In 1907 and the preceding two or 
three years, considerable progress was 
made in the direction of constructing 
dirigible balloons, and one of the most 
successful types of these was the Zeppe¬ 
lin airship in Germany. This was fur¬ 
ther developed in 1908, and all records 
for performances by craft in which gas is 
the sustaining power were broken. The 
most remarkable was that in which the 
airship was destroyed. Count Zeppelin 
started from the waters of Lake Con¬ 
stance at 6:15 a. m. Aug. 4, in an attempt 
to make the longest flight on record for 
a dirigible balloon. He passed over the 
city of Constance and kept to the west 
until Basel, on the Swiss frontier, was 
passed. Then he sailed north-west to 
Mulhausen and thence northeasterly 
along the Rhine valley, passing over 
Strassburg and other cities and continu¬ 
ing until 6 o’clock in the evening when 
a landing was made on an island in the 
Rhine, near Oppenheim, Germany. One 
of the motors was out of order and a 
stop had to be made for repairs. At 
10:15 p. m. the flight was resumed until 
Mayence was reached. After encircling 
the city the airship was turned in the 
direction of home. All went well until 
Echterdingen, five miles south of Stutt¬ 
gart, was reached, about 8 a. m. on the 
5th. Here it became necessary to make 
another descent owing to the fusing of 
the metal in which the piston of the 
forward motor ran and also because of 
the escape of gas caused by an ascent of 
6,000 feet in the air while maneuvering. 
The landing was safely made and the 
necessary repairs were being made when 
at 3 o’clock in the afternoon a storm, 
arose, tore the balloon from its moorings 
and drove it some fifty yards. Here the 
rear end of the fabric drooped and in a 
moment smoke and flames were seen to 
burst out from one end to the other, 
followed almost immediately by an ex¬ 
plosion which brought the motors and 
framework crashing to the ground. 
Four of the crew were injured, but 
Count Zeppelin escaped being hurt. 
The craft, which was the fourth con¬ 
structed by Count Zeppelin, was com¬ 
pletely destroyed. It was 443 feet long 
with a diameter of about 45 feet. The 
balloon part was separated into sixteen 
separate interior compartments for the 
inflating gas. The bow tapered to a 
blunt point, while at the stern were the 
rudders and frames used in steering. 
Underneath were suspended two inde¬ 
pendent platforms, each carrying a 
motor capable of developing 140 horse 
power. The outer part of the airship 
consisted of a rigid envelope of alumi¬ 
num, this among other things making it 
distinct from any other craft of the 
kind constructed. It had made many 
successful trips in the vicinity of Lake 
Constance and had carried as many as 
sixteen passengers at one time. 

The other dirigible air ships of the 
balloon type that attracted attention in 
1908 were the Parseval in Germany, the 
Republic (La Republique) in France 


and the Baldwin in the United States. 
These, though differing in detail, are 
similar in principle, the lifting power 
in each being a balloon of the usual 
materials and the motive power a gas 
engine working in a suspended frame. 
The Parseval, named after its inventor, 
Major Yon Parseval, made a trip from 
Berlin, Sept. 15, lasting 11 hours and 15 
minutes, at a height of about 1,500 feet 
and at a speed of about 25 miles an hour. 
The balloon is 157 feet long and 26 feet 
in diameter, and its gas capacity is 
3,270 cubic yards. It is tube-shaped 
with rounded ends. The car, which is 
about 20 feet in length, is suspended so 
as to swing backward and forward in 
its plane parallel to the gas bag, not 
being rigidly fastened to it. The pro¬ 
peller, 14 feet in diameter, is situated 
just above the car. 

The dirigible balloon made by Capt. 
Thomas A. Baldwin, and accepted by 
the war department of the United 
States, is 84 feet long, with a maximum 
diameter of 18 feet and a minimum di¬ 
ameter of 16 feet, and a capacity of 
18,000 cubic feet of gas. The suspended 
frame is 66 feet in length and the 12 
foot propeller makes 450 revolutions 
per minute, driving the airship at the 
rate of about 20 miles an hour. The 
engine is of twenty horse-power. The 
ship is raised or lowered by means of 
box-kite planes at the forward end. 

The Wright aeroplane, which won the 
honors of the year both in Europe and 
America, is what is called a biplane, 
the surfaces of which are parallel, ex¬ 
actly one above the other and slightly 
concave on the lower surface. They are 
made of cloth stretched on a frame¬ 
work of spruce. They are 40 feet long 
and 634 feet wide, giving a total area of 
260 square feet. The distance between 
the planes is 6 feet. In front is a hori¬ 
zontal biplane rudder for regulating 
the height of flight, at the back a verti¬ 
cal biplane rudder for steering. The 
total length of the machine is 33 feet. 
Between the planes is a four-cylinder 
water-cooled twenty-five horse-power 
motor, designed by the Wright broth¬ 
ers. On its right is a radiator with flat 
copper tubes and on its left sit the pilot 
and passenger. The motor drives two 
wooden propellers 10 feet in diameter 
by means of crossed chains. The pro¬ 
pellers revolve in opposite directions 
and are geared down in the ratio of 33 
to 9. The total weight of the aeroplane 
with one man on board is about 1,000 
pounds. The motor in working order 
weighs 200 pounds. 

The method of operation is apparent¬ 
ly very simple. The most interesting 
feature consists in the “working” of 
the extreme under part of the wings, 
whereby the flight of a bird is imitated 
and perfect lateral stability is secured. 
The rudder which regulates the hori¬ 
zontal balance has to be used almost 
continually. In order to make a flight 
a wooden rail about 72 feet long is laid 
on the ground. The aeroplane rests 
upon wooden “skates” and has two 
rollers in front. On the rail runs a lit¬ 
tle car upon which the aeroplane rests 
and the rollers on the rail. When the 
screws begin to revolve the machine 


flies rapidly along the rail and at its 
extremity rises into the air by the help 
of the horizontal rudder When there 
is a wind the rail alone is sufficient. In 
calm weather the aeroplane is launched 
as by a catapult, by means of a weight 
of 1,500 pounds, which falls from the 
top of a pillar 18 feet high and pulls 
upon ropes passing through pulleys. 

The French rights in the Wright pat¬ 
ents were sold in October, 1908, to a 
syndicate headed by Lazare Weiller for 
$100,000. The tests in France were made 
in the vicinity of Le Mans by Wilbur 
Wright, while those in the United States 
by Orville Wright took place at Fort My- 
er, Va., under the supervision of army 
officers. 

Next after the Wright aeroplane, that 
invented by Henry Farman of Paris 
was the most successful, with that con¬ 
structed by Leon Delagrange, also of 
Paris, a close third. The Farman ma¬ 
chine consists of two superimposed 
aero surfaces, each about 33 feet long 
by 634 feet wide and set 5 feet apart. 
The framework of the ship is of 
wood and steel tubing, and the covering 
of the aerosurfaces rubber. The body 
for carrying motor and other machinery 
and the aeronaut is covered with can¬ 
vas and is 15 feet long, 2)4 feet vyide. 
The motor is of the petrol Antoinette 
type and the propeller, which is 1 % feet 
in diameter, is of aluminum sheeting. 
It makes 1,050 revolutions per minute. 
The machine is mounted on bicycle 
wheels and starts by running along the 
ground under its own power until lifted 
by the planes. In alighting the power 
is simply shut off and the machine al¬ 
lowed to glide toward the ground. The 
whole contrivance weighs about 1,600 
pounds. The Delagrange aeroplane is 
similar in most respects to the Farman 
machine, the latter being practically 
only an improved model of the former. 

AEROPLANE RECORDS 
Sept 12, 1908—Orville Wright remained 
in air 74 minutes 24 seconds at Fort 
Myer, Va.; also remained in air 9 
minutes 6)4 seconds with one passen¬ 
ger accompanying him ; distance 5.88 
miles. 

Sept. 16, 1908—Wilbur Wright, 26 miles, 
in 39 minutes 18f seconds, at Le 
Mans, France. 

Sept. 17,1908—Orville Wright badly in¬ 
jured and Lieut. Thomas E. Selfridge 
killed in aeroplane accident at Fort 
Myer, Ya, 

Sept, 21, 1908—Wilbur Wright, about 
61 miles, in 1 hour 31 minutes 51 sec¬ 
onds, at Le Mans, France; eclipsing 
all previous records. 

Oct. 2, 1908—Henry Farman, 40 kilo¬ 
meters, in 44 minutes 32 seconds at 
Paris, France; claimed as speed 
record. 

Oct. 6, 1908—Wilbur Wright, with pas¬ 
senger, remains in air 1 hour 4 min¬ 
utes 26 seconds, at Le Mans, France. 
Oct 30, 1908—Henry Farman flies from 
Mourmelon to Rheims, in France, 20 
miles in 20 minutes, at height of 120 
to 150 feet. 

December 31, 1908—Wilbur Wright 
breaks all previous aeroplane records 
at Le Mans, France, with a flight of 




AIRY 


AKKAS 


two hours and nine minutes, thereby 

winning the Michelin cup. 

AIRY, Sir George Biddell, a distin¬ 
guished English astronomer, was born 
at Alnwick, June 27, 1801, and educated 
at Hereford, Colchester, and Trinity 
College, Cambridge. In 1835 he was 
appointed astronomer-royal, and as 
such his superintendence of the observa¬ 
tory at Greenwich was able and success¬ 
ful. Among separate works published 
by him may be mentioned Popular 
Astronomy, On Sound and Atmospheric 
Vibrations, A Treatise on Magnetism, 
On the Undulatory Theory of Optics, 
On Gravitation. Died Jan. 2, 1892. 

AISLE (11), in architecture, one of the 
lateral divisions of a church in the 
direction of its length, separated from 
the central portion or nave by piers or 
pillars. There may be one aisle or 
more on each side of the nave. The 
cathedrals at Antwerp and Paris have 
seven aisles in all. The nave is some¬ 
times called the central aisle. See 
Cathedral. 

AISNE (an), a northeastern frontier 
department of France; area, 2838 sq. 
miles. It is an undulating, well-culti¬ 
vated, and well-wooded region, chiefly 
watered by the Oise in the north, its 
tributary the Aisne in the center, and 
the Marne in the south. It contains the 
important towns of St. Quentin, Laon 
(the capital), Soissons, and Chateau 
Thierry. Pop. 555,925. 

AIVA'LI, or KIDONIA, a seaport of 
Asiatic Turkey, on the Gulf of Adramyti, 
66 miles north by west of Smyrna, carry¬ 
ing on an extensive commerce in olive- 
oil, soap, cotton, etc. Pop. 30,000. 

AIX-LA-CHAPELLE (aks-Ii-sha-pel), 
a city of Rhenish Prussia, 38 miles west 
by south of Cologne. The most import¬ 
ant building is the cathedral, the oldest 
portion of which, often called the nave, 
was erected in the time of Charles the 
Great (Charlemagne) as the palace 
chapel about 796. Aix-la-Chapelle, 
with the adjoining Burtscheid, which 
may be considered a suburb, is a place 
of great commerce and manufacturing 
industry, the chief productions being 
woolen yarns and cloths, needles, 
machinery, cards (for the woolen manu¬ 
facture), railway and other carriages, 
cigars, chemicals, silk goods, hosiery, 
glass, soap, etc. A considerable por¬ 
tion of its importance and prosperity 
arises from the influx of vistors to its 
springs and baths, there being a num¬ 
ber of warm sulphur springs here, and 
several chalybeate springs, with ample 
accommodation for strangers. Thirty- 
seven German emperors and eleven 
empresses have been crowned in it, and 
the imperial insignia were preserved 
here till 1795, when they were carried 
to Vienna. Pop. 135,245.—Congress 
of Aix-la-Chapelle, a congress held in 
1818, by which the army of the allies in 
France was withdrawn after France 
had paid the contribution imposed at 
the peace of 1815, and independence 
restored to France.—A treaty of peace 
concluded at this city, May 2, 1668, as 
a result of the Triple Alliance, put an 
end to the war carried on against Spain 
by Louis XIV. in 1667, after the death 
of his father-in-law Philip IV., in sup¬ 
port of his claims to a great part of the 


Spanish Netherlands, which he urged 
in the name of his queen, the infanta 
Maria Theresa. By this France ob¬ 
tained LUle, Charleroi, Douai, Tournia, 
Oudenarde, etc. The second peace of 


but took the chief power into his own 
hands in 1560. He fought with dis¬ 
tinguished valor against his foreign 
foes and rebellious subjects, conquering 
all his enemies, and extending the limits 



Tomb of Akbar. 


Aix-la-Chapelle, October 18, 1748, ter¬ 
minated the Austrian war of succession. 

AJACCIO (a-yach'o), the capital of 
Corsica, on the southwest coast of the 
island, on a tongue of land projecting 
into the Gulf of Ajaccio, the birthplace 
of Napoleon and the seat of a bishop, 
with coral and sardine fisheries, and a 
considerable trade. Pop. 20,946. 

A'JAX, the name of two Grecian 
chiefs who fought against Troy, the 
one being son of Olleus, the other son 
of Telamon. The latter was from Salamis, 
and sailed with twelve ships to Troy, 
where he is represented by Homer as the 
boldest and handsomest of the Greeks, 
after Achilles. On the death of Achilles, 
when his arms, which Ajax claimed, 
were awarded to Ulysses, he became 
insane and killed himself. This is the 
subject of Sophocles’s tragedy Ajax. 

AJMEER', AJMIR, or AJMER, a 
British commissionership in India, Raj- 
putana, divided into the two districts 
of Ajmeer and Mairwara; area, 2711 sq. 
miles. Pop. 476,912.—Ajmeer, the cap¬ 
ital, an ancient city, a favorite residence 
of the Mogul emperors, is 279 miles s.w. 
of Delhi, at the foot of Taragarh Hill 
(2853 feet), on w T hich is a fort. Pop. 
73,839. 

AJOWAN', an umbelliferous plant 
cultivated in India, Persia, and Egypt, 
the seeds of which are used in cookery 
and in medicine, having carminative 
properties. 

AJ'UTAGE, a short tube of a tapering 
shape fitting into the side of a reservoir 
to regulate the discharge of the water. 
Also, the nozzle of a tube for regulating 
the discharge of water to form a jet 
d’eau. 

AKAROID RESIN, a resin obtained 
from some of the grass-trees of Australia, 
used in varnishes. 

AK'BAR, a Mogul emperor, the great¬ 
est Asiatic prince of modern times. He 
was born at Amerkote, in Sind, in 1542, 
succeeded his father, Humayun, at the 
age of thirteen, and governed first under 
the guardianship of his minister, Beyram, 


of the empire farther than they had ever 
been before, although on his accession 
they embraced only a small part of the 
former Mogul Empire. He died in 1605. 
His mausoleum at Secundra, near Agra, 
is a fine example of Mohammedan archi¬ 
tecture. 

AKEE', a tree much esteemed for its 
fruit. The leaves are somewhat simi¬ 
lar to those of the ash; the flowers are 
small and white, and produced in 
branched spikes. The fruit is lobed and 
ribbed, of a dull orange color, and con¬ 
tains several large black seeds, embedded 
in a succulent and slightly bitter arillus 
of a pale straw color, which is eaten 
when cooked. The akee is a native of 
Guinea, whence it was carried to the 
West Indies by Captain Bligh in 1793. 

A KEMPIS, Thomas. See Thomas & 
Kempis. 

AKHUND OF SWAT, The, a noted 
Mohammedan dervish and saint who 
exerted a considerable influence on the 
Ameer of Afghanistan during the 
Turko-Russian war of 1877. The 
akhund caused no end of anxiety to the 



Akka-African tribe. 


British government, although he was 
generally friendly to that power. He 
died in 1878. 

AKKAS, a dwarfish race of central 
Africa, dwelling in scattered settle¬ 
ments to the northwest of Lake Albert 



























AKMOLINSK 


ALABAMA 


Nyanza, about lat. 3° n., Ion. 29° e. 
Their height averages about 4£ feet; 
they are of a brownish or coffee color; 
head large, jaws projecting (or prog¬ 
nathous), ears large, hands small. They 
are timid and suspicious, and live almost 
entirely by the chase, being exceedingly 
6kilful with the bow and arrow. 

AKMOLINSK', a Russian province 
in central Asia, largely consisting of 
steppes and wastes. Capital, Omsk. 
Area about 210,000 sq. m. Pop. 678,957. 

AK'RON, a town of the United States, 
in Ohio, 100 miles n.e. of Columbus, on 
an elevated site. Being furnished with 
ample water-power by the Little Cuya¬ 
hoga, it possesses large flour-mills, 
woolen factories, manufactures of iron 
oods, etc. In the vicinity extensive 
eds of mineral paint are worked. 
Pop. 45,000. 

AKSU, a town of Chinese Turkestan, 
260 miles northeast of Yarkand at the 
southern base of the Thian-shan moun¬ 
tains. It was formerly the capital of a 
separate khanate ; in 1867 it became a 
part of the state of Eastern Turkestan 
under Yakub Beg, but was conquered 
again by China in 1867. It is celebrated 
for its manufactures of cotton cloth 
and saddlery, and is much resorted to 
by caravans as a entrepot of commerce 
between Russia Tartary and China. 

AKYAB, a town of Burmah, the 
chief seaport of Aracan, is situated on 
the eastern side of the island of the 
same name at the mouth of the Kula- 
ban river 190 miles east of Calcutta. In 
1826, being then a mere fishing village, 
it was chosen for the chief station of 
the province and now is a great rice 
port, a well built place with broad and 
regular streets, good public buildings 
and a high school. Savage island with 
a light house, shelters the harbor. Pop. 
40,000. Island of the same name ha,s 
population of 450,000. 



ALABAMA (al-a-ba'ma), a Gulf State 
bounded on the north by Tennessee, on 
the south by Florida and the Gulf of 
Mexico, on the east by Georgia, and on 
the west by Mississippi. Its length is 
330miles, average breadth 154, and area 
60,722 square miles. It ranks twenty- 
seventh in size among the states. The 
Alleghany range stretches into the 
northern portion of the state, but the 
elevation is nowhere great. The Alaba¬ 
ma is the chief river of the state. It is 
formed by the junction of the Coosa and 


the Talapoosa, which unite about 10 
miles above the city of Montgomery. 
Forty-five miles above Mobile the Ala¬ 
bama is joined by the Tombigbee, and 
from that point is known as the Mobile 
River. It is navigable from Mobile to 
Wetumpka, on the Coosa, some 460 miles. 
The Tombigbee is navigable to Colum¬ 
bus, and the Black Warrior, one of its 
chief tributaries, to Tuscaloosa. The 
Tennessee flows through the northern 
portion of the state, and the Chattahoo¬ 
chee forms part of its eastern boundary. 
The climate of Alabama is semi-tropical. 
The temperature ranges from 82° to 18° 
Fahr. in winter, and in summer from 
105° to 60°; the mean temperature for 
the year being a little over 60°. 

Alabama possesses a rich soil of varied 
character, and produces corn and cotton 
in abundance. Wheat, oats and hay also 
form important articles of agricultural 
production. The State is heavily tim¬ 
bered, especially in the southern tier of 
counties. 

Shipments of cotton are made from 
Mobile, and through Savannah, Ga., 
New Orleans and Charleston, S. C. Rice 
and sugar cane, sweet potatoes, and all 
kinds of vegetables and fruits are abun¬ 
dant, and some tobacco is grown in the 
north. There is an abundant rainfall, 
aggregating fifty to fifty-four inches per 
annum,and well distributed throughout 
the seasons. Much attention is given to 
stock-raising. 

The abundant mineral resources of 
Alabama have been developed wonder¬ 
fully during the last decade. Coal is 
found in vast deposits,'side by side with 
beds of limestone and iron ore of enor¬ 
mous extent. In the valleys of the 
Tennessee and upper Alabama rivers, 
the enterprising cities Birmingham, 
Besemer, Sheffield, Roanoke, Hunts¬ 
ville, Decatur and others rank with the 
most energetic mining and manufactur- 
ingcitiesof the North. It isclaimed that 
pig iron can be manufactured more 
cheaply in Alabama than anywhere else 
in the Unioi. There are large manu¬ 
factures of cotton goods, and many 
varied industries have been introduced. 
The railway system has been rapidly 
extended since the war. In 1907 there 
were 2,985 miles of completed railroad. 

The population of Alabama, 1,262,506 
in 1880, increased 19.4 per cent, during 
the decade, and the census of 1890 re¬ 
turns it at 1,513,107. It is now, 1909, es¬ 
timated by the Governor of the state to be 
2,100,000. There are over half a million 
colored people in the State. The chief 
towns are Montgomery, the capital, 
Mobile, Birmingham, Bessemer, Annis¬ 
ton , and Huntsville. Mobile is the only 
seaport. 

There is a good school system, supple¬ 
mented by State-aided universities, and 
normal and training schools. In the 
larger cities there are separate school 
districts. 

Alabama was first visited by De Soto 
in 1540, and takes its name from the very 
powerful nation of Indians that were 
at that time found occupying it. Among 
these were the Alibamas, the Choctaws, 
the Chickasaws, the Cherokees, and the 
Apalaches. In 1702 the French settled 
at Biloxi, founded Mobile in 1711, and 
for many years were discouraged by 


disease and famine. In 1763 Alabama 
was added to Illinois territory and 

f assed through various vicissitudes of 
ndian wars, claims from different 
countries and neighboring states, until 
in 1817 it was formed into a territory 
and two years later admitted into the 
Union. Early in 1861 an ordinance of 
secession was adopted, and Montgomery 
was made the temporary capital of the 
Confederacy. The State was the theater 
of war in 1862, and in 1864 Mobile was 
the scene of a naval battle, and her forts 
were silenced by Farragut. In -1865 
Mobile, Selma, and Montgomery were 
taken by Federal troops, and a provi¬ 
sional governor was appointed by Presi¬ 
dent Johnson later in that year. In 1868 
a new constitution was adopted, and 
the State was readmitted to representa¬ 
tion in congress. 

On July 14,1868, military rule ceased, 
and on November 16, 1870, the State 
ratified the fifteenth amendment to the 
Federal constitution. For a decade af¬ 
ter the Civil War, Alabama suffered 
from maladministration. Party spirit 
ran very high, and elections were bit¬ 
terly contested. The dishonesty of 
officials and the extravagant railway 
policy they pursued brought the State 
andthechief towns into serious financial 
difficulties. With the reorganization of 
the public debt in 1876 began an era of 
quiet and prosperity. Since 1874 Ala¬ 
bama has been invariably Democratic. 
In 1901 a constitutional convention 
changed the organic law in such a man¬ 
ner as to insure political supremacy to 
the white population, 

ALABAMA, a river of the United 
States, in the State of Alabama, formed 
by the junction of the Coosa and the 
Tallapoosa. After a course of 300 miles 
it joins the Tombigbee and assumes the 
name of the Mobile. 

ALABAMA CLAIMS. See Alabama, 
The. 

ALABAMA, The, a ship built at Birk¬ 
enhead, England, to act as a privateer 
in the service of the Confederate States 
of North America during the civil war 
begun in 1861. Before she’ was launched 
her destination was made known to the 
British government, but owing to some 
legal formalities the orders given for her 
detention did not reach Liverpool till 
the day after she had left that port (29th 
July, 1862). She received her arma¬ 
ment and stores at the Azores, and en¬ 
tered on her destructive career, captur¬ 
ing and burning merchant vessels, till 
she was sunk in a fight with the Federal 
war steamer Kearsarge, off Cherbourg, 
19th June, 1864. As early as the winter 
of 1862 the United States government 
declared that they held themselves 
entitled at a suitable period to demand 
full compensation from Britain for the 
damages inflicted on American property 
by the Alabama and several other 
cruisers that had been built, supplied, 
or recruited in British ports or waters. 
After a long series of negotiations it was 
agreed to submit the final settlement of 
the question to a court of arbitration, 
consisting of representatives of Britain, 
and the United States, and of three 
other members, appointed by the King 
of Italy, the President of Switzerland, 
and the Emperor of Brazil. This court 







ALABASTER 


ALBACETE 


met at Geneva, 17th December, 1871, 
and a decree was given in September, 
1872, that Britain was liable to the 
United States in damages to the amount 
of 15,500,000 dollars. After all awards 
were made to private claimants about 
8,000,000 dollars still remain unclaimed. 

ALABAS'TER, a name applied to a 
granular variety of gypsum or hydrated 
sulphate of lime. It has a fine granular 
texture, is usually of a pure white color, 
and is so soft that it can be scratched 
with the nail. It is found in many parts 
of Europe; in great abundance and of 
peculiarly excellent quality in Tuscany. 

ALAMEDA (a'la-ma'da), a city in 
Alameda county, California, six miles 
across the bay from San Francisco, on 
the Southern Pacific Railroad. Its 
growth has been rapid since 1870. Pop. 
19,124. 

AL'AMO, a fort in Bexar county, 
Texas, U. S., celebrated for the resist¬ 
ance its occupants (140 Texans) made 
to a Mexican force of 4000 from 23d 
February to 6th March, 1836. At the 
latter date only six Texans remained 
alive, and on their surrendering they 
were slaughtered by the Mexicans. 

ALAND (o'land) ISLANDS, a numer¬ 
ous group of islands and islets, about 
eighty of which are inhabited, belong¬ 
ing to Russia, situated in the Baltic Sea, 
near the mouth of the. Gulf of Finland; 
area, 468 square miles. The principal 
island, Aland, distant about 30 miles 
from the Swedish coast, is 18 miles long 
and about 14 broad. It has a harbor 
capable of containing the whole Russian 
fleet. The fortress of Bomarsund, here 
situated, was destroyed by an Anglo- 
French force in August, 1854. The in¬ 
habitants, who are of Swedish extrac¬ 
tion, employ themselves mostly in fish¬ 
ing. The islands were ceded by Sweden 
to Russia in 1809. Pop. 18,000. 

ALA'NI, or ALANS, one of the war¬ 
like tribes which migrated from Asia 
westward at the time of the decline of 
the Roman empire. They are first met 
with in the region of the Caucasus, 
where Pompey fought with them. From 
this center they spread over the south 
of modern Russia to the confines of the 
Roman empire. About the middle of 
the fifth century they joined the Van¬ 
dals, among whom they become lost to 
history. 

ALARM, in military language, a sig¬ 
nal, given by beat of drum, bugle-call, 
or firing of a gun, to apprise a camp or 
garrison of a surprise intended or 
actually made by the enemy. A place, 
called the alarm-post, is generally ap¬ 
pointed at which the troops are to 
assemble when an alarm is given.— 
Alarm is also the name given to several 
contrivances in which electricity is made 
use of, as a fire-alarm, by which intelli¬ 
gence is at once conveyed to the proper 
quarter when a fire breaks out; a bur¬ 
glar-alarm, an arrangement of wires and 
a battery in a house intended to set a 
bell or bells ringing should a burglar 
attempt to gain entrance. 

ALARM-CLOCK, one which can be 
set so as to ring loudly at a certain hour 
to wake from sleep or excite attention. 

ALASKA, the largest of the territories 
of the United States, comprising a vast 
part of the northwest of the North 


American continent. It was purchased 
in 1867 from Russia for §7,200,000. 
Its area is 577,400 square miles, includ¬ 
ing not only an enormous tract of main¬ 
land, but Prince of Wales Island, the 
Alexander Archipelago, the Kadiak 
Islands, the Aleutian Islands, Pribyloff, 
and St. Lawrence Island in Bering 
Strait. Its coast line is longer than that 
of the Atlantic seaboard of the United 
States. The principal river is the Yukon, 
which rises in British Columbia less 
than 200 miles n.n.e. of Sitka, strikes a 
broad arc of a circle more than 2,000 
miles long, and enters Bering Sea on the 
s. side of Norton Sound through an ex¬ 
tensive delta. At 600 miles from the 
coast it is over a mile wide, and the 
volume of its water is so great as to 
freshen the water 10 miles off shore from 
its principal mouth. The next largest 
river is the Kuskokwim, which rises on 
the northern slopes of the Alaskan range 
of mountains to the eastward of the 
meridian of 150° w., and empties into 
Kuskokwim Bay, Bering Sea, in about 
lat. 60° n. Like the following, it is but 
little known. Next in order of size are 
the Colville, flowing into the Arctic 
Ocean e. of Point Barrow; the Copper, 
flowing southward from the Alaska 
Mountains, and emptying into the Bay 
of Alaska in about Ion. 145° w.; the 
Suschitno,- and several Arctic streams. 
The Rocky Mountains turn westward 
in about lat. 63° n. and pass into the 
Alaska Mountains, a range which runs 
first w., then s.w., and is finally pro¬ 
longed into the peninsula of Alaska and 
the Aleutian Islands, the peaks in the 
two latter being often volcanic. This 
range apparently culminates in Mt. 
Wrangel, in about Ion. 145° w., lat. 
62° 30; n.; height, 17,500 feet. Near the 
coast is a less continuous range, which 
culminates in Mt. Logan (lat. 60° 30' n.), 
altitude 19,500 feet, thus overtopping 
Mt. Elias (18,100 feet), which is situated 
at the point where the U. S. boundary 
makes a turn from westward to north¬ 
ward, and which was long regarded as 
the highest peak north of Mexico. 
Among these coast mountains is Mt. 
Cook (in British territory), 15,750 feet, 
and Mt. Fairweather (U. S.), 15,500 feet. 
Glaciers are frequent among these moun¬ 
tains, and one from Mt. Elias dips its 
nose into salt water at Icy Bay. 

The population for the whole Terri¬ 
tory in 1880 was 33,426, of whom 17,617 
were Eskimos, 11,478 Indians, 2,145 
Aleuts, 1756 half-breeds, and 430 
whites. In 1890 the census enumera¬ 
tion (necessarily largely an estimate), 
gave 4416 whites, 82 blacks, 1568 half- 
breeds, 13,735 natives not Eskimos, 
2125 Chinese, 8400 Eskimos; total, 
30,326. The census (1900) gives a total 
population of 63,592. Pop., (1908), 
130,000. 

_ The coast of this part of America was 
discovered by a Russian expedition 
under Bering in 1741. Settlements were 
gradually made, and the coast was at one 
time claimed as far s. as San Francisco. 
In 1799 the Territory was granted to a 
Russo-American fur company by the 
Emperor Paul VIII., and the charter 
was renewed in 1839. New Archangel, 
now Sitka, was the principal settlement. 
The privileges of the company expired 


in 1863, and the Territory was purchased 
by the U. S. in 1867. Portions of the 
Territory were soon after explored by 
employees of the Russo-American Tele¬ 
graph Company in surveying a route for 
an overland telegraph line to Europe. 
Explorations of the coast have since 
been continued by the Coast and 
Geodetic Survey. The Yukon has been 
explored by Dali and Schwatka, and 
Mt. Elias by several parties, the most 
successful of which was that of Russell 
in 1891. From Sept. 8, 1881, to Aug. 29, 
1883, a well-equipped meteorological 
station of the U.S. Signal Service was 
kept at Point Barrow. In 1884 a dis¬ 
trict government was created by Con¬ 
gress, with a governor and a district 
court. The latter sits alternately at 
Sitka and Wrangel. The laws are those 
of Oregon. Sitka is the capital and has 
a land-office. The farming of the 
Pribylof or Fur Seal islands in Bering 
Sea was at first granted to the Alaska 
Commercial Company at a rental 
amounting to about S300,000 annually. 
On the expiration of their lease in 1890, 
the right was acquired by the North 
American Commercial Company. 

A treaty was signed by the Secretary 
of State and the British Ambassador in 
Washington on Jan. 30, 1897, providing 
for the demarcation of so much of the 
boundary between Alaska and Canada 
as lies along the 141st meridian. The 
joint high commission appointed to at¬ 
tempt the settlement of all questions 
at issue between the U. S. and Canada 
made its award in 1903. 

Alaska is rich in mineral wealth, has 
immense forests, and its fishing and 
sealing industries are enormous. Its 
most valuable exports are furs of seals, 
bears, foxes, otters, martens, beavers, 
and other animals. The salmon dis¬ 
trict has an output of 300,000 cases 
yearly. Gold is mined extensively in 
the Klondike district and valuable 
placer mines have been worked nearer 
the coast. The Sitka district is the 
most desirable for permanent residence. 
It has abundant forests and the climate 
is mild and the rainfall heavy. 

ALAU'DA, a genus of insessorial birds, 
which includes the larks. See Lark. 

A'LAVA, a hilly province in the north 
of Spain, one of the three Basque prov¬ 
inces; area, 1207 sq. m.; covered by 
branches of the Pyrenees, the moun¬ 
tains being clothed with oak, chestnut, 
and other timber, and the valleys yield¬ 
ing grain, vegetables, and abundance of 
fruits. There are iron and copper mines, 
and inexhaustible salt springs. Capital, 
Vittoria. Pop. 93,538. 

ALB, a clerical vestment worn bjr 
priests while officiating in the more 
solemn functions of divine service. It 
is a long robe of white linen reaching 
to the feet, bound round the waist by a 
cincture, and fitting more closely to the 
body than the surplice. 

ALBA, Duke of. See Alva. 

ALBACETE (al-ba-tha'ta), a town in- 
southern Spain, capital of the province 
of the same name, 106 miles n.n.w. of 
Cartagena, with a considerable trade, 
both direct and transit, and manufac-, 
tures of knives, daggers, etc. Pop. 21,- 
637.—The province has an area of 6170 
sq. m., and a pop. of 237,877. 





C£j 9 


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a. 


KLONDIKE GOLD REGION 



























































































ALBAN 


ALBERT 


ALBAN, St., the traditionary proto- 
martyr of Britain, who flourished in the 
third century, was, it is said, converted 
from Paganism by a confessor whom he 
had saved from his persecutors, and, re¬ 
fusing to sacrifice to the gods, was ex¬ 
ecuted outside of the city of Verulamium 
(St. Albans) in 285 or 305. 

ALBANI (al-ba'ne), Francesco, a 
famous Italian painter, born at Bologna 
in 1578, died in 1660. Among the best 
known of his compositions are the Sleep¬ 
ing Venus, Diana in the Bath, Danae 
Reclining, Galatea on the Sea, Europe 
on the Bull. 

ALBA'NIA, an extensive region in 
the southwest of Turkey in Europe, 
stretching along the coast of the Adriatic 
for about 290 miles, and having a 
breadth varying from about 90 to 
about 50 miles. The boundary on the 
east is formed by a range of mountains, 
and the country is composed of at least 
nine ridges of hills, of which six are in 
lower or southern Albania (ancient 
Epirus) and the remainder in central and 
upper or northern Albania. There are no 
large rivers, and in summer many of the 
streams are completely dry. The Drin 
or Drino is the largest. The most 
beautiful lake is that of Ochrida, 20 
miles long, 8 broad at the widest part. 
The Lake of Scutari, in upper Albania, 
is the largest. Among trees Albania has 
many species of oak, the poplar, hazel, 
plane, chestnut, cypress, and laurel. 
The vine flourishes, together with the 
orange, almond, fig, mulberry, and 
citron; maize, wheat, and barley are 
cultivated. Its fauna comprises bears, 
wolves, and chamois; sheep, goats, 
horses, asses, and mules are plentiful. 
The chief exports are live stock, wool, 
hides, timber, oil, salt-fish, cheese, and 
tobacco. The chief ports are Prevesa, 
Avlona, and Durazzo. The population, 
about 1,400,000, consists chiefly of 
Albanians or Arnauts, or, as they call 
themselves, Skipetars (mountaineers), 
with a certain number of Greeks and 
Turks. The Albanians are distinct in 
race and language from the surrounding 
peoples. They are only half civilized, 



Albanian peasantry. 


are divided into a number of clans, and 
bloody feuds are still common among 
them. They belong partly to the Greek, 
partly to the Roman Catholic Church, 
but the great majority are Moham¬ 


medans. Though their country became 
a province of the Turkish dominions in 
the fifteenth century, they still maintain 
a certain degree of independence, which 
the Porte has never found it possible to 
overcome. 

AL'BANY, the original Celtic name 
probably at first applied to the whole of 
Britain, but latterly restricted to the 
Highlands of Scotland. 

AL'BANY, a city of the United States, 
capital of the State of New York on the 
west bank of the Hudson, 132 miles 
north of New York City, from and to 
which steamboats run daily. The Erie 
Canal and the numerous railway lines 
centering here from all directions greatly 
contribute to the growth and prosperity 
of the city, which carries on an extensive 
trade. It is a great mart for timber, 
and has foundries, breweries, tanneries, 
etc. Albany was settled by the Dutch 
in 1610-14, and the older houses are in 
the Dutch style, with the gable-ends 
to the streets. There is a university, 
an observatory, and a state library with 
90,000 volumes. The principal public 
edifices are the capitol or state-house, 
the state-hall for the public offices, a 
state arsenal, and numerous religious 
edifices. Pop. (1908), 98,537. 



Wandering albatros. 


AL'BATROS, a large marine swim¬ 
ming bird of several species, of which the 
wandering albatros is the best known. 
The bill is straight and strong, the upper 
mandible hooked at the point and the 
lower one truncated; there are three 
webbed toes on each foot. The upper 
part of the body is of a grayish brown, 
and the belly white. It is the largest sea¬ 
bird known, some measuring 17$ feet 
from tip to tip of their expanded wings. 
They abound at the Cape of Good Hope 
and in other parts of the southern seas, 
and in Bering’s Straits, and have been 
known to accompany ships for whole 
days without ever resting on the waves. 
From this habit the bird is regarded 
with feelings of attachment and super¬ 
stitious awe by sailors, it being reckoned 
unlucky to kill one. Coleridge has 
availed himself of this feeling in his 
Ancient Mariner. The albatros is met 
with at great distances from the land, 
settling down on the waves at night 
to sleep. It is exceedingly voracious, 
whenever food is abundant gorging to 
such a degree as to be unable to fly or 
swim. It feeds on fish, carrion, fish- 


spawn, oceanic mollusca, and other 
small marine animals. Its voice is a 
harsh, disagreeable cry. Its nest is a 
heap of earth; its eggs are larger than 
those of a goose. 

ALBERONI, Cardinal Giulio (ju'li-o 
al-ba-ro'ne), born in 1664 in north Italy, 
and educated for the church. The Duke 
of Parma sent him as his minister to 
Madrid, where be gained the affection 
of Philip V. He rose by cunning and 
intrigue to the station of prime-minister, 
became a cardinal, was all-powerful in 
Spain after the year 1715, and endeav¬ 
ored to restore it to its ancient splendor. 
He died at Rome in 1752. 

AL'BERT I., Duke of Austria, and 
afterward Emperor of Germany, son 
of Rodolph of Hapsburg, was born in 
1248. On the death of his father in 
1292 he claimed the empire, but his 
arrogant conduct drove the electors to 
choose Adolphus of Nassau emperor. 
Adolphus, after a reign of six years, 
having lost the regard of all the princes 
of the empire Albert was elected to 
succeed him. Pope Boniface VIII., 
however, refused to acknowledge him 
as emperor. Albert formed an alliance 
with Philip le Bel of France, and offered 
so determined and successful a resist¬ 
ance to the papal authority that Boni¬ 
face was induced to withdraw his 
opposition, on condition that Albert 
would break with his French ally. He 
was assassinated, at Aix-la-Chapelle in 
1298, by his nephew, John, Duke of 
Suabia, whose inheritance he had seized 
upon, in 1308. 

ALBERT, first Duke of Prussia, and 
last grand-master of the Teutonic 
Order, was born in 1490; died in 1568. 

ALBERT, Prince, Albert-Francis-Au- 
gustus-Charles-Emmanuel, Prince of 
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and Prince Consort 
of England, second son of Ernest I., 
Duke of Saxe-Coburg, was born at the 
Rosenau, a castle near Coburg, on 26th 
August, 1819. In 1837 he entered the 
University of Bonn, where he devoted 
himself to the studies of political and 
natural science, history, philosophy, 
etc., as well as to those of music and 
painting. On leaving the university he 



Albert. Prince Consort. 


made a tour through the chief cities 
of Italy with Baron Stockmar. On the 
10th Feb. 1840, he married his cousin, 
Queen Victoria of England. An allow¬ 
ance of $150,000 a year was settled upon 








ALBERTA 


ALCIBIADES 


the prince, who was naturalized by act of 
Parliament, received the title of Royal 
Highness by patent, was made a field- 
marshal, a Knight of the Garter, of the 
Bath, etc. Other honors were subse¬ 
quently bestowed upon him, the chief of 
which was the title of Prince Consort 
(1857). His foreign birth at first 
caused him to be regarded with some 
suspicion, but his unfailing tact and gen¬ 
uine ability were not long in gaining 
their due recognition. His services 
to the cause of science and art were 
very important; he presided over the 
commission appointed in 1841 to con¬ 
sider the best means of rebuilding the 
houses of parliament, and the great 
exhibition of 1851 owed much of its 
success to his activity, knowledge, and 
judgment. The amendment of the 
Articles of War in 1844 which ultimately 
put an- end to dueling was due to his 
suggestion. He died of typhoid fever 
on December 14, 1861, after a short 
illness. 

ALBER'TA, since 1905 one of the 
provinces of Canada, having Assiniboia 
and Saskatchewan on the east, British 
Columbia on the west, the United 
States on the south, and Athabasca on 
the north ; area, 253,540 sq. miles; pop. 
75,000. It is afertile, grassyregion, with 
trees in the river valleys; coal is abund¬ 
ant and gold is found near Edmonton. 
The capital is Edmonton. 

ALBERT NYAN'ZA, a lake of Africa, 
one of the head-waters of the Nile, lying 
(approximately) between lat. 2° 30' and 
1° 10' n., and with its northeast ex¬ 
tremity in about Ion. 28° e.; general 
direction from northeast to southwest, 
surface about 2500 feet above sea-level. 
It is surrounded by precipitous cliffs, 
and bounded on the west and south¬ 
west by great ranges of mountains. 
It abounds with fish, and its shores are 
infested with crocodiles and hippopot¬ 
amuses. It receives the Victoria Nile 
from the Victoria Nyanza, and the 
White Nile issues from its northern 
extremity. 

ALBIGENSES (al-bi-jen'sez), a sect 
which spread widely in the south of 
France and elsewhere about the twelfth 
century, and which differed in doctrine 
and practice from the Roman Catholic 
Church, by which they were subjected to 
severe persecution. 

ALBINOS (al-bl'noz), the name given 
to those persons from whose skin, hair, 
and eyes, in consequence of some defect 
in their organization, the dark coloring 
matter is absent. The skin of albinos, 
therefore, whether they belong to the 
white, Indian, or negro races, is of a 
uniform pale milky color, their hair is 
white, while the iris of their eyes is pale 
rose color, and the pupil intensely red, 
the absence of the dark pigment allowing 
the multitude of blood-vessels in these 
parts of the eye to be seen. For the 
same reason their eyes are not well suit¬ 
ed to endure the bright light of day, and 
they see best in shade or by moonlight. 
The peculiarity of albinism or leucop- 
athy is always born with the individual, 
and is not confined to the human race, 
having been observed also in horses, 
rabbits, rats, mice, etc., birds (white 
crows or blackbirds are not particularly 
uncommon), and fishes. 


AL'BION, the earliest name by which 
the island of Great Britain was known, 
employed by Aristotle, and in poetry 
still used for Great Britain. The same 
word as Albany, Albyn. 

AL'BITE, or SODA-FELSPAR, a 
mineral, a kind of felspar, usually of a 
white color, to which property it owes 
it name, but occasionally bluish, grayish, 
greenish, or reddish white. 

AL'BOIN, King of the Lombards, 
succeeded his father Audoin in 561, and 
reigned in Noricum and Pannonia. 
After a victorious career in Italy he 
was slain at Verona, in 573 or 574, by an 
assassin, instigated by his wife Rosa¬ 
mond, whose hatred he had incurred by 
sending her, in one of his fits of intoxi¬ 
cation, a cup wrought from the skull 
of her father, and forcing her to drink 
from it. 

ALBRET, Jeanne d’ (zhan dal-bra), 
Queen of Navarre, wife of Antoine de 
Bourbon and mother of Henri IV. of 
France, a zealous supporter of the re¬ 
formed religion, which she established 
in her kingdom; born 1528, died 
(probably poisoned) 1572, shortly be¬ 
fore the massacre of St. Bartholomew. 

AL'BUM, a name now generally given 
to a blank book for the reception of 
pieces of poetry, autographs, engravings, 
photographs, etc. 

ALBU'MEN, or ALBUMIN, a sub¬ 
stance, or rather group of substances, so 
named from the Latin for the white of 
an egg, which is one of its most abundant 
known forms. It may be taken as the 
type of the protein compounds or the 
nitrogenous class of foodstuffs. One 
variety enters largely into the com¬ 
position of the animal fluids and solids, 
is coagulable by heat at and above 160°, 
and is composed of carbon, hydrogen, 
nitrogen, and oxygen, with a little sul- 
hur. It abounds in the serum of the 
lood, the vitreous and crystalline 
humors of the eye, the fluid of dropsy, 
the substance called coagulable lymph, 
in nutritive matters, the juice of flesh, 
etc. The blood contains about 7 per 
cent of albumen. Another variety 
called vegetable albumen exists in most 
vegetable juices and many seeds, and 
has nearly the same composition and 
properties as egg albumen. When 
albumen coagulates in any fluid it 
readily incloses any substances that 
may be suspended in the fluid. Hence 
it is used to clarify syrupy liquors. In 
cookery white of eggs is employed for 
clarifying, but in large operations like 
sugar-refining the serum of blood is 
used. From its being coagulable by 
various salts, and especially by corrosive 
sublimate, with which it forms an 
insoluble compound, white of egg is a 
convenient antidote in cases of poison¬ 
ing by that substance. With-lime it 
forms a cement to mend broken ware. 

In botany the name albumen is given 
to the farinaceous matter which sur¬ 
rounds the embryo, the term in this 
case having no reference to chemical 
composition. It constitutes the meat 
of the cocoanut, the flour or meal of 
cereals, the roasted part of coffee, 
etc. 

ALBUMINU'RIA, a condition in which 
the urine contains albumen, evidencing 
I a diseased state of the kidneys. 


ALBUR'NUM, the soft white sub¬ 
stance which, in trees, is found between 
the liber or inner bark and the wood, 
and, in progress of time acquiring- 
solidity, becomes itself the wood. A 
new layer of wood, or rather of albur¬ 
num, is added annually to the tree in 
every part just under the bark. 

ALCALDE (Spanish; al-kal-da), or 
ALCAIDE (Portuguese; al-ki'da), the 
name of a magistrate in the Spanishand 
Portuguese towns, to whom the admin¬ 
istration of justice and the regulation of 
the police is committed. His office 
nearly corresponds to that of juctice of 
the peace. The name and the office are 
of Moorish origin. 

ALCES'TIS, in Greek mythology, 
wife of Admetus, king of Thessaly. Her 
husband was ill, and, according to an 
oracle, would die unless some one made 
a vow to meet death in his stead. This 
was secretly done by Alcestis, and 
Admetus recovered. After her decease 
Hercules brought her back from the 
infernal regions. 

AL'CHEMY, or ALCHYMY, the art 

which in former times occupied the 
place of and paved the way for the 
modern science of chemistry (as astrol¬ 
ogy did for astronomy), but whose aims 
were not scientific, being confined solely 
to the discovery of the means of indef¬ 
initely prolonging human life, and of 
transmuting the baser metals into gold 
and silver. Among the alchemists it 
was generally thought necessary to 
find a substance which, containing the 
orignal principle of all matter, should 
possess the power of dissolving all sub¬ 
stances into their elements. This 
general solvent, or menstruum univer¬ 
sale, which at the same time was to 
possess the power of removing all the 
seeds of disease out of the human body 
and renewing fife, was called the philoso¬ 
pher’s stone, and its pretended posses¬ 
sors were known as adepts. Alchemy 
flourished chiefly in the middle ages, 
though how old might be such notions 
as those by which the alchemists were 
inspired it is difficult to say. When 
more rational principles of chemistry 
and philosophy began to be diffused and 
to shed fight on chemical phenomena, 
the rage for alchemy gradually de¬ 
creased. It is still impossible to assert 
anything with certainty about the 
transmutation of metals. Modern chem¬ 
istry, indeed, places metals in the class 
of elements, and denies the possibility 
of changing an inferior metal into gold. 
But hitherto chemistry has not suc¬ 
ceeded in unfolding the principles by 
which metals are formed and the laws of 
their production, or in aiding or imitat¬ 
ing this process of nature. 

ALCIBI'ADES (-dez), an Athenian of 
high family and of great abilities, but of 
no principle, was born at Athens in 
b.c.450, being the son of Cleinias, and a 
relative of Pericles, who also was his 
guardian. He acquired great popu¬ 
larity by his liberality in providing for 
the amusements of the people, and 
after the death of Cleon attained a 
political ascendency which left him no 
rival but Nicias. Thus he played an 
important part in the long-continued 
Peloponnesian war. In 415 he advo¬ 
cated the expedition against Sicily, and 







ALCO 


ALDEN 


was chosen one of the leaders, but before 
the expedition sailed he was charged 
with profaning and divulging the 
Eleusinian mysteries, and mutilating 
the busts of Hermes, which were set up 
in public all through Athens. Rather 
than stand his trial he went over to 
Sparta, divulged the plans of the 
Athenians, and assisted the Spartans 
to defeat them. He soon left Sparta and 
took refuge with the Persian satrap 
Tissaphernes, ingratiating himself by 
his affectation of Persian manners, as 
he had previously done at Sparta by a 
similar affectation of Spartan simplic¬ 
ity. He now began to intrigue for his 
return to Athens, offering to bring 
Tissaphernes over to the Athenian 
alliance, and latterly he was recalled 
and his banishment canceled. He, 
however, remained abroad for some 
years in command of the Athenian 
forces, gained several victories, and 
took Chalcedon and Byzantium. In 
b.c. 407 he returned to Athens, but in 
406, the fleet which he commanded 
having suffered a severe defeat, he was 
deprived of his command. He once 
more went over to the Persians, taking 
refuge with the satrap Pharnabazus of 
Phrygia, and here he was assassinated 
in b.c. 404. 

ALCO, a small variety of dog, with a 
small head and large pendulous ears, 
found wild in Mexico and Peru, and 
also domesticated. - 

AL'COHOL, the purely spirituous or 
intoxicating part of all liquids that have 
undergone vinous fermentation, ex¬ 
tracted by distillation—a limpid color¬ 
less liquid, of an agreeable smell and a 
strong pungent taste. When brandy, 
whisky, and other spirituous liquors, 
themselves distilled from cruder mate¬ 
rials, are again distilled, highly volatile 
alcohol is the first product to pass off. 
The alcohol thus obtained contains 
much extraneous matter, including a 
proportion of water, from the first as 
high as 20 or 25 per cent, and increasing 
greatly as the process continues. Char¬ 
coal and carbonate of soda put in the 
brandy or other liquor partly retain 
the fusel-oil and acetic acid it contains. 
The product thus obtained by dis¬ 
tillation is called rectified spirits or 
spirits of wine, and contains from 55 to 
85 per cent of alcohol, the rest being 
water. By distilling rectified spirits 
over carbonate of potassium, powdered 
quicklime, or chloride of calcium, the 
greater part of the water is retained, 
and nearly pure alcohol passes over. 
It is only, however, by very prolonged 
digestion with desiccating agents and 
subsequent distillation that the last 
traces of water can be removed. The 
specific gravity of alcohol varies with 
its purity, decreasing as the quantity 
of water it contains decreases. This 
property is a convenient test of the 
alcoholic strength of liquors that con¬ 
tain only alchohol and water; but, on 
account of the condensation that in¬ 
variably takes place on the mixture of 
these two liquids, it can be applied only 
in connection with special tables of 
reference, or by means of an instrument 
specially adapted for the purpose. (See 
Alcoholometer.) By simple distillation 
the specific gravity of alcohol can 


scarcely be reduced below ’825 at 60° 
Fahr.; by rectification over chloride 
of calcium it may be reduced to ‘794; 
as it usually occurs it is about '820. 
Alcohol is composed of carbon, hydro¬ 
gen, and oxygen, in the proportions 
expressed by the formula CkHeO. 
Under a barometric pressure of 29'5 
inches it boils at 173° Fahr. (78°'4C.); 
in the exhausted receiver of an air-pump 
it boils at ordinary temperatures. Its 
congelation has been effected only in 
recent times at the low temperature of 



Alcyonaria. 

1, Sea-fan. 2. Sea-pen. 3. Cornuldria rugosa. 

-203° Fahr. Its very low freezing-point 
renders it valuable for use in ther¬ 
mometers for very low temperatures. 
Alcohol is extremely inflammable, and 
burns with a pale-blue flame, scarcely 
visible in bright daylight. It occasions 
no carbonaceous deposit upon sub¬ 
stances held over it, and the products 
of its combustion are carbonic acid and 
water. The steady and uniform heat 
which it gives during combustion makes 
it a valuable material for lamps. It dis¬ 
solves the vegetable acids, the volatile 
oils, the resins, tan, ’ and extractive 
matter, and many of the soaps; the 
greater number of the fixed oils are 
taken up by it in small quantities only, 
but some are dissolved largely. When 
alcohol is submitted to distillation with 
certain acids a peculiar compound is 
formed, called ether.It is alcohol 
which gives all intoxicating liquors the 
property whence they are so called. 
Alcohol acts strongly on the nervous 
system, and though in small doses it is 
stimulating and exhilarating, in large 
doses it acts as a poison. In medicine 
it is often of great service. 

The name alcohol is also applied in 
chemistry to a large group of com¬ 
pounds of carbon, hydrogen, and 
oxygen, whose chemical properties are 
analogous to that of common or ethylic 
alcohol. 

AL'COHOLISM, a morbid condition 
of the body (especially of the nervous 
system) brought on by the immoderate 
use of alcoholic liquors. 

ALCOHOLOM'ETER, an instrument 
constructed on the principle of the 
hydrometer, to determine from the 
specific gravity of spirituous liquors the 
percentage of alcohol they contain, the 
scale marking directly the required 
proportion. If the liquor contain any¬ 
thing besides water and alcohol, pre¬ 
vious distillation is necessary. 

ALCO'RAN. See Koran. 


AL'COTT, Louisa May, a distin¬ 
guished American authoress, born in 
1833. She has written a number of 
books chiefly intended for the young: 
Little Women, An Old-fashioned Girl, 
Little Men, Jack and Gill, etc. Died in 
1888. 

AL'COVE, a recess in a room, usually 
separated from the rest of the room by 
columns, a balustrade, or by curtains, 
and often containing a bed or seats. 

ALCYONA'RIA, animals forming a 
great division of the class Actinozoa. 
(See Sea-anemone.) These animals are 
nearly all composite, and the individual 
polyps have mostly eight tentacles. 
They include the organ-pipe corals, sea- 
pens, fan-corals, etc., as also the red 
coral of commerce. The polyps essen¬ 
tially resemble those of the genus Alcyo- 
nium in structure, and in the number and 
arrangement of the tentacles. 

ALCYO'NIUM,a genus of animals, one 
familiar species of which, dredged 
around the British coasts, is named 
“Dead-Men s Fingers,” or “Cow’s Paps,” 
from its lobed or digitate appearance. 
It grows attached to stones, shells, and 
and other objects. It consists of a 
mass of little polyps, each polyp possess¬ 
ing eight little fringed tentacles disposed 
around a central mouth. The Alcyoni- 
um forms the type of the Alcyonaria. 

ALDEB'ARAN, a star of the first 
magnitude, forming the eye of the con¬ 
stellation Taurus or the Bull, the 
brightest of the five stars known to the 
Greeks as the Hyades. Spectrum 
analysis has shown it to contain anti¬ 
mony, bismuth, iron, mercury, hydro¬ 
gen, sodium, calcium, etc. 

AL'DEHYDE, the oxidation product 
of an alcohol intermediate between it 
and its acid. Common aldehyde is 
derived from spirit of wine by oxidation, 
and is a colorless, limpid, volatile, and 
inflammable liquid, with a peculiar 
ethereal odor, which is suffocating when 
strong; specific gravity, 0'79. It oxi¬ 
dizes in air, and is converted into acetic 
acid. It rapidly decomposes oxide of 
silver, depositing a brilliant film of 
metallic silver; hence it is used in silver¬ 
ing curved glass surfaces. 

ALDEN, Henry Mills, an American 
author born at Mt. Tabor, Vt., in 1836. 
He was a classmate of James A. Garfield 
in the class of 1857 at Williams College. 
He has been editor of Harper’s Weekly 
and Harper’s Monthy, and is noted for 
his contributions to the criticism of 
Greek literature. He has also published 
volumes of essays, poems, and prose 
poems. 

ALDEN, Mrs. Isabella McDonald, an 
American author. She was born at 
Rochester, N. Y., in 1841, and early in 
her career became widely known 
through her juvenile stories currently 
known as the Pansy Books. Her works 
have been translated into several foreign 
languages. 

ALDEN, John, an early American 
settler, one of the Pilgrim Fathers. He 
helped to repair the Mayflower, sailed 
in her, and signed the compact. He 
settled at Duxbury, Mass., and married 
Priscilla Mullens. Alden outlived all the 
other signers of the compact and has 
been immortalized by Longfellow in his 
> poem, The Courtship of Miles Standish. 







ALDER 


ALEXANDER 


ALDER (fcl'der), a genus of plants, 
consisting of trees and shrubs inhabiting 
the temperate and colder regions of the 
globe. Common alder is a tree which 
grows in wet situations in Europe, Asia, 
and the United States. Its wood, light 
and soft and of a reddish color, is used 
for a variety of purposes, and is well 
adapted for work which is to be kept 
constantly in water. The roots and 
knots furnish a beautifully-veined wood 
well suited for cabinet work. The bark 
is used in tanning and leather dressing, 
and by fishermen for staining their nets. 
This and the young twigs are sometimes 
employed in dyeing, and yield different 
shades of yellow and red. With the 
addition of copperas it yields a black 
dye. 

AL'DERMAN, in the United States a 
representative of a ward or district 
in the legislative department of a town 
or city. In some cities aldermen hold 
separate courts and have the power of 
a magistrate to a limited extent. 

AL'DERNEY, an island belonging to 
Britain off the coast of Normandy. The 
coast is bold and rocky, the interior is 
fertile. About a third of the island is 
occupied by grass lands; and the 
Alderney cows, a small-sized but hand¬ 
some breed, are famous for the richness 
of their milk. The climate is mild and 
healthful. The French language still pre¬ 
vails among the inhabitants, but all 
understand and many speak English. 
—The Race of Alderney is the strait 
between the coast of France and this 
island. Pop. 2062. 

ALDERSHOT (al'der-), a town and 
military station in England, the latter 
having given rise to the former. The 
number of troops usually maintained at 
Aldershot is about 7000. The town is 
in the neighborhood of the barracks, 
immediately beyond the government 
ground, and in Hampshire. Pop. 
(including military), 30,974. 

AL'DINE EDITIONS, the name given 
to the works which proceeded from the 
press of Aldus Manutius and his family 
at Venice (1490-1597). (See Manutius.) 
Recommended by their value, as well 
as by a splendid exterior, they have 
gained the respect of scholars and the 
attention of book-collectors. Many of 
them are the first printed editions 
of Greek and Latin classics. Others are 
texts of the modern Italian authors. 
These editions are of importance in the 
history of printing. Aldus had nine 
kinds of Greek type, and no one before 
him printed so much and so beautifully 
in this language. Of the Latin char¬ 
acter he procured fourteen kinds of 
type. 

AL'DRICH, Thomas Bailey, American 
poet and writer of prose tales, born at 
Portsmouth, N. H., Nov. 11, 1836. He 
was early engaged in commercial occupa¬ 
tions, but abandoned them for jounal- 
ism, and was the editor of several publi¬ 
cations, including the Atlantic Monthly. 
His works comprise The Bells, Ballad 
of Baby Bell, Cloth of Gold, Prudence 
Palfrey, etc. He died in 1907. 

ALE and BEER, well-known and 
extensively used fermented liquors, the 
principle of which is extracted from 
several sorts of grain, but most com¬ 


monly from barley, after it has under¬ 
gone the process termed malting. Beer 
is a more general term than ale, being 
often used for any kind of fermented 
malt liquor, including porter, though 
it is also used in a more special significa¬ 
tion. See Brewing. 

ALEMBERT (A-Ian-bar), Jean le 
Rond d’, a French mathematician and 
philosopher, born in Paris in 1717, and 
died there in 1783. He was the illegit¬ 
imate son of Madame de Tencin, and 
was exposed at the Church of St. Jean 
le Rond (hence his name) soon after 
birth. He was brought up by the wife 
of a poor glazier, and with her he lived 
for more than forty years. His parents 
never publicly acknowledged him, but 
his father settled upon him an income 
of 1200 livres. He showed much quick¬ 
ness in learning, entered the College 
Mazarin at the age of twelve, and studied 
mathematics with enthusiasm and suc¬ 
cess. Having left college he studied law 
and became an advocate, but did not 
cease to occupy himself with mathe¬ 
matics. A pamphlet on the motion of 
solid bodies in a fluid, and another on the 
integral calculus, which he laid before 
the Academy of Sciences in 1739 and 
1740, showed him in so favorable a 
light that the Academy received him in 
1741 into the number of its members. 
He soon after published his famous 
work on dynamics, Traits de Dyna- 
mique (1743); and that on fluids, Trait6 
des Fluides. He also took a part in the 
investigations which completed the 
discoveries of Newton respecting the 
motion of t"he heavenly bodies, and 
published at intervals various important 
astronomical dissertations, as well as on 
other subjects. He also took part, 
with Diderot and others, in the cele¬ 
brated Encyclopedic, for which he 
wrote the Discours P'-eliminaire, as 



T. B. Aldrich. 


well as many philosophical and almost 
all the mathematical articles. 

ALEMTEJO (A-lan-ta'zho), the largest 
province of Portugal, and the most 
southern except Algarve; area, 10,255 
sq. miles; pop. 413,531. The capital 
is Evora. 


ALENCON (&-lan-s5n), a town of 
France, capital of department Orne, and 
formerly of the Duchy of Alen^on, on 
the right bank of the Sarthe, 105 miles 
west by south of Paris; well built. 
Alen§on was long famed for its point- 
lace, called “point d’Alen^on.” Pop. 
17,237.—Alengon, originally a county, 
later a dukedom, became united with 
the crown in 1221, and was given by 
Louis XI. as an appanage to his fifth 
son, with w r hom the branch of the 
Alen§on Valois commenced. The first 
duke of the name lost his life at the 
battle of Agincourt in 1415; another, 
called Charles IV., married the cele¬ 
brated Margaret of Valois, sister of 
Francis I. He commanded the left wing 
of the French army at the battle of 
Pavia, where, instead of supporting the 
king at a critical moment, he fled at the 
head of his troops, the consequence of 
w'hich was the loss of the battle and the 
capture of the king. 



Aleppo. 


ALEP'PO, a city of Asiatic Turkey, 
in northern Syria, on the river Koik, in 
a fine plain 60 miles southeast of Alex- 
andretta, which is its port, and 195 
miles n.n.e. of Damascus. Pop, 100,000. 

ALETSCH'-GLACIER, the greatest 
glacier in Switzerland, canton Valais, a 
prolongation of the immense mass of 
glaciers connected with the Jungfrau, 
the Aletschhorn (14,000 ft.), and other 
peaks; about 15 miles long. 

ALEUROM'ETER, an instrument for 
indicating the bread-making qualities 
of wheaten flour. The indications 
depend upon the expansion of the gluten 
contained in a given quantity of flour 
when freed of its starch by pulverization 
and repeated washings with water. 

ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, a chain of 
about eighty small islands belonging 
to the United States, separating the 
Sea of Kamtchatka from the northern 
part of the Pacific Ocean, and extending 
nearly 1000 miles from east to west 
between Ion. 172° e. and 163° w.; total 
area, 6391 square miles; pop. 1220. 
They are of volcanic formation, and in a 
number of them there are volcanoes 
still in activity. The natives belong to 
the same stock with those of Kamt¬ 
chatka. 

ALE'WIFE, a fish of the same genus 
as the shad, growing to the length of 
12 inches, and taken in great quantities 
in the mouths of the rivers of New Eng¬ 
land, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, 
being salted and exported. 

ALEXANDER, surnamed the Great, 
was the son of Philip of Macedon and his 
queen Olympias, and was born at Pella, 








ALEXANDER 


ALEXANDER 


B.c. 356. In youth he had Aristotle as 
instructor, and he early displayed un¬ 
common abilities. The victory of 
Chseronea in 338, which brought Greece 
entirely under Macedonia, was mainly 
decided by his efforts. Philip having 
been assassinated, b.c. 336, Alexander, 
not yet twenty years of age, ascended 
the throne. His father had been pre¬ 
paring an expedition against the Persians 
and Alexander determined to carry it 
out; but before doing so he had to 
chastise the barbarian tribes on the 
frontiers of Macedon as well as quell a 
rising in Greece, in which he took and 
destroyed Thebes, put 6000 of the 
inhabitants to the sword, and carried 
30,000 into captivity. His first encoun¬ 
ter with the Persian forces (assisted by 
Greek mercenaries) was at the small 
river Granicus, where he gained a com¬ 
plete victory. Most of the cities of 
Asia Minor now opened their gates to 
the victor, and Alexander restored 
democracy in all the Greek cities. In 
passing through Gordium he cut the 
Gordian knot, on which it was believed 



Coin of Alexander the Great. 


the fate of Asia depended, and then con¬ 
quered Lycia, Ionia, Caria, Pamphylia, 
and Cappadocia. A sickness, caused by 
bathing in the Cydnus (b.c. 333), 
checked his course; but scarcely was 
he restored to health when he continued 
his onward course, and this same year 
defeated the Persian emperor Darius 
and his army of 500,000 or 600,000 men 
(including 50,000 Greek mercenaries), 
near Issus (inner angle of the Gulf of 
Alexandretta). Alexander did not pur¬ 
sue Darius, but proceeded southward, 
and secured all the towns along the 
Mediterranean Sea, though he did not 
get possession of Tyre (taken 332 b.c.) 
without a siege of seven months. Pales¬ 
tine and Egypt now fell before him, and 
in the latter he founded Alexandria, 
which became one of the first cities of 
ancient times. On his return Alexander 
marched against Darius, who had 
collected an immense army in Assyria, 
and rejected the proposals of his rival 
for peace. A battle was fought at 
Gaugamela, about 50 miles from Arbela, 
b.c. 331, and, notwithstanding the 
immense numerical superiority of his 
enemy, Alexander (who had but 40,000 
men and 7000 horse) gained a complete 
victory. Babylon and Susa opened their 
gates to the conqueror, who marched 
toward Persepolis, the capital of Persia, 
and entered it in triumph. Continuing 
his progress he subdued Bessus, and 
advanced to the Jaxartes, the extreme 
eastern limit of the empire, but did not 
fully subdue the whole of this region 
till 328, some fortresses holding out 
with great tenacity. In one of these he 
P. E.—3 


took prisoner the beautiful Roxana, 
daughter of Oxyartes, a nobleman of 
Sogdiana, and having fallen in love with 
her he married her. Alexander now 
formed the idea of conquering India, 
then scarcely known even by name. 
He passed the Indus (b.c. 326), marched 
toward the Hydaspes (Jhelum), at the 
passage of which he conquered a king 
named Porus in a bloody battle, and 
advanced victoriously through the 
northwest of India, and intended to 
proceed as far as the Ganges, when the 
murmurs of his army compelled him to 
return. On the Hydaspes he built a 
fleet, in which he sent a part of his army 
down the river, while the rest proceeded 
along the banks. By the Hydaspes he 
reached the Acesines (Chenab), and thus 
the Indus, down which he sailed to the 
sea. Nearchus, his admiral, sailed hence 
to the Persian Gulf, while Alexander 
directed his march by land to Babylon, 
losing a great part of his troops in the 
desert through which he had to pass. 
In Susa he married Statira, the eldest 
daughter of Darius, and rewarded those 
of his Macedonians who had married 
Persian women, because it was his 
intention to unite the two nations as 
closely as possible. At Opis, on the 
Tigris, a mutiny arose among his 
Macedonians (in 324), who thought he 
showed too much favor to the Asiatics; 
by firmness and policy he succeeded in 
quelling this rising, and sent home 
10,000 veterans with rich rewards. 
Soon after, his favorite horse, Buceph¬ 
alus, died at Ecbatana, and Alexander’s 
grief was unbounded. The favorite was 
royally buried at Babylon, and here 
Alexander was engaged in extensive 
plans for the future, when he became 
suddenly sick, after a banquet, and 
died in a few days ($23 b.c.), in his 
thirty-third year, after a reign of twelve 
years and eight months. His body was 
after a time conveyed to Egypt with 
great splendor by his general Ptolemy. 
He left behind him an immense empire, 
which was divided among his chief 
generals, and became the scene of 
continual wars. The reign of Alexander 
constitutes an important period in the 
history of humanity. His career was 
not merely a series of empty conquests, 
but was attended with the most im¬ 
portant results. The language, and 
much of the civilization of Greece, 
followed in his track; large additions 
were made to the sciences of geography, 
natural history, etc.; a road was opened 
to India; and the products of the 
farthest east were introduced into 
Europe. Greek kingdoms, under his 
generals and their successors, continued 
to exist in Asia for centuries. 

ALEXANDER, the name of eight 
popes, the earliest of whom, Alexander 

1., is said to have reigned from 109 to 
119. The most famous (or infamous) 
is ALEXANDER VI. (Borgia), who was 
born at Valencia, in Spain, in 1431, and 
died in 1503. When he was only twenty- 
five years of age his uncle, Pope Calixtus 

111., made him a cardinal, and shortly 
afterward appointed him to the digni¬ 
fied and lucrative office of vice-chan¬ 
cellor. By bribery he prepared his 
way to the papal throne, which he 
attained in 1492, after the death of 


Innocent VIII. Both the authority and 
revenues of the popes being at this time 
much impaired, he set himself to reduce 
the power of the Italian princes, and 
seize upon their possessions for the 
benefit of his own family. To effect 
this end he is said not to have scrupled 
to use the vilest means, including 
poison and assassination. His policy, 
foreign as well as domestic, was faithless 
and base, and his private life was stained 
by sensuality. He understood how to 
extract immense sums of money from 
all Christian countries under various 
pretexts. He sold indulgences, and set 
aside, in favor of himself, the wills of 
several cardinals. His excesses roused 
against him the powerful eloquence of 
Savonarola, who, by pen and pulpit, 
urged his deposition, but had to meet 
his death at the stake in 1498. Not 
long after his election Alexander had 
the honor of deciding the dispute be¬ 
tween the kings of Portugal and Castile 
concerning their respective claims to 
the foreign countries recently dis¬ 
covered. His son, Cesare Borgia, and 
his daughter, Lucrezia, are equally noto¬ 
rious with himself. 

ALEXANDER, the name of three 
Scottish kings. ALEXANDER I., a son 
of Malcolm Canmore and Margaret of 
England, succeeded his brother Edgar 
in 1107, and governed with great ability 
till his death in 1124— ALEXANDER II. 
was born in 1198, and succeeded his 
father William the Lion in 1214. He 
died in 1248 at Kerrera, an island op¬ 
posite Oban, when on an expedition in 
which he hoped to wrest the Hebrides 
from Norway. He was succeeded by his 
son, ALEXANDER III., a boy of eight, 
who in 1251 married Margaret, eldest 
daughter of Henry III. of England. 
Like his father he was eager to bring the 
Hebrides under his sway, and this he 
was enabled to accomplish in a few 
years after the defeat of the Norse King 
Haco at Largs, in 1263. The mainland 
and islands of Scotland were now under 
one sovereign, though Orkney and Shet¬ 
land still belonged to Norway. 

ALEXANDER I., Emperor of Russia, 
son of Paul I. and Maria, daughter of 
Prince Eugene of Wiirtemberg, was bom 
in 1777, and died in 1825. On the 
assassination of his father, in 1801, 
Alexander ascended the throne, and 
one of his first acts was to conclude 
peace with Britain, against which his 
predecessor had declared war. In 1803 
he offered his services as mediator 
between England and France, and two 
years later a convention was entered 
into between Russia, England, Austria, 
and Sweden for the purpose of resisting 
the encroachments of France on the 
territories of independent states. He 
was present at the battle of Austerlitz 
(1805), when the combined armies of 
Russia and Austria were defeated by 
Napoleon. In the succeeding campaign 
the Russians were again beaten at Eylau 
(8th February, 1807) and Friedland 
(14th June), the result of which was an 
interview, between Alexander and Na¬ 
poleon, and the treaty at Tilsit. The 
Russian emperor now for a time iden¬ 
tified himself with the Napoleonic 
schemes, and soon obtained possession 
of Finland and an extended territory 







ALEXANDER II 


ALEXANDRINE 


on the Danube. The French alliance, 
however, he found to be too oppressive, 
and his having separated himself from 
Napoleon led to the disastrous French 
invasion of 1812. In 1813 he published 
a manifesto which served as the basis 
of the coalition of the other European 
powers against France, which was 
followed by the capture of Paris 
(in 1814), the abdication of Napoleon 
and the restoration of the Bourbons, 
and the utter overthrow of Napoleon 
the following year. After Waterloo, 
Alexander, accompanied by the Em¬ 
peror of Austria and the King of 
Prussia, made his second entrance into 
Paris, where they concluded the treaty 
known as the Holy Alliance. The 
remaining part of his reign was chiefly 
taken up in measures of internal reform, 
including the gradual abolition of 
serfdom, and the promotion of educa¬ 
tion, agriculture, commerce, and manu¬ 
factures, as well as literature and the 
fine arts. 

ALEXANDER II., Emperor of Russia, 
was born April 29, 1818, and succeeded 
his father Nicholas in 1855, before the 
end of the Crimean war. After peace 
was concluded the new emperor set 
about effecting reforms in the empire, 
the greatest of all being the emancipa¬ 
tion of the serfs in 1861, a measure 
which gave freedom, on certain con¬ 
ditions, to 22,000,000 of human beings 
who were previously in a state little 
removed from that of slavery. Under 
him, too, representative assemblies in 
the provinces were introduced, and he 
also did much to improve education, 
and to reorganize the judicial system. 
During his reign the Russian dominions 
in central Asia were extended, a piece 
of territory south of the Caucasus, 
formerly belonging to Turkey, was 
acquired, and a part of Bessarabia, 
belonging since the Crimean war to 
Turkey in Europe, but previously to 
Russia, was restored to the latter power. 
The latter additions resulted from the 
Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78. He 
was killed by an explosive missile flung 
at him (by a Nihilist it is supposed) in 
a street in St. Petersburg, 13th March, 
1881. He was succeeded by his second 
son Alexander III., his eldest son having 
died in youth. Alexander Ill’s policy 
was reactionary, He died in 1894. 

ALEXANDER SEVE'RUS, a Roman 
emperor, born in 205, died 235 a.d. 
He was raised to the imperial dignity 
in 222 a.d. by the praetorian guards 
after they had put his cousin the 
emperor Heliogabalus to death. When 
on an expedition into Gaul to repress 
an incursion of the Germans, he was 
murdered with his mother in an insur¬ 
rection of his troops, headed by the 
brutal Maximin, who succeeded him 
as emperor. 

ALEXANDERS, an umbelliferous 
biennial plant, a native of Britain 
formerly cultivated for its leafstalks 
which, having a pleasant aromatic 
flavor, were blanched and used instead 
of celery—a vegetable that has taken 
its place. 

ALEXAN'DRIA, an ancient city and 
seaport in Egypt, at the northwest 
angle of the Nile delta, on a ridge of 


land between the sea and Lake Mareotis. 
Founded by, and named in honor of, 
Alexander the Great, in b.c. 332, and 
the center of commerce between the 
east and west, as well as of Greek 
learning and civilization, with a popu¬ 
lation at one time of perhaps 1,000,000. 
It was especially celebrated for its great 
library, and its famous lighthouse, one 
of the wonders of the world, standing 
upon the little island of Pharos, which 
was connected with the city by a mole. 
Under Roman rule it was the second 
city of the empire, and when Con¬ 
stantinople became the capital of the 
east it still remained the chief center 
of trade; but it received a blow from 
which it never recovered when captured 
by Amru, general of Caliph Omar in 641, 
after a siege of fourteen months. Its 
ruin was finally completed by the dis¬ 
covery of the passage to India by the 
Cape of Good Hope, which opened up a 
new route for the Asiatic trade. See Al¬ 
exandrian Library, Alexandrian School. 
—Modern Alexandria stands partly 
on what was formerly the island of 
Pharos, partly on the peninsula which 
now connects it with the mainland and 
has been formed by the accumulation of 



soil, and partly on the mainland. 
Alexandria has two ports, on the east 
and west respectively of the isthmus of 
the Pharos peninsula, the latter having 
a breakwater over 3000 yards in length, 
with fine quays and suitable railway 
and other accommodation. The trade 
of Alexandria is large and varied, the 
exports being cotton, beans, peas, rice, 
wheat, etc.; the imports chiefly manu¬ 
factured goods. At the beginning of the 
century Alexandria was an insignificant 
place of 5000 or 6000 inhabitants. 
The origin of its more recent career of 
prosperity it owes to Mohammed Ali. 
In 1882 the insurrection of Arabi Pasha 
and the massacre of Europeans led to 
the intervention of the British, and the 
bombardment of the forts by the British 
fleet in July. When the British entered 
the city they found the finest parts of 
it sacked and in flames, but the damage 
has been repaired. Pop. 319,766. 

ALEXANDRIA, a town and port of 
the United States, in Virginia, on the 
right bank of the Potomac (which is of 
sufficient depth for large vessels), 7 miles 
miles south of Washington, with straight 
and spacious streets; carries on a consid¬ 
erable trade, chiefly in flour. Pod. 
16,589. 

ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY, the larg¬ 
est and most famous of all the ancient 
collections of books, founded by Ptolemy 
Soter (died 283 b.c.), king of Egypt, 


and greatly enlarged by succeeding 
Ptolemies. At its most flourishing 
period it is said to have numbered 
700,000 volumes, accommodated in 
two different buildings, one of them 
being the Serapeion, or temple of 
Jupiter Serapis. The other collection 
was burned during Julius Caesar’s siege 
of the city, but the Serapeion library 
existed to the time of the Emperor 
Theodosius the Great, when, at the 
general destruction of the heathen tem¬ 
ples, the splendid temple of Jupiter 
Serapis was gutted (a.d. 391) by a 
fanatical crowd of Christians, and its 
literary treasures destroyed or scattered. 
A library was again accumulated, but 
was burned by the Arabs when they 
captured the city under the caliph Omar 
in 641. 

ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL or AGE, 

the school or period of Greek literature 
and learning that existed at Alexandria 
in Egypt during the three hundred 
years that the rule of the Ptolemies 
lasted (323-30 b.c.), and continued 
under the Roman supremacy. Ptolemy 
Soter founded the famous library of 
Alexandria (see above), and his son, 
Philadelphus, established a kind of 
academy of sciences and arts. Among 
the grammarians and critics were 
Zenodotus, Eratosthenes, Aristophanes, 
Aristarchus, and Zoilus, proverbial as 
a captious critic. Their merit is to 
have collected, edited, and preserved 
the existing monuments of Greek 
literature. To the poets belong Apol¬ 
lonius, Lycophron, Aratus, Nicander, 
Euphorion, Callimachus, Theocritus, 
Philetas, etc. Among those who pur¬ 
sued mathematics, physics, and as¬ 
tronomy, was Euclid, the father of 
scientific geometry; Archimedes, great 
in physics and mechanics; Apollonius 
of Perga, whose w'ork on conic sections 
still exists; Nicomachus, the first 
scientific arithmetician; and (under 
the Romans) the astronomer and geog¬ 
rapher Ptolemy. Alexandria also was 
distinguished in philosophical specu¬ 
lation, and it was here that the New 
Platonic school was established at the 
close of the second century after Christ 
by Ammonius of Alexandria (about 
193 a.d.), whose disciples were Plotinus 
and Origen. The principal Gnostic sys¬ 
tems also had their origin in Alex¬ 
andria. 

ALEXANDRIAN VERSION, or CODEX 
ALEXANDRINUS, a manuscript in the 
British Museum, of great importance 
in Biblical criticism, written on parch¬ 
ment with uncial letters, and belonging 
probably to the latter half of the sixth 
century. It contains the whole Greek 
Bible (the Old Testament being accord¬ 
ing to the Septuagint), together with 
the letters of Bishop Clement of Rome, 
but it wants parts of Matthew, John, 
and Second Corinthians. The Patriarch 
of Constantinople, who in 1628 sent this 
manuscript as a present to Charles I., 
said he had received it from Egypt 
(whence its name). 

ALEXANDRINE, in prosody, the 
name given, from an old French poem on 
Alexander the Great, to a species of 
verse, which consists of six iambic feet, 
or twelve syllables, the pause being, 
in correct Alexandrines, always on the 








ALEXIS MICHAILOVITCH 


ALGEBRA 


sixth syllable; for example, the second 
of the following verses: 

A needless Alexandrine ends the song. 

That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow 
length along. 

In English Drayton's Polyolbion is 
written in this measure, and the con¬ 
cluding line of the Spenserian stanza is 
an Alexandrine. The French in their 
epics and dramas are confined to this 
verse, which for this reason is called by 
them the heroic. 

ALEXTS MICHATLOVITCH (son of 
Michael), second Russian czar of the 
line of Romanof (the present dynasty), 
born in 1629, succeeded his father 
Michael Feodorovitch in 1645, and died 
in 1676. He did much for the internal 
administration and for the enlarge¬ 
ment of the empire; reconquered Little 
Russia from Poland, and carried his 
authority to the extreme east of 
Siberia. He was father of Peter the 
Great. 

ALEXIS PETRO'VITCH, eldest son 
of Peter the Great, was born in Moscow, 
1690, and died in 1718. He opposed the 
innovations introduced by his father, 
who on this account disinherited him 
by a ukase in 1718, and when he dis¬ 
covered that Alexis was paving the 
way to succeed to the crown he had his 
eon tried and condemned to death. This 
affected the latter so much that he died 
in a few days, leaving a son, afterward 
the emperor Peter II. 

ALEXIUS COMNE'NUS, Byzantine 
Emperor, was born in 1048, and died in 
1118. He was a nephew of Isaac the 
first emperor of the Comneni, and 
attained the throne in 1081, at a time 
when the empire was menaced from 
various sides, especially by the Turks 
and the Normans. From these dangers, 
as well as from later (caused by the 
first Crusade, the Normans, and the 
Turks), he managed to extricate him¬ 
self by policy or warlike measures, and 
maintained his position till the age of 
seventy, during a reign of thirty-seven 
years. 

AL'FA, a name for esparto grass or a 
variety of it, largely obtained from 
Algeria. 

ALFAL'FA, a prolific forage plant 
similar to lucerne, largely grown in 
California, etc. 

AL'FENID, an alloy of nickel plated 
with silver, used for spoons, forks, 
candlesticks, tea services, etc. 

ALFIERI (al-fe-a're), Vittorio, Count, 
Italian poet, was born at Asti in 1749, 
and died in 1803. After extensive 
European travels he began to write, 
and his first play, Cleopatra (1775), 
being received with general applause he 
determined to devote all his efforts to 
attaining a position among writers of 
dramatic poetry. He died at Florence 
and was buried in the church of 
Santa Croce, between Macchiavelli 
and Michael Angelo, where a beautiful 
monument by Canova covers his re¬ 
mains. His tragedies are full of lofty 
and patriotic sentiments, but the lan¬ 
guage is stiff and without poetic grace, 
and the plots poor. Nevertheless he is 
considered the first tragic writer of 


Italy, and has served as a model for 

his successors. 

ALFON'SO. See Alphonso. 

AL'FORD, Henry, D.D., Dean of 
Canterbury, an English poet, scholar, 
and miscellaneous writer, was bom in 
London in 1810. After attending vari¬ 
ous schools he entered Trinity College, 
Cambridge, in 1827, graduated B.A. 
in 1832, was elected fellow in 1834, 
and next year became vicar of Wymes- 
wold, Leicestershire. In 1842 he was 
appointed examiner in logic and moral 
philosophy to the University of London, 
and held the appointment till 1857. 
He early began the great work of his 
life, his edition of the Greek Testament 
with commentary, which occupied him 
for twenty years, the first volume being 
published in 1849, the fourth and last 
in 1861. In 1853 he was transferred to 
Quebec Chapel, London, and in 1857 he 
was appointed Dean of Canterbury. He 
died in 1871. 

AL'FRED (or AJL'FRED) the Great, 
King of England, one of the most 
illustrious rulers on record, was born at 
Wantage, in Berkshire, a.d. 849, his 
father being Ethelwolf, son of Egbert, 
king of the West Saxons. He succeeded 
his brother Ethelred in 872, at a time 
when the Danes, or Northmen, had ex¬ 
tended their conquests widely over the 
country, and they had completely over¬ 
run the kingdom of the West Saxons by 
878. Alfred was obliged to flee in dis¬ 
guise, and stayed for some time with one 
of his own neat-herds. At length he 
gathered a small force, and, having 
fortified himself on the Isle of Athelney, 
formed by the confluence of the rivers 
Parret and Tone, amid the marshes of 
Somerset, he was able to make frequent 
sallies against the enemy. It was 
during his abode here that he went, if 
the story is true, disguised as a harper 
into the camp of King Guthrum (or 
Guthorm), and, having ascertained 
that the Danes felt themselves secure, 
hastened back to his troops, led them 
against the enemy, and gained such a 
decided victory that fourteen days 
afterward the Danes begged for peace. 
This battle took place in May, 878, near 
Edington, in Wiltshire. Alfred allowed 
the Danes who were already in the coun¬ 
try to remain, on condition that they 
gave hostages, took a solemn oath to 
quit Wessex, and embraced Christian¬ 
ity. Their king, Guthrum, was baptized, 
with thirty of his followers, and ever 
afterward remained faithful to Alfred. 
They received that portion of the east 
of England now occupied by the coun¬ 
ties of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridge, 
as a place of residence. The few years 
of tranquillity (886-893) which followed 
were employed by Alfred in rebuilding 
the towns that had suffered most during 
the war, particularly London; in train¬ 
ing his people in arms, and no less 
in agriculture; in improving the navy: 
in systematizing the laws and internal 
administration; and in literary labors 
and the advancement of learning, These 
peaceful labors were interrupted, about 
894, by an invasion of the Northmen, 
who, after a struggle of three years, 
were finally driven out. Alfred died in 
901. He had married, in 868, Alswith 
or Ealhswith, the daughter of a Mercian 


nobleman, and left two sons: Edward, 
who succeeded him, and Ethelwerd, who 
died in 922. 

ALG JE (al'je), a nat. order of crypto- 
gamic or thallogenous plants, found for 
the most part in the sea and fresh water, 
and comprising seaweeds, etc. , The 
higher forms have stems bearing leaf¬ 
like expansions, and they are often 
attached to the rocks by roots, which, 
however, do not derive nutriment from 
the rocks. A stem, however, is most 
frequently absent. The plants are 
nourished through their whole surface 
by the medium in which they five. They 
vary in size from the microscopic 
diatoms to forms whose stems resemble 
those of forest trees, and whose fronds 
rival the leaves of the palm. They are 
entirely composed of cellular tissue, and 
many are edible and nutritious, as 
carrageen or Irish-moss, dulse, etc. 
Kelp, iodine, and bromine are products 
of various species. The Algae are also 
valuable as manure. 

ALGAROBILL'A, the seed-pods of 
one or two South American trees, valu¬ 
able as containing much tannin. 

AL'GAROT, a violently purgative and 
emetic white powder, precipitated from 
chloride of antimony in water; for¬ 
merly used in medicine. 

ALGARVE (al-gar'va), a maritime 
province of Portugal occupying the 
southern portion of the kingdom; 
mountainous but with some fertile 
tracts. Area,2099sq.miles;pop.254,851. 

AL'GEBRA, a kind of generalized 
arithmetic, in which numbers or quanti¬ 
ties and operations, often also the 
results of operations, are represented 
by symbols. Thus the expression 
xy + cz + dy 2 denotes that a number 
represented by x is to be multiplied by a 
number represented by y, a number c 
multiplied by a number z, a number d 
by a number y multiplied by itself 
(or squared), and the sum taken of these 
three products. So the equation (as it 
is called) x 2 - 7x + 12 = 0 expresses 
the fact that if a certain number x is 
multiplied by itself, and this result 
made less by seven times the number 
and greater by twelve, the result is 0. 
In this case x must either be 3 or 4 to 
produce the given result; but such an 
equation (or formula) as (a + 6) (a- b ) 
= a 2 - b 2 is always true whatever values 
may be assigned to a and b. Algebra 
is an'invaluable instrument in intricate 
calculations of all kinds, and enables 
operations to be performed and results 
obtained that by arithmetic would be 
impossible, and its scope is still being 
extended. 

The beginnings of algebraic method 
are to be found in Diophantus, a Greek 
of the fourth century of our era, but it 
was the Arabians that introduced 
algebra to Europe, and from them it 
received its name. The first Arabian 
treatise on algebra was published in the 
reign of the great Kaliph A1 Mamun 
(813-833) by Mohammed Ben Musa. In 
1202 Leonardo Fibonacci of Pisa, who 
had traveled and studied in the East, 
published a work treating of algebra as 
then understood in the Arabian school. 
From this time to the discovery of 
printing considerable attention was 
given to algebra, and the work of Ben 





ALGER 


ALGIN 


Musa and another Arabian treatise, 
called the Rule of Algebra, were trans¬ 
lated into Italian. The first printed 
work treating on algebra (.also on arith¬ 
metic, etc.) appeared at Venice in 1494, 
the author being a monk called Luca 
Pacioli da Bergo. Rapid progress now 
began to be made, and among the names 
of those to whom advances are to be 
attributed are Tartaglia and Cardan. 
About the middle of the sixteenth 
century the German Stifel introduced 
the signs + , y/, and Recorde the 
sign =. Recorde wrote the first Eng¬ 
lish work on algebra. Francois Vieta, 
a French mathematician (1540-1603), 
first adopted the method which has led 
to so great an extension of modern 
algebra, by being the first who used 
general symbols for known quantities 
as well as for unknown. It was he also 
who first made the application of 
algebra to geometry. Albert Girard 
extended the theory of equations by 
the supposition of imaginary quantities. 
The Englishman Harriot, early in the 
seventeenth century, discovered nega¬ 
tive roots, and established the equality 
between the number of roots and the 
units in the degree of the equation. He 
also invented the signs < >, and 
Oughthred that of X. Descartes, 
though not the first to apply algebra 
to geometry, has, by the extent and 
importance of his applications, com¬ 
monly acquired the credit of being so. 
The same discoveries have also been 
attributed to him as to Harriot, and 
their respective claims have caused 
much controversy. He obtained by 
means of algebra the definition and 
description of curves. Since his time 
Algebra has been applied so widely in 
geometry and higher mathematics that 
we need only mention the names of 
Fermat, Wallis, Newton, Leibnitz, De 
Moivre, MacLaurin, Taylor, Euler, 
D’Alembert, Lagrange, Laplace, Fourier, 
Poisson, Gauss, Honer, De Morgan, 
Sylvester, Cayley. Boole, Jevons, and 
others have applied the algebraic 
methods not only to formal logic but to 
political economy. 

ALGER, Horatio, an American au¬ 
thor, writer of juvenile books, born at 
Revere, Mass., 1834, died inl899. He was 
graduated from Harvard in 1852, and, 
after studying divinity, became pastor 
of a Unitarian church at Brewster, 
Mass. Mr. Alger published over 70 
stories, of which nearly 1,000,000 copies 
have been sold. 

ALGER, Russell Alexander, American 
soldier and statesman, born at La¬ 
fayette, Ohio, in 1836. Admitted to the 
bar in 1859, he enlisted as a volunteer 
in the Union army at the outbreak 
of the civil war, and rose from the 
ranks to be major-general. After the 
war he grew rich as a lumber merchant 
in Michigan ; was governor of Michigan 
from 1885 to 1886, commander of theG. 
A. R. in 1889, and secretary of war in 
President McKinley’s Cabinet. He was 
appointed Senator in 1892, and elected 
in 1903 for term expiring in 1907. He 
died in 1907. 

ALGE KIA, a French colony in North 
Africa, having on the north the Mediter¬ 
ranean, on the east Tunis, on the west 
Morocco, and on the south (where the 


boundary is ill-defined) the Desert of 
Sahara; area, 122,878 sq. miles, or, 
including the Algerian Sahara, 257,000. 
The country is divided into three 
departments—Algiers, Oran, and Con¬ 
stantine. The coast-line is about 550 
miles in length, steep and rocky, and 
though the indentations are numerous 
the harbors are much exposed to the 
north wind. The country is traversed 
by the Atlas Mountains, two chains of 
which—the Great Atlas, bordering on 
the Sahara, and the Little, or Maritime 
Atlas, between it and the sea—run 
parallel to the coast, the former attain¬ 
ing a height of 7000 feet. The intervals 
are filled with lower ranges, and numer¬ 
ous transverse ranges connect the prin¬ 
cipal ones and run from them to the 
coast, forming elevated tablelands 
and inclosed valleys. The rivers are 
numerous, but many of them are mere 
torrents rising in the mountains near 
the coast. The Shelif is much the largest. 

The chief products of cultivation are 
wheat, barley, and oats, tobacco, cotton, 
wine, silk, and dates. Among wild 
animals are the lion, panther, hyena, 
and jackal; the domestic quadrupeds 
include the horse, the mule, cattle, 
sheep, and pigs (introduced by the 
French). Algeria possesses valuable 
minerals, including iron, copper, lead, 
sulphur, zinc, antimony, marble (white 
and red), phosphate, and lithographic 
stone. 

The two principal native races in¬ 
habiting Algeria are Arabs and Berbers. 
The former are mostly nomads, dwell¬ 
ing in tents and wandering from place 
to place, though a large number of them 
are settled in the Tell, where they carry 
on agriculture and have formed nu¬ 
merous villages. The Berbers, here 
called Kabyles, are the original in¬ 
habitants of the territory and still form 
a considerable part of the population. 
They speak the Berber language, but use 
Arabic characters in writing. The 
Jews form a small but influential part 
of the population. Various other races 
also exist. Except the Jews all the 
native races are Mohammedans. There 
are now a considerable number of 
French and other colonists, provision 
being made for granting them conces¬ 
sions of land on certain conditions. 
There are over 260,000 colonists of 
French origin in Algeria, and over 
200,000 colonist natives of other Eu¬ 
ropean countries (chiefly Spaniards and 
Italians). Algeria is governed by a 
governor-general, who is assisted by a 
council appointed by the French govern¬ 
ment. The settled portion of the 
country, in the three departments of 
Algiers, Constantine, and Oran, is 
treated much as if it were a part of 
France, and each department sends 
two deputies and one senator to the 
French chambers. The rest of the terri¬ 
tory is under military rule. The colony 
costs Franee a considerable sum every 
year. Pop. of Algeria proper in 1901, 
4,739,331; of the Algerian Sahara, 60,000. 

The country now called Algeria was 
known to the Romans as Numidia. 
It flourished greatly under their rule, 
and early received the Christian religion. 

con( l uere d by the Vandals in 
430-431 a.d., and recovered by Beli- 


sarius for the Byzantine Empire in 
533-534. About the middle of the 
seventh century it was overrun by the 
Saracens. The town of Algiers was 
founded about 935 by Yussef Ibn 
Zeiri, and the country was subsequently 
ruled by his successors and the dynasties 
of the Almoravides and Almohades. 
The depredations of the Algerian pirates 
were a continual source of irritation to 
the Christian powers, who sent a long 
series of expeditions against them. For 
instance in 1815 a United States fleet 
defeated an Algerian one and forced the 
dey to agree to a peace in which he 
recognized the American flag as invio¬ 
lable. 

At last the French determined on 
more vigorous measures, and in 1830 
sent a force of over 40,000 men against 
the country. Algiers was speedily oc¬ 
cupied, the dey retired, and the country 
was without a government, but resist¬ 
ance was organized by Abd-el-Kader, 
an Arab chief whom the emergency had 
raised up. 

This and subsequent efforts failed, 
and the country became a French 
province, with a French general for 
governor. 

ALGIERS (al'jerz), a city and seaport 
on the Mediterranean, capital of Algeria, 
on the Bay of Algiers, partly on the 
slope of a hill facing the sea. The old 
town, which is the higher, is oriental 



Principal mosque, Algiers. 


in appearance, with narrow, crooked 
streets, and houses that are strong, 
prison-like edifices. The modern French 
town, which occupies the lower slope 
and spreads along the shore, is hand¬ 
somely built, with broad streets and 
elegant squares. The climate of Algiers, 
though extremely variable, makes it 
a very desirable winter residence for 
invalids and others from colder regions. 
Though warm, it is bracing and tonic, 
and not of a relaxing character. There 
is a considerable rainfall (average 29 in.), 
but the dry air and absorbent soil pre¬ 
vent it from being disagreeable. The 
winter months resemble a bright, sunny 
American autumn, while the heat of 
summer is not so intense as that of 
Egypt* The sirocco or desert wind is 
troublesome, however, during summer, 
but in the winter it is merely a pleasant, 
warm, dry breeze. Hailstorms are not 
infrequent, but frost and snow in Algiers 
are so rare as to be almost unknown 
Pop. 97,400. 

ALGIN, a viscous, gummy substance 
obtained from certain seaweeds. It 
can be utilized for all purposes where 
starch or gum is required; used in 
















ALGOA BAY 


ALIMENT 


cookery for soups and jellies; in an 
insoluble form it can be cut, turned, 
and polished, like horn or vulcanite. 

ALGO'A BAY, a bay on the south 
coast of Cape Colony, 425 miles east 
from the Cape of Good Hope, the only 
place of shelter on this coast for vessels 
during the prevailing northwest gales. 
The usual anchorage is off Port Eliza¬ 
beth, on its west coast, now a place of 
large and increasing trade. 

ALGOL', a star in the constellation 
Perseus (head of Medusa), remarkable 
as a variable star, changing in brightness 
from the second to the fifth magnitude. 

ALGO'MA, a district of Canada, on 
the north side of Lake Superior, forming 
the northwest portion of Ontario, rich 
in silver, copper, iron, etc. 

ALGON'QUINS, a family of North 
American Indians, formerly spread over 
a great extent of territory, and still 
forming a large proportion of the 
Indians of Canada. They consisted of 
four groups, namely: (1) the eastern 
group, comprising the Massachusetts, 
Narragansets, Mohicans, Delawares, and 
other tribes; (2) the northeastern 
group, consisting of the Abenakis, etc.; 

(3) the western group, made up of the 
Shawnees, Miamis, Illinois, etc.; and 

(4) the northwestern group, including 
the Chippewas or Ojibbewas, the largest 
of all the tribes. 

ALHAM'BRA, a famous group of 
buildings in Spain, forming the citadel of 
Granada when that city was one of the 
principal seats of the empire of the Moors 
in Spain, situated on a height, surround¬ 



Alhambra—Moorish ornament. 

ed by a wall flanked by many towers, 
and having a circuit of 2\ miles. Within 
the circuit of the walls are two churches, 
a number of mean houses, and some 
straggling gardens, besides the palace 
of Charles V. and the celebrated Moorish 
palace which is often distinctively 
spoken of as the Alhambra. This build¬ 
ing, to which the celebrity of the site is 
entirely due, was the royal palace of the 
kings of Granada. The greater part 
of the present building belongs to the 
first half of the 14th century. It con¬ 
sists mainly of buildings surrounding 
two oblong courts, the one called the 
Court of the Fishpond (or of the 
Myrtles), 138 by 74 feet, lying north and 
south; the other, called the Court of 
the Lions, from a fountain ornamented 
with twelve lions in marble, 115 by 66 
feet, lying east and west, described as 
being, with the apartments that sur¬ 
round it, “the gem of Arabian art in 
Spain, its most beautiful and most per¬ 


fect example.” Its design is elaborate, 
exhibiting a profusion of exquisite de¬ 
tail gorgeous in coloring, but the small¬ 
ness of its size deprives it of the element 
of majesty. The peristyle or portico 
on each side is supported by 128 pillars 
of white marble, 11 feet high, sometimes 
placed singly and sometimes in groups. 
Two pavilions project into the court at 
each end, the domed roof of one having 
been lately restored. Some of the finest 
chambers of the Alhambra open into 
this court, and near the entrance a 
museum of Moorish remains has been 
formed. The prevalence of stucco or 
plaster ornamentation is one of the 
features of the Alhambra, which be¬ 
comes especially remarkable in the 
beautiful honeycomb stalactitical pen- 
dentives which the ceilings exhibit. 
Arabesques and geometrical designs 
with interwoven inscriptions are present 
in the richest profusion. 

ALTAS, a word often used in judicial 
proceedings in connection with the 
different names that persons have 
assumed, most likely for prudential 
reasons, at different times, and in order 
to conceal identity, as Joseph Smith 
alias Thomas Jones. 

ALTBI, a defense in criminal proce¬ 
dure, by which the accused endeavors 
to prove that when the alleged crime 
was committed he was present in a 
different place: 

ALICANTE (a-le-kan'ta), a fortified 
town and Mediterranean seaport in 
Spain, capital of the province of the 
same name, picturesquely situated part¬ 
ly on the slope of a hill, partly on the 
lain at the foot, about 80 miles south 
y west of Valencia. The principal 
manufactures are cotton, linen, and ci¬ 
gars, one cigar manufactory employing 
above 3000 women The chief export 
is wine, which largely goes to England. 
Pop. 50,142.—The province is very fruit¬ 
ful and well cultivated, producing wine, 
silk, fruits, etc. The wine is of a dark 
color, and is heavy and sweet. Area, 
2098 sq. miles. Pop. 470,149. 

ALICE MAUD MARY, Princess, 
second daughter of Queen Victoria, 
Duchess of Saxony, and Grand Duchess 
of Hesse-Darmstadt, born 1843, died 
1878. In 1862 she married Frederick 
William Louis of Hesse, nephew of the 
grand duke, whom he succeeded in 1877. 

A'LIEN, in relation to any country, a 
person born out of the jurisdiction of 
the country, and not having acquired 
the full rights of a citizen of it. The 
position of aliens depends upon the laws 
of the respective countries, but generally 
speaking aliens owe a local allegiance, 
and are bound equally with natives to 
obey all general rules for the preser¬ 
vation of order which do not relate 
specially to citizens. In the United 
States the position of aliens as regards 
acquisition and holding of real prop¬ 
erty differs somewhat in the different 
states, though in recent times the dis¬ 
abilities of aliens have been removed in 
most of them. Personal property they 
can take, hold, and dispose of like native 
citizens. Individual states have no 
jurisdiction on the subject of naturali¬ 
zation, though they may pass laws ad¬ 
mitting aliens to any privilege short 
of citizenship. A naturalized citizen 


is not eligible to election as president 
or vice-president of the United States, 
and cannot serve as senator until after 
nine years’ citizenship, nor as a member 
of the house of representatives until 
after seven years’ citizenship. Five 
years’ residence in the United States and 
one year’s permanent residence in the 
particular state where the application 
is made are necessary for the attain¬ 
ment of citizenship. 

ALIGARH (a-le-gar'), a fort and 
town in India, in the United Provinces, 
on the East Indian railway, 84 miles 
southeast of Delhi. The fort, which 
had been skilfully strengthened by 
French engineers in the service of the 
Mahrattas, was taken by storm after 
a desperate resistance in 1803 by the 
British forces under Lord Lake, when 
the whole district was added to the 
British possessions. Pop. 70,127.—The 
district has an area of 1954 square 
miles, and a population of 1,203,047. 

ALIGNMENT (a-lln'ment), a military 
term, signifying the act of adjusting 
to a straight line or in regular straight 
lines, or the state of feeing so adjusted. 

AL'IMENT, food, a term which in¬ 
cludes everything, solid or liquid, 
serving as nutriment for the bodily 
system. Aliments are of the most 
diverse character, but all of them must 
contain nutritious matter of some kind, 
which, being extracted by the act of 
digestion, enters the blood, and effects 
by assimilation the repair of the body. 
Alimentary matter, therefore, must be 
similar to animal substance, or trans- 
mutable into such. All alimentary 
substances must, therefore, be composed 
in a greater or lesser degree of soluble 
parts, which easily lose their peculiar 
qualities in the process of digestion, 
and correspond to the elements of the 
body. The articles used as food by 
man do not consist entirely of nutritious 
substances, but with few exceptions 
are compounds of various nutritious 
with indigestible and accordingly innu- 
tritious substances. The only nitro¬ 
genous aliments are albuminous sub¬ 
stances, and these are contained largely 
in animal food (flesh, eggs, milk, 
cheese). The principal non-nitrogenous 
substance obtained as food from ani¬ 
mals is fat. Sugar is so obtained in 
smaller quantities (in milk). While 
some vegetable substances also con¬ 
tain much albumen, very many of them 
are rich in starch. Among vegetable 
substances the richest in albumen are 
the legumes (peas, beans, and lentils), 
and following them come the cereals 
(wheat, oats, etc.). Sugar, water, and 
salts may pass without any change 
into the circulatory system; but al¬ 
buminous substances cannot do so 
without first being rendered soluble 
and capable of absorption (in the 
stomach and intestines); starch must 
be converted into sugar and fat emulsi¬ 
fied (chiefly by the action of the pan¬ 
creatic juice). One of the objects of 
cooking is to make our food more sus¬ 
ceptible of the operation of the digestive 
fluids. 

The relative importance of the various 
nutritious substances that are taken 
into the system and enter the blood 
depends upon their chemical consti- 






















ALIMENTARY CANAL 


ALLAHABAD 


tution. The albuminous substances are 
the most indispensable, inasmuch as 
they form the material by which the 
constant waste of the body is repaired. 
But a part of the operation of albu¬ 
minous nutriments may be performed 
equally well, and at less cost, by non- 
nitrogenous substances, that part being 
the maintenance of the temperature of 
the body. As is well known, the tem¬ 
perature of warm-blooded animals is 
considerably higher than the ordinary 
temperature of the surrounding air, 
in man ahout 98° Fahr., and the uni¬ 
formity of this temperature is main¬ 
tained by the heat which is set free by 
the chemical processes (of oxidation) 
which go on within the body. Now 
these processes take place as well with 
non-nitrogenous as with nitrogenous sub¬ 
stances. The former are even prefera¬ 
ble to the latter for the keeping up of 
these processes; by oxidation they yield 
larger quantities of heat with less labor 
to the body, and they are hence called 
the heat-givers. The best heat-giver is 
fat. Albuminous matters are not only 
the tissue-formers of the body; they also 
supply the vehicle for the oxygen, 
inasmuch as it is of such matters that 
the blood corpuscles are formed. The 
more red blood corpuscles an animal 
possesses, the more oxygen can it take 
into its system, and the more easily and 
rapidly can it carry on the process of 
oxidation and develop heat. Now 
only a part of the heat so developed 
passes away into the environment of 
the animal; another part is trans¬ 
formed within the body (in the muscles) 
into mechanical work. Hence it follows 
that the non-nitrogenous articles of 
food produce not merely heat but also 
work, but only with the assistance of 
albuminous matters, which, on the 
one hand, compose the working ma¬ 
chine, and, on the other hand, convey 
the oxygen necessary for oxidation. 
See Dietetics, Digestion, Adulteration, 

ALIMENTARY CANAL, a common 
name given to the oesophagus, stomach, 
and intestines of animals. See Intes¬ 
tine, Stomach. 

AL'IMONY, in law, the allowance to 
which a woman is entitled while a 
matrimonial suit is pending between 
her and her husband, or after a legal 
separation from her husband, not occa¬ 
sioned by adultery or elopement on 
her 

AL'IQUOT PART is such part of a 
number as will divide and measure it 
exactly without any remainder. For 
instance, 2 is an aliquot part of 4,3 of 12. 
and 4 of 20. 

ALISMA'CEAi, the water-plantain 
family, the members of which are her¬ 
baceous, annual, or perennial. They 
are floating or marsh plants, and many 
have edible fleshy rhizomes. They are 
found in all countries, but especially 
in Europe and North America, where 
their rather brilliant flowers adorn the 
pools and streams. 

AL'ISON, Sir Archibald, lawyer and 
writer of history, was born in Shropshire 
in 1792, and died in 1867, near Glasgow. 
He was made a baronet in 1852. His 
chief work—The History of Europe, 
from 1789 to 1815—was first issued in 


ten vols. 1833-42, the narrative being 
subsequently brought down to 1852, the 
beginning of the second French Empire. 
This work displays industry and re¬ 
search, and is generally accurate, but 
not very readable. Its popularity, how¬ 
ever, has been immense, and it has been 
translated into French, German, Arabic, 
Hindustani, etc. 

His son, General Sir Archibald Alison, 
born in 1826, entered the army in 1846, 
and served in the Crimea, in India 
during the mutiny, and in the Ashantee 
expedition of 1873-4. In Egypt, in 
1882, he led the Highland Brigade at 
the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, and in 1882-3 
remained in command of the army of 
occupation. He retired from the army 
in 1893. 

ALIZ'ARINE, a substance contained 
in the madder root, and largely used 
in dyeing reds of various shades. It 
forms yellowish-red prismatic crystals, 
nearly insoluble in cold, but dissolved 
to a small extent by boiling water, and 
readily soluble in alcohol and ether. 
It possesses exceedingly strong tinctorial 
powers. 

AL'KALI, a term first used to desig¬ 
nate the soluble part of the ashes 
of plants, especially of seaweed. Now 
the term is applied to various classes 
of bodies having the following prop¬ 
erties in common: (1) solubility in 
water; (2) the power of neutralizing 
acids, and forming salts with them; 
(3) the property of corroding animal and 
vegetable substances; (4) the property 
of altering the tint of many coloring 
matters—thus, they turn litmus, red¬ 
dened by an acid, into blue; turmeric, 
brown; and syrup of violets and infusion 
of red cabbages, green. The alkalies 
are hydrates, or water in which half 
the hydrogen is replaced by a metal or 
compound radical. In its restricted 
and common sense the term is applied 
to four substances only: hydrate of 
potassium (potash), hydrate of sodium 
(soda), hydrate of lithium (lithia), and 
hydrate of ammonium (an aqueous 
solution of ammonia). In a more 
general sense it is applied to the hydrates 
of the so-called alkaline earths (baryta, 
strontia, and lime), and to a large 
number of organic substances, both 
natural and artificial, described under 
Alkaloid.—Volatile alkali is a name for 
ammonia. 

ALKALIM'ETER, an instrument for 
ascertaining the quantity of free alkali 
in any impure specimen, as in the pot¬ 
ashes of commerce. These, besides the 
carbonate of potash, of which they 
principally consist, usually contain a 
portion of foreign salts, as sulphate and 
chloride of potassium, and as the true 
w °rth of the substance, or price for 
which it ought to sell, depends entirely 
on the quantity of carbonate, it is of 
importance to be able to measure it 
accurately by some easy process. This 
process depends on the neutralization 
of the alkali by an acid of known 
strength, the point of neutralization be¬ 
ing determined by the fact that neutral 
liquids are without action on either red 
or blue litmus solution. The alkalimeter 
is merely a graduated tube furnished 
with a stop-cock at the lower extremity, 
from which the standard acid is dropped 


into water in which a certain quantity 
of the substance is dissolved. The 
quantity required to produce neutrali¬ 
zation being noted, the strength of the 
liquid tested is easily arrived at. A 
process of neutralization, exactly the 
same in principle, may be employed 
to test the strength of acids by alkalies, 
the one process being called alkalimetry, 
the other acidimetry. 

AL'KALOID, a term applied to a'class 
of nitrogenized compounds having cer¬ 
tain alkaline properties, found in living 
plants, and containing their active prin¬ 
ciples, usually in combination with 
organic acids. Their names generally 
end in ine, as morphine, quinine, aconi¬ 
tine, caffeine, etc. Most alkaloids occur 
in plants, but some are formed by 
decomposition. Their alkaline character 
depends on the nitrogen they contain. 
Most natural alkaloids contain carbon, 
hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen, but the 
greater number of artificial ones want 
the oxygen. The only property com¬ 
mon to all alkaloids is that of combining 
with acids to form salts, and some 
exhibit an alkaline reaction with colors. 
Alkaloids form what is termed the 
organic bases of plants. Although 
formed originally within the plant, it 
has been found possible to prepare 
several of these alkaloids by purely 
artificial means. 

AL'KANET, a dyeing drug, the bark of 
the root of a plant with downy and 
spear-shaped leaves, and clusters of 
small purple or reddish flowers. The 
lant is sometimes cultivated in Britain, 
ut most of the alkanet of commerce is 
imported from the Levant or from 
southern France. It imparts a fine 
deep-red color to all unctuous sub¬ 
stances, and is used for coloring oils, 
plasters, lip-salve, confections, etc.; 
also in compositions for rubbing and 
giving color to mahogany furniture, and 
to color spurious port-wine. 

ALKAR'SIN, an extremely poisonous 
liquid containing kakodyle, together 
with oxidation products of this sub¬ 
stance, and formerly known as Cadet’s 
fuming liquor, characterized by its in¬ 
supportable smell and high degree of 
spontaneous combustibility when ex¬ 
posed to air. 

ALKO'RAN. See Koran. 

ALLA BREVE (bra'va), a musical 
direction expressing that a breve is to 
be played as fast as a semibreve, a semi¬ 
breve as fast as a minim, and so on. 

AL'LAH, in Arabic, the name of God, 
a word of kindred origin with the He' 
brew word Elohim. Allah Akbar (God 
is great) is a Mohammedan war-cry. 

ALLAHABAD', an ancient city of 
India, capital of the United Provinces, 
on the wedge of land formed by the 
Jumna and the Ganges. Allahabad is 
one of the chief resorts of Hindu pil¬ 
grims, who have their sins washed 
away by bathing in the waters of the 
sacred rivers Ganges and Jumna at 
their junction; and is also the scene of - 
a great fair in December and January. 
Pop. 172,032.—The division of Alla¬ 
habad contains the districts of Cawnpur, 
Futtehpur, Hamirpur, Banda, Jaunpur, 
and Allahabad; area, 17,265 square 
miles; pop. 5,535,803.—The district 
contains an area of 2852 square miles. 






ALLAMANDA 


ALLIGATOR 


about five-sixths being under cultiva¬ 
tion. Pop. 1,487,904. 

ALLAMAN'DA, a genus of American 
tropical plants with large yellow or 
violet flowers, some of them met with in 
European greenhouses. A. cathartica has 
strong emetic and purgative properties. 

ALLAN, David, a Scottish painter, 
born 1744, died 1796. His illustrations 
of the Gentle Shepherd, the Cotter’s 
Saturday Night, and other sketches of 
rustic life and manners in Scotland, 
obtained for him the name of the 
“Scottish Hogarth.” 

ALLAN, Sir William, a distinguished 
Scottish artist, born in 1782, died in 
1850. In 1814 he publicly exhibited his 
pictures, one of which (Circassian Cap¬ 
tives) made his reputation. He now 
turned his attention to historical paint¬ 
ing and battle scenes, among them be¬ 
ing two pictures of the Battle of Water¬ 
loo, the one from the British, the other 
from the French position, and delineat¬ 
ing the actual scene and the incidents 
therein taking place at the moment 
chosen for the representation. One of 
these Waterloo pictures was purchased 
by the Duke of Wellington. In 1835 he 
became R.A., in 1838 president of the 
Scottish Academy, in 1842 he was 
knighted. 

ALLAN'TOIS, a structure appearing 
during the early development of verte¬ 
brate animals—Reptiles, Birds, and 
Mammalia. It is largely made up of 
blood-vessels, and, especially in birds, 
attains a large size. It forms the inner 
lining to the shell, and may thus be 
viewed as the surface by means of which 
the respiration of the embryo is carried 
on. In Mammalia the allantois is not 
so largely developed as in Birds, and it 
enters largely into the formation of the 
placenta. 

ALLEGHANY (al-le-ga'ni), a river of 
Pennsylvania and New York, which 
unites with the Monongahela at Pitts- 
burg, to form the Ohio; navigable nearly 
200 miles above Pittsburg. 

ALLEGHANY MOUNTAINS, a name 
sometimes used as synonymous with 
Appalachians, but also often restricted 
to the portion of those mountains that 
traverses the states of Virginia, Mary¬ 
land, and Pennsylvania from south¬ 
west to northeast, and consists of a 
series of parallel ridges for the most part 
wooded to the summit, and with some 
fertile valleys between. Their mean 
elevation is about 2500 feet; but in Vir¬ 
ginia they rise to over 4000. 

ALLEGHENY (al-le-gen'i), a city of 
the United States, in Pennsylvania, on 
the river Alleghany, opposite Pitts¬ 
burg, of which it may be considered 
virtually to be a suburb, and with which 
it is connected by six bridges. The 
principal industries are connected with 
iron and machinery. Pop. 160,000. 

ALLE'GIANCE, the obedience which 
every subject or citizen owes to the gov¬ 
ernment of his country. It used to be 
the doctrine of the English law that 
natural-born subjects owe an allegiance 
which is intrinsic and perpetual, and 
which cannot be divested by any act of 
their own; but this is no longer the case. 
Aliens owe a temporary or local alle¬ 
giance to the government under which 
they for the time reside. 


AL'LEGORY, a figurative representa¬ 
tion in which the signs (words or forms) 
signify something besides their literal or 
direct meaning. In rhetoric allegory is 
often but a continued simile. Parables 
and fables are a species of allegory. 
Sometimes long works are throughout 
allegorical, as Spenser’s Faerie Queene 
and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. When 
an allegory is thus continued it is indis¬ 
pensable to its success that not only the 
allegorical meaning should be appro¬ 
priate, but that the story should have 
an interest of its own in the direct mean¬ 
ing apart from the allegorical significa¬ 
tion. Allegory is often made use of in 
painting and sculpture as well as in 
literature. 

ALLEGRO (al-la'gro), a musical term 
expressing a more or less quick rate of 
movement, or a piece of music or move¬ 
ment in lively time. Allegro moderato, 
moderately quick; allegro maestoso, 
quick but with dignity; allegro assai 
and allegro molto, very quick; allegro 
con brio or con fuoco, with fire and 
energy; allegrissimo, with the utmost 
rapidity. 

ALLELUIA. See Halleluia. 

ALLEN, Charles Herbert, American 
statesman, born at Lowell, Mass., in 
1848. He was successively member of 
the Massachusetts legislature, of the 
state senate, and of the 49th and 50th 
congresses. In 1898 he became assistant 
secretary of the Navy, and 1900-1 was 
the first civil governor of Porto Rico. 

ALLEN, Ethan, an American revo¬ 
lutionary partisan and general; born 
1737, died 1789. He surprised and 



Ethan Allen. 


captured Ticonderoga Fort (1775); at¬ 
tacked Montreal, and was captured and 
sent to England, being exchanged in 
1778. 

ALLEN, James Lane, an American 
novelist, born in Kentucky in 1849, 
graduated from Transylvania Uni¬ 
versity, and former educator. In 1886 
he began to publish novels dealing with 
various social and religious topics. 
Among these may be mentioned Flute 
and Violin, The Blue Grass Region, 
John Gray, The Kentucky Cardinal, 
and The Reign of Law. His works 
show considerable power of style. 

ALLEN, Viola, an American actress, 
born in 1867. She made her debut in 
Esmeralda at the Madison Square 
Theater in New York in 1882. She 
subsequently played in the companies 
of McCullough, Salvini, Barrett, Jeffer¬ 
son, Florence, and others, but her 
chief success was in the role of Glory 
Quayle in Hall Caine’s Christian. 

ALLEN, William, cardinal, an Eng¬ 
lish Roman Catholic of the time of 


Queen Elizabeth, a strenuous opponent 
of Protestantism and supporter of the 
claims of Philip II. to the English 
throne; born 1532, died 1594. It was by 
his efforts that the English college for 
Catholics at Douay was established. 
He was made cardinal in 1587. 

ALLEN, William, D.D., American 
clergyman and author; born 1784, died 
1868. He was president of Bowdoin 
College 1820-1839; author of American 
Biographical and Historical Dictionary. 

ALLEN, Zechariah, an American 
inventor, bom in Providence, R. I., in 
1795, died in 1882. He invented the 
first hot-air furnace for heating dwell¬ 
ings, calculated the power of Niagara 
Falls, and invented the cut-off valve 
for steam engines. 

ALLENTOWN, a town in Pennsyl¬ 
vania, on the Lehigh river, 8 miles above 
its junction with the Delaware. It has 
an important trade in coal and iron ore, 
with large blast-furnaces, rolling-mills, 
etc. Pop. 40,000. 

ALLIA'CEOUS PLANTS, plants be¬ 
longing to the genus to which the onion, 
leek, garlic, shallot, etc., belong, or to 
other allied genera, and distinguished 
by a certain peculiar pungent smell and 
taste. 

ALLI'ANCE, a league between two 
or more powers. Alliances are divided 
into offensive and defensive. The 
former are for the purpose of attacking 
a common enemy, and the latter for 
mutual defense. An alliance often 
unites both of these conditions. Offen¬ 
sive alliances, of course, are usually 
directed against some particular enemy- 
defensive alliances against any one from 
whom an attack may come. 

ALLIANCE, Holy. See Holy Alliance. 

AL'LIBONE, Samuel Austin, LL.D., 
American author; born 1816, died 1889. 
He compiled a most useful Critical 
Dictionary of English Literature and 
British and American Authors. 

ALLIER (al-le-a), a central depart¬ 
ment of France, intersected by the river 
Allier, and partly bounded by the Loire; 
surface diversified by offsets of the 
Cevennes and other ranges, rising in 
the south to over 4000 feet, and in 
general richly wooded. It has exten¬ 
sive beds of coal as well as other min¬ 
erals; mineral waters at Vichy, Bour¬ 
bon, L’Archambault, etc. Area, 2822 sq. 
miles. Capital, Moulins. Pop. 424,582. 

AL'LIGATOR, a genus of reptiles, 
differing from the true crocodiles in 
having a shorter and flatter head, in 
having cavities or pits in the upper jaw, 
into which the long canine teeth of the 
under jaw fit, and in having the feet 
much less webbed. Their habits are less 
perfectly aquatic. They are confined to 
the warmer parts of America, where 
they frequent swamps and marshes, and 
may be seen basking on the dry ground 
during the day in the heat of the sun. 
They are most active during the night, 
when they make a loud bellowing. The 
largest of these animals grow to the 
length of 18 or 20 feet. They are cov¬ 
ered by a dense armor of horny scales, 
impenetrable to a rifle-ball, and have a 
huge mouth, armed with strong, conical 
teeth. They swim with wonderful 
celerity, impelled by their long, later¬ 
ally-compressed, and powerful tails. On 






ALLIGATOR-APPLE 


ALMA-TADEMA 


land their motions are proportionally 
slow and embarrassed because of the 
length and unwieldiness of their bodies 
and the shortness of their limbs. They 
live on fish, and any small animals or 
carrion, and sometimes catch pigs on 


the shore, or dogs which are swimming. 
They even sometimes make man their 
prey. In winter they burrow in the 
mud of swamps and marshes, lying 
torpid till the warm weather. The 
female lays a great number of eggs, 
which are deposited in the sand or mud, 
and left to he hatched by the heat of the 
6un, but the mother alligator is very 
attentive to her young. The most 
fierce and dangerous species is that 
found in the southern parts of the 
United States, having the snout a little 
turned up, slightly resembling that of 
the pike. The alligators of South 
America are there very often called 
Caymans. 

ALLIGATOR-APPLE, a fruit allied to 
the custard-apple, growing in marshy 
districts in Jamaica, little eaten on 
account of its narcotic properties. 

ALLIGATOR-PEAR, an evergreen tree 
with a fruit resembling a large pear, 
1 to 2 lbs. in weight, with a firm marrow¬ 
like pulp of a delicate flavor; called also 
avocado-pear, or subaltern’s butter. It 
is a native of tropical America and the 
West Indies. 

ALLISON, William Boyd, an Ameri¬ 
can statesman born at Perry, Ohio, edu¬ 
cated at Western Reserve College, and 
removed as a lawyer to Iowa in 1857. 
He was member of congress from 1863 
to 1871, and has been U. S. senator 
since 1872. He originated the Bland- 
Allison act of 1878, was member of the 
Brussels Conference of 1892, and in 
the national republican convention of 
1830 figured as a candidate for the pres¬ 
idency. He died in 1908. 

ALLITERATION, the repetition of 
the same letter at the beginning of two 
or more words immediately succeeding 
each other, or at short intervals; as, 
many men many minds; death defies the 
doctor; apt alliteration’s artful aid; puffs, 
powders, patches, bibles, billet-doux. 

AL'LIUM,a genus of plants containing 
numerous well-known species of pot¬ 
herbs. They are umbelliferous, and 
mostly perennial, herbaceous plants, but 
a few are biennial. Among them are 
garlic, onion, leek, chive, shallot. 

ALLOCUTION, an address, a term 
particularly applied to certain addresses 


on important occasions made by the 
e to the cardinals. 

LLOP'ATHY, the name applied by 
homceopathists to systems of medicine 
other than their own; Hahnemann’s 
principle being that “like cures like,” he 


called his own system homoeopathy, 
and other systems allopathy. See 
Homoeopathy. 

ALLOT'ROPY, a term used to express 
the fact that one and the same element 
may exist in different forms, differing 
widely in external physical properties. 
Thus, carbon occurs as the diamond, 
and as charcoal and plumbago, and is 
therefore regarded as a substance sub¬ 
ject to allotropy. 

ALLOY', a substance produced by 
melting together two or more metals, 
sometimes a definite chemical com¬ 
pound, but more generally merely a 
mechanical mixture. Most metals mix 
together in all proportions, but others 
unite only in definite proportions, and 
form true chemical compounds. Others 
again resist combination, and when 
fused together form not a homogeneous 
mixture, but a conglomerate of distinct 
masses. The changes produced in their 
physical properties by the combination 
of metals are very various. Their hard¬ 
ness is in general increased, their mallea¬ 
bility and ductility impaired. The color 
of an alloy may be scarcely different 
from that of one of its components, or 
it may show traces of neither of two. 
Its specific gravity is sometimes less 
than the mean of that of its component 
metals. Alloys are always more fusible 
than the metal most difficult to melt 
that enters into their composition, and 
generally even more so than the most 
easily melted one. Newton’s fusible 
metal, composed of three parts of tin, 
two or five parts of lead, and five or 
eight parts of bismuth, melts at tem¬ 
peratures varying from 198° to 210° F. 
(and therefore in boiling water); its 
components fuse respectively at the tem¬ 
peratures 442°, 600°, and 478° F. 
Sometimes each metal retains its own 
fusing-point. With few exceptions 
metals are not much used in a pure 
state. Gold coins contain 8£ per cent 
alloy; silver coins, 1\ per cent. Printers’ 
types are made from an alloy of lead and 
antimony ; brass and a numerous list of 
other alloys are formed from copper and 
zinc; bronze from copper and tin. 

ALL SAINTS’ DAY, a festival of the 
Christian Church, instituted in 835, and 


celebrated on the 1st of November in 
honor of the saints in general. 

ALL SOULS’ DAY, a festival of the 
Roman Catholic Church, instituted in 
998, and observed on the 2d of Novem¬ 
ber for the relief of souls in purgatory. 

ALLSPICE (al'spis), or PIMENTA, is 
the dried berry of a West Indian species 
of myrtle, a beautiful tree with white 
and fragrant aromatic flowers and 
leaves of a deep shining green. It is 
employed in cookery, also in medicine as 
an agreeable aromatic, and forms the 
basis of a distilled water, a spirit, and 
an essential oil. 

ALLU'VIUM, deposits of soil collected 
by the action of water, such as are 
found in valleys and plains, consisting 
of loam, clay, gravel, etc., washed down 
from the higher grounds. Great altera¬ 
tions are often produced by alluvium— 
deltas and whole islands being often 
formed by this cause. Much of the rich 
land along the banks of rivers is alluvial 
in its origin. 

AL'MADEN, a place in California, 
about 60 m. s.e. of San Francisco, with 
rich quicksilver mines, the product of 
which has been largely employed in 
gold and silver mining. 

AL'MA MA'TER, a term familiarly 
applied to their own university by those 
who have had a university education. 

AL-MAMUN (ma-mon'), a caliph of 
the Abasside dynasty, son of Harun-al- 
Rashid, born 786, died 833. Under him 
Bagdad became a great center of art 
and science. 

AL'MANAC, a calendar, in which are 
set down the rising and setting of the 
sun, the phases of the moon, the most 
remarkable positions and phenomena 
of the heavenly bodies, for every month 
and day of the year; also the several 
fasts and feasts to be observed in the 
church and state, etc., and often much 
miscellaneous information likely t-> be 
useful to the public. The term is of 
Arabic origin, but the Arabs were not 
the first to use almanacs, which indeed 
existed from remote ages. In England 
they are known from the fourteenth 
century, there being several English 
almanacs of this century existing in 
MS. They became generally used in 
Europe within a short time after the 
invention of printing; and they were 
very early remarkable, as some are still, 
for the mixture of truth and falsehood 
which they contained. Almanacs, from 
their periodical character, and the fre¬ 
quency with which they are referred to, 
are now more and more used as vehicles 
for conveying statistical and other useful 
information, some being intended for 
the inhabitants of a particular country 
or district, others for a particular class 
or party. Some of the almanacs that 
are regularly published every year are 
extremely useful, and are indeed almost 
indispensable to men engaged in official, 
mercantile, literary, or professional 
business, 

ALMA* - TAD'EMA, Sir Lawrence, 
Dutch painter, born in 1836, resident 
since 1870 in England, where he is a 
naturalized subject. In 1876 he was 
elected an associate of the Royal Acad¬ 
emy, in 1879 an academician. He re¬ 
ceived the honor of knighthood in 1899. 
He is especially celebrated for his 



Group of Alligators. 























ALMERIA 


ALPHABET 


pictures of ancient Roman, Greek, and 
Egyptian life, which are painted with 
great realism and archaeological cor¬ 
rectness. 

ALMERIA (al-ma-re'a), a fortified 
seaport of southern Spain, capital of 
province Almeria, near the mouth of a 
river and on the gulf of same name. The 
province, which has an area of 3300 sq. 
miles, is generally mountainous, and 
rich in minerals. Pop. of town, 47,326; 
of province, 359,013. 

ALMOND (a'mund), the fruit of the 
almond-tree, which grows usually to 
the height of 20 feet, and is akin to the 
peach, nectarine, etc. It has beautiful 
pinkish flowers that appear before the 



Almond. 


leaves, which are oval, pointed, and 
delicately serrated. It is a native of 
Africa and Asia. The fruit is a drupe, 
ovoid, and with downy outer surface; 
the fleshy covering is tough and fibrous ; 
it covers the compressed wrinkled stone 
inclosing the seed or almond within it. 
There are two varieties, one sweet and 
the other bitter. The chief kinds of 
sweet almonds are the Valencian, 
Jordan, and Malaga. They contain 
a bland fixed oil, consisting chiefly of 
olein. Bitter almonds come from 
Mogador, and besides a fixed oil they 
contain a substance called emulsin, 
and also a bitter crystalline substance 
called amygdalin, which, acting on the 
emulsin, produces prussic acid, whence 
the aroma of bitter almonds when mixed 
with water. Almond-oil, a bland fixed 
oil, is expressed from the kernels of 
either sweet or bitter almonds, and is 
used by perfumers and in medicine. 
A poisonous essential oil is obtained 
from bitter almonds, which is used for 
flavoring by cooks and confectioners, 
also by perfumers and in medicine. The 
name almond, with a qualifying word 
prefixed, is also given to the seeds of 
other species of plants; thus, Java al¬ 
monds are the kernels of Canarium 
commune. 

AL'MONER, an officer of a religious 
establishment to whom belonged the 
distribution of alms. The grand almoner 
(grand aumonier) of France was the 
highest ecclesiastical dignitary in that 
kingdom before the revolution. The 
lord almoner, or lord high almoner, of 
England, is generally a bishop, whose 
office is well-nigh a sinecure. He dis¬ 
tributes the sovereign’s doles to the poor 
on Maundy Thursday. 

AL'MUG (or AL'GUM) TREE, names 
which occur in 1 Ki. x. 11, 12 and 2 Chr. 
ii. 8, and ix. 10,11, as the names of trees 


of which the wood was used for pillars in 
the temple and the king’s house, for 
harps and psalteries, etc. They are 
said in one passage to be hewn in 
Lebanon, in another to be brought from 
Ophir. They have been identified by 
critics with the red sandalwood of India. 
Some of them may possibly have been 
transplanted to Lebanon by the Phoeni¬ 
cians. 

ALOE (al'o), the name of a number of 
plants belonging to the genus Aloe, 
some of which are not more than a few 
inches, while others are 30 feet and 
upward in height; natives of Africa 
and other hot regions; leaves fleshy, 
thick, and more or less spinous at the 
edges or extremity; flowers with a tubu¬ 
lar corolla. Some of the larger kinds are 
of great use, the fibrous parts of the 
leaves being made into cordage, fishing 
nets and lines, cloth, etc. The inspis¬ 
sated juice of several species is used in 
medicine, under the name of aloes, 
forming a bitter purgative. The Ameri¬ 
can aloe (see Agave) is a different plant 
altogether. 

ALOES-WOOD, the inner portion of 
the trunk of forest trees found in trop¬ 
ical Asia, and yielding a fragrant res¬ 
inous substance, which, as well as the 
wood, is burned for its perfume. 

ALPAC'A, a ruminant mammal of the 
camel tribe, a native of the Andes, 
especially of the mountains of Chile and 
Peru, and so closely allied to the llama 
that by some it is regarded rather as a 
smaller variety than a distinct species. 
It has been domesticated, and remains 
also in a wild state. In form and size 
it approaches the sheep, but has a 
longer neck. It is valued chiefly for its 
long, soft, and silky wool, which is 
straighter than that of the sheep, and 
very strong, and is woven into fabrics 
of great beauty, used for shawls, cloth¬ 
ing for warm climates, coat-linings, and 
umbrellas, and known by the same name. 
Its flesh is pleasant and wholesome. 

ALPENHORN, a long, nearly straight 
horn, curving slightly, and widening to¬ 
ward its extremity, used in the Alps to 
convey signals, or notice of something. 

ALPENSTOCK, a strong tall stick shod 
with iron, pointed at the end so as to 
take hold in, and give support on, ice and 
other dangerous places in climbing the 
Alps and other high mountains. 

ALPE'NA, a city and the county seat 
of Alpena Co., Mich., 110 miles north of 
Bay City, on Thunder Bay, and the 
Detroit and Mackinaw Railroad. Pop 
13,100. 

ALPES (alp), the name of three depart¬ 
ments in the southeast of France, all 
more or less covered by the Alps or 
their offshoots: Basses-Alpes (bas-alp) 
has mountains rising to a height of 8000 
to 10,000 feet, is drained by the Durance 
and its tributaries, and is the most thinly 
peopled department in France; area, 
2685 miles;capital, Digne. Pop. 129,494. 
—Hautes-Alpes (ot-alp), mostly formed 
out of ancient Dauphin^, traversed by 
the Cottian and Dauphine Alps (high¬ 
est summits 12,000 ft.), drained chiefly 
by the Durance and its tributaries It 
is the lowest department in France in 
point of absolute population; area, 
2158 miles; capital, Gap; pop. 122,924.— 
Alpes-Maritimes (alp-ma-ri-tem) has the 


Mediterranean on the south, and mainly 
consists of the territory of Nice, ceded 
to France by Italy in 1860. The greater 
part of the surface is covered by the 
Maritime Alps; the principal river is the 
Var. It produces in the south cereals, 
vines, olives, oranges, citrons, and other 
fruits; and there are manufactories of 
perfumes, liquors, soap, etc., and valua¬ 
ble fisheries. It is a favorite resort for 
invalids. Area, 1482 square miles; cap¬ 
ital, Nice; pop. 293.213. 

AL'PHA and O'MEGA, the first and 
last letters of the Greek alphabet, some- 



Alpaca. 


times used to signify the beginning and 
the end, or the first and the last of any¬ 
thing; also as a symbol of the Divine 
Being. They were also formerly the 
symbol of Christianity, and engraved 
accordingly on the tombs of the ancient 
Christians. 

AL'PHABET (from Alpha and Beta, 
the two first letters of the Greek alpha¬ 
bet), the series of characters used in 
writing a language, and intended to 
represent the sounds of which it con¬ 
sists. The English alphabet, like most 
of those of modern Europe, is derived 
directly from the Latin, the Latin from 
the ancient Greek, and that from the 
Phoenician, which again is believed to 
have had its origin in the Egyptian 
hieroglyphics, the Hebrew alphabet also 
having the same origin. The names 
of the letters in Phoenician and Hebrew 
must have been almost the same, for 
the Greek names, which, with the letters, 
were borrowed from the former, differ 
little from the Hebrew. By means 
of the names we may trace the process 
by which the Egyptian characters were 
transformed into letters by the Phoe¬ 
nicians. Some Egyptian character 
would, by its form, recall the idea of a 
house, for example, in Phoenician or 
Hebrew beth. This character would 
subsequently come to be used wherever 
the sound b occured. Its form might be 
afterward simplified, or even completely 
modified, but the name would still 
remain, as beth still continued the He¬ 
brew name for b, and beta the Greek. 
Our letter m, which in Hebrew was 
called mim, water, has still a consider¬ 
able resemblance to the zigzag, wavy 
line which had been chosen to repre¬ 
sent water, as in the zodiacal symbol 
for Aquarius. The letter o, of which 
the Hebrew name means eye, no doubt 
originally intended to represent that 






ALPHONSO 


ALTAI MOUNTAINS 


organ. While the ancient Greek alpha¬ 
bet gave rise to the ordinary Greek 
alphabet and the Latin, the Greek 
alphabet of later times furnished ele¬ 
ments for the Coptic, the Gothic, and 
the old Slavic alphabets, The Latin 
characters are now employed by a great 
many nations, such as the Italians, the 
French, the Spanish, the Portuguese,the 
English, the Dutch, the German, the 
Hungarian, the Polish, etc., each nation 
having introduced such modifications or 
additions as are necessary to express the 
sound of the language peculiar to it. 
The Greek alphabet originally possessed 
only sixteen letters,though the Phoeni¬ 
cian had twenty-two. The original 
Latin alphabet, as it is found in the old¬ 
est inscriptions consisted of twenty-one 
letters; namely, the vowels a, e, i, o,and 
u, (v) and the consonants b, c, d, f, h, k, 
1, m,n,p,q,r,s, t, x, z. The Anglo-Saxon 
alphabet had two characters for the 
digraph th .which were unfortunately 
not retained in later English; it had 
also the character se. It wanted j, v, y 
(consonant), and z. The German alpha¬ 
bet consists of the same letters as the 
English, but the sounds of some of them 
are different. Anciently certain char¬ 
acters called Runic were made use of by 
the Teutonic nations, to which some 
would attribute an origin independent 
of the Greek and Latin alphabets. 
While the alphabets of the west of 
Europe are derived from the Latin, the 
Russian, which is very complete, is 
based on the Greek, with some charac¬ 
ters borrowed from the Armenian, etc. 
Among Asiatic alphabets, the Arabian 
(ultimately of Phoenician origin) has 
played a part analogous to that of the 
Latin in Europe, the conquests of Mo¬ 
hammedanism having imposed it on the 
Persian, the Turkish, the Hindustani, 
etc. The Sanskrit or Devanagari alpha¬ 
bet is one of the most remarkable alpha¬ 
bets of the world. As now used it has 
fourteen characters for the vowels and 
diphthongs, and thirty-three for the 
consonants, besides two other symbols. 
Our alphabet is a very imperfect instru¬ 
ment for what it has to perform, being 
both defective and redundant. An 
alphabet is not essential to the writing 
of a language, since ideograms or sym¬ 
bols may be used instead, as in Chinese. 

ALPHON'SO, the name of a number 
of kings of Spain and Portugal. Alphon- 
so I. was the son of Henry of Burgun¬ 
dy. He conquered Portugal and was 
recognized by the Pope. The present 
King of Spain is Alphonso XIII., born 
May 17, 1886, six months after the death 
of his father, married 1906, to Princess 
Victoria of England. In 1907 an heir to 
the throne was born. 

ALPIEE WARBLER, a European 
bird of the same genus as the hedge- 
sparrow. 

ALPS, the highest and most exten¬ 
sive system of mountains in Europe, in¬ 
cluded between lat. 44° and 48° n., and 
Ion. 6° and 18° e., covering a great part 
of Northern Italy, several departments 
of France, nearly the whole of Switzer¬ 
land, and a large part of Austria, while 
its extensive ramifications connect it 
with nearly all the mountain systems of 
Europe. The culminating peak is Mont 
Blanc, 15,781 feet high, though the 


true center is the St. Gothard, or the 
mountain mass to which it belongs, and 
from whose slopes flow, either directly 
or by affluents the great rivers of cen¬ 
tral Europe, the Danube, Rhine, Rhone, 
and Po. Round the northern frontier 
of Italy the Alps form a remarkable 
barrier, shutting it off at all points from 
the main land of Europe, so that, as a 
rule, it can only be approached from 
France, Germany, or Switzerland, 
through high and difficult passes. In 
the west this barrier approaches close to 
the Mediterranean coast, and near Nice 
there is left a free passage into the 
Italian peninsula between the moun¬ 
tains and the sea. From this point east¬ 
ward the chain proceeds along the coast 
till it forms a junction with the Apen¬ 
nines. In the opposite direction it pro¬ 
ceeds northwest, and afterward north 
to Mont Blanc, on the boundaries of 
France and Italy; it then turns north¬ 
east and runs generally in this direction 
to the Gross Glockner, in central Tyrol, 
between the rivers Draveandthe Salza, 
where it divides into two branches, the 
northern proceeding northeast toward 
Vienna, the southern toward the Balkan 
Peninsula. The principal valleys of the 
Alps run mostly in a direction nearly 
parallel with the principal ranges, and 
therefore east and west. The transverse 
valleys are commonly shorter, and fre¬ 
quently lead up through a narrow gorge 
to a depression in the main ridge be¬ 
tween two adjacent peaks. These are 
the passes or cols, which may usually be 
found by tracing a stream which 
descends from the mountains up to its 
source. 

The Alps are very rich in lakes and 
streams. Among the chief of the form¬ 
er are the lakes of Geneva, Constance, 
Zurich, Thun, Brienz, on the north 
side; on the south Maggiore, Como, 
Lugano, Garda, etc. The drainage is 
carried to the North Sea by the Rhine, 
to the Mediterranean by the Rhone, to 
the Adriatic by the Po, to the Black 
Sea by the Danube. 

In the lower valleys of the Alps the 
mean temperature ranges from 50° to 
60°. Half way up the Alps it averages 
about 32°—a height which, in the 
snowy regions, it never reaches- But 
even where the temperature is lowest 
the solar radiation produced by the 
rocks and snow is often so great as to 
raise the photometer to 120 ° and even 
higher. The exhilarating and invigor¬ 
ating nature of the climate in the upper 
regions during the summer has been 
acknowledged by all. 

In respect to vegetation the Alps have 
been divided into six zones, depending 
on height modified by exposure and 
local circumstances. The first is the 
olive region. This tree flourishes better 
on sheltered slopes of the mountains 
than on the plains of northern Italy. 
The vine, which bears greater winter 
cold, distinguishes the second zone. On 
slopes exposed to the sun it flourishes to 
a considerable height. The third is 
called the mountainous region. Cereals 
and deciduous trees form the distin¬ 
guishing features of its vegetation. 
The mean temperature about equals 
that of Great Britain, but the extremes 
are greater. The fourth region is the 


sub-Alpineor coniferous. Here are vast 
forests of pines of various species. Most 
of the Alpine villages are in the two last 
regions. On the northern slopes pines 
grow to 6,000, and on the southern 
slopes to 7,000 feet above the level of 
the sea. This is also the region of the 
lower or permanent pastures where the 
flocks are fed in winter. The fifth is the 
pasture region, the term alp being used 
in the local sense of high pasture 
grounds. It extends from the upper¬ 
most limit of trees to the region of per¬ 
petual snow. Here there are shrubs, 
rhododendrons, junipers, bilberries, and 
dwarf willows, etc. The sixth zone is the 
region of perpetual snow. The line of 
snow varies, according to seasons and 
localities from 8,000 to 9,500 feet, but 
the line is not continuous, being often 
broken in upon. Few flowering plants 
extend above 10,000 feet, but they have 
been found as high as 12,000 feet. 

At this great elevation are found the 
wild goat and the chamois. In summer 
the high mountain pastures are covered 
with large flocks of cattle, sheep, and 
goats, which are in winter removed to 
a lower and warmer level. The marmot, 
and white or Alpine hare, inhabit both 
the snowy and the woody regions. 
Lower down are found the wild-cat,fox, 
lynx, bear and wolf; the last two are 
now extremely rare. The vulture, 
eagle, and other birds of prey frequent 
the highest elevations, the ptarmigan 
seeks its food and shelter among the 
diminutive plants that border upon the 
snow-line. Excellent trout and other 
fish are found; but the most elevated 
lakes are, from their low temperature, 
entirely destitute of fish. 

ALSACE (al-sas), before the French 
revolution a province of France, on the 
Rhine, afterward constituting the 
French departments of Haut- and Bas- 
Rhin, and subsequently to the Franco- 
Prussian war of 1870-71 reunited to Ger¬ 
many, and incorporated in the province 
of Elsass-Lothringen (Alsace-Lorraine). 
Alsace is generally a level country 
though there are several ranges of low 
hills richly wooded. The principal river 
is the Ill. Corn, flax, tobacco, grapes, 
and other fruits are grown. Area, 
3,198 sq. miles; pop. 1,074,626. The in¬ 
habitants mostly speak German, and 
are of German race. Strasburg is the 
chief city. The chief productions are 
wine, hemp, flax, tobacco, madder, 
copper, iron, etc. 

ALSACE-LORRAINE, a province 
of Germany, on the east of France, 
partly bounded by the Rhine; area, 
5,600 sq. miles, of which Alsace occupies 
3,198 and Lorraine 2,402. The three chief 
towns are Strasburg, Mahlhausen, and 
Metz. Pop. 1,719,470, of whom 1,310,- 
450 are Catholics and 372,078 Protest¬ 
ants. 

ALTAI MOUNTAINS (al'ti), an im¬ 
portant Asiatic system on the borders 
of Siberia and Mongolia, partly in Rus¬ 
sian and partly in Chinese territory, be¬ 
tween lat. 46° and 53° n., Ion. 83° and91° 
e., but having great eastern extensions. 
The Russian portion is comprised in the 
governments of Tomsk and Semipala- 
tinsk, the Chinese in Dsungaria. The 
rivers of this region, which are large and 
numerous, are mostly head-waters of 






ALTAR 


ALVARADO 


the Obi and Irtish. The area covered 
by perpetual snow is very considerable, 
and glaciers occupy a wide extent. The 
Altai is exceedingly dch in minerals, 
including gold, silver, copper, and iron. 
The name Altai means ‘gold mountain.” 
The inhabitants are chiefly Russians 
and Kalmuks. The chief town is Bar¬ 
naul. 

ALTAR (^l'tar), any pile or structure 
raised above the ground for receiving 
sacrifices to some divinity. The Greek 
and Roman altars were various in form, 
and often highly ornamental; in temples 
they were usually placed before the 
statue of the god. In the Jewish cere¬ 
monial the altar held an important place, 
and was associated with many of the 
most significant rites of religion. Two 
altars were erected in the tabernacle in 
the wilderness, and the same number in 
the temple, according to instructions 
given to Moses in Mt. Sinai. These 
were called the altar of burnt-offering 
and the altar of incense. In some sec¬ 
tions of the Christian church the com¬ 
munion-table, or table on which the 
eucharist is placed, is called an altar. 
In the primitive church it was a table of 
wood, but subsequently stone and metal 
were introduced, with rich ornaments, 
sculpture, and painting. After the in¬ 
troduction of Gothic art the altar fre¬ 
quently became a lofty and most elabo¬ 
rate structure. 

ALTAZ'IMUTH, a vertical circle with 
a telescope so arranged as to be capable 
of being turned round horizontally to 
any point of the compass, and so differ¬ 
ing from a transit-circle, which is fixed 
in the meridian. The altazimuth is 
brought to bear upon objects by motions 
affecting their altitude and azimuth. 

AL'TENBURG, a town of Germany, 
capital of Saxe-Altenburg, 23 miles 
south of Leipzig. It has some fine streets 
and many handsome edifices, including 
a splendid palace; manufactures of ci¬ 
gars, woolen yarn, gloves, hats, musical 
instruments, glass, brushes, etc. Pop. 
37,110. 

ALTERATIVES (al'-), medicines, as 
mercury, iodine, etc., which, adminis¬ 
tered in small doses, gradually induce a' 
change in the habit or constitution, and 
imperceptibly alter disordered secretions 
and actions, and restore healthy func¬ 
tions without producing any sensible 
evacuation by perspiration, purging, or 
vomiting. 

ALTER EGO, a second self, one who 
represents another in every respect. 

ALTER'NATE, in botany, placed on 
opposite sides of an axis at a different 
level, as leaves.—Alternate generation, 
the reproduction of young not resem¬ 
bling their parents, but their grand¬ 
parents, continuously, as in the jelly¬ 
fishes, etc. See Generation, Alternate. 

ALTH-TE'A, a genus of plants. See 
Hollyhock and Marshmallow. 

ALTITUDE, in mathematics the per¬ 
pendicular height of the vertex or apex 
of a plane figure or solid above the base. 
In astronomy it is the vertical height of 
any point or body above the horizon. It 
is measured or estimated by the angle 
subtended between the object and the 
plane of the horizon, and may be either 
true or apparent. The apparent altitude 
is that which is obtained immediately 


from observation; the true altitude, that 
which results from correcting the appar¬ 
ent altitude, by making allowance for 
parallax, refraction, etc 

ALTO, in music, the highest singing 
voice of a male adult, the lowest of a toy 
or a woman, being in the latter the same 
as contralto. The alto, or counter¬ 
tenor, is not a natural voice, but a de¬ 
velopment of the falsetto. It is almost 
confined to English singers, and the only 
music written for it is by English com¬ 
posers. It is especially used in cathedral 
compositions and glees. 

ALTON, a town in Illinois, on the 
Mississippi near the mouth of the Miss¬ 
ouri, with a state penitentiary, several 
mills and manufactories, and in the 
neighborhood limestone and coal. Pop. 
17,000. 

AL'TONA, an important commercial 
city in the Prussian province of Schles¬ 
wig-Holstein, on the right bank of the 
Elbe, adjoining Hamburg, with which 
it virtually forms one city. It is a free 
port, and its commerce, both inland and 
foreign, is large, being quite identified 
with that of Hamburg. Pop. 161,507. 

ALTOO'NA, a town in Pennsylvania, 
at the eastern base of the Alleghanies, 
244 miles west of Philadelphia, with 
large machine-shops and locomotive fac¬ 
tories. Pop. 45,000. 

ALTRUISM, a term first employed 
by the French philosopher Comte, to sig¬ 
nify devotion to others or to humanity; 
the opposite of selfishness or egoism. 

AL'UM, a well-known crystalline, 
astringent substance with a sweetish 
taste, a double sulphate of potassium and 
aluminium with a certain quantity of 
water of crystallization. It crystallizes 
in regular octahedrons. Its solution 
reddens vegetable blues. Exposed to 
heat its water of crystallization is driven 
off, and it becomes light and spongy with 
slightly corrosive properties, and is used 
as a caustic under the name of burnt 
alum. Common alum is strictly potash 
alum; other two varieties are soda alum 
and ammonia alum, both similar in 
properties. The importance of alum 
in the arts is very great, and its annual 
consumption is immense. It is em¬ 
ployed to increase the hardness of tallow, 
to remove greasiness from printers’ 
cushions and blocks in calico manufac¬ 
tories; in dyeing it is largely used a* a 
mordant. It is also largely used in the 
composition of crayons, in tannery, and in 
medicine (as an astringent and styptic). 
Wood and paper are dipped in a solution 
of alum to render them less combustible. 

ALU'MINA, the single oxide of the 
metal aluminium. As found native it is 
called corundum, when crystallized ruby 
or sapphire, when amorphous emery. It 
is next to the diamond in hardness. In 
combination with silica it is one of the 
most widely distributed of substances, as 
it enters in large quantity into the com¬ 
position of granite, traps, slates, schists, 
clays, loams, and other rocks. The por¬ 
celain clays and kaolins contain about 
half their weight of this earth, to which 
they owe their most valuable properties. 
It has a strong affinity for coloring 
matters, which causes it to be employed 
in the preparation of the colors called 
lakes in dyeing and calico-printing. It 
combines with the acids and forms 


! numerous salts, the most important of 
which are the sulphate and acetate, the 
latter of extensive use as a mordant. 

ALUMIN'IUM, a metal discovered in 
1827, but nowhere found native, though 
as the base of alumina (which see) it is 
abundantly distributed. The mineral 
cryolite—a fluoride of aluminium and 
sodium—which is brought from Green¬ 
land, is one of the chief sources of alu¬ 
minium. It is a shining white metal, of 
a color between silver and platinum, very 
light, weighing less than glass, and 
about one-fourth of silver, not liable to 
tarnish nor undergo oxidation in the air, 
very ductile and malleable, and remark¬ 
ably sonorous. It forms several useful 
alloys with iron and copper; one of the 
latter (aluminium gold) much resembles 
gold, and is made into cheap trinkets. 
Another, known as aluminium bronze, 
ossesses great hardness and tenacity, 
poons, tea and coffee pots, dish-covers, 
musical and mathematical instruments, 
trinkets, etc., are made of aluminium. 

ALUM-ROOT, the name given in 
America to two plants on account of the 
remarkable astringency of their roots, 
which are used for medical purposes. 

ALUM-SLATE, a slaty rock from 
which much alum is prepared; color 
grayish, bluish, or iron-black; often 
possessed of a glossy or shining luster; 
chiefly composed of clay (silicate of 
alumina), with variable proportions of 
sulphide of iron (iron-pyrites), lime, 
bitumen, and magnesia. 

ALUM-STONE, a mineral of a grayish 
or yellowish-white color, approaching 
to earthy in its composition, from which 
(in Italy) is obtained a very pure alum 
by simply subjecting it to roasting and 
lixiviation. 

AL'VA, or AL'BA, Ferdinand Alvarez, 
Duke of, Spanish statesman and general 
under Charier, V. and Philip II.; was 
born in 1508; early embraced the mili¬ 
tary career, and fought in the wars of 
Charles V. in France, Italy, Africa, 
Hungary, and Germany. He is more 
especially remembered for his bloody and 
tyrannical government of the Nether¬ 
lands (1567-73), which had revolted, and 
which he was commissioned by P hili p 
II. to reduce to entire subjection to 
Spain. Hopeless of finally subduing 
the country he asked to be recalled, and 
accordingly, in December, 1573, Alva 
left the country, in which, as he himself 
boasted, he had executed 18,000 men. 
He was received with distinction in 
Madrid, but did not long enjoy his former 
credit. He had the honor, however, be¬ 
fore his death (which took place in 1582) 
of reducing all Portugal to subjection to 
his sovereign. It is said of him that 
during sixty years of warfare he never 
lost a battle and was never taken by 
surprise. 

ALVARADO (al-va-ra'do), Pedro de, 
one of the Spanish “conquistadors,” was 
born toward the end of the 15th century, 
and died in 1541. Having crossed the 
Atlantic he was associated (1519) with 
Cortez in his expedition to conquer Mex¬ 
ico; and was intrusted with important 
operations. In July, 1520, during the 
disastrous retreat from the capital after 
the death of Montezuma, the perilous 
command of the rear-guard was assigned 
to Alvarado. On his return to Spain he 










ALWAR 


AMBASSADOR 


was received with honor by Charles V., 
who made him governor of Guatemala, 
which he had himself conquered. To 
this was subsequently added Honduras. 
He continued to add to the Spanish 
dominions in America till his death. 

ALWAR (al-war'), a state of north¬ 
western Hindustan, in Rajputana; area, 
3024 square miles. This semi-independ¬ 
ent state has as its ruler a rajah with a 
revenue of about SI,000,000; military 
force, about 5000 infantry and 2000 
cavalry. Pop. 828,888.—Alwar, the cap¬ 
ital, is situated at the base of a rocky 
hill crowned by a fort, 80 miles s.s.w. 
of Delhi, surrounded by a moat and 
rampart, and poorly built, but with fine 
surroundings; contains the rajah’s pal¬ 
ace and a few other good buildings. 
Pop. 56,771. 

AMADE'US, Duke of Aosta, second 
son of Victor Emanuel of Italy, and 
brother of the present king, was born 
in 1845, and was chosen by the Cortes 
King of Spain in 1870, Queen Isabella 
having had to leave the country in 1868. 
He abdicated in 1873 and returned to 
Italy. He died in 1890. 

AMAL'FI, a seaport in southern Italy 
on the gulf of Salerno, 23 miles from 
Naples, the seat of a bishop, a place of 



The Cathedral, Amalfi. 


great commercial importance in the 
middle ages, enjoying a republican con¬ 
stitution of its own. Pop. 11,242. 

AMAL'EKITES, a Semitic race oc¬ 
cupying the peninsula between Egypt 
and Palestine, named after a grandson 
of Esau. They were denounced by 
Moses for their hostility to the Israelites 
during their journey through the wilder¬ 
ness, and they seem to have been all but 
exterminated by Saul and David. 

AMAL'GAM, a name applied to the 
alloys of mercury with the other metals. 
One of them is the amalgam of mercury 
with tin, which is used to silver looking- 
glasses. Mercury unites very readily 
with gold and silver at ordinary tem¬ 
peratures, and advantage is taken of 
this to separate them from their ores, the 
process being called amalgamation. 
The mercury being properly applied 
dissolves and combines with the pre¬ 


cious metal and separates it from the 
waste matters, and is itself easily driven 
off by heat. 

AMARAPURA (a-ma-ra-po'ra), a de¬ 
serted city, once the capital of the Bur¬ 
mese Empire, on the left bank of the 
Irawaddy, quite close to Mandalay. The 
population in 1800 was 175,000. 


AMARYLLIDA'CEZE, an order of 

monocotyledonous plants, generally 
bulbous, occasionally with a tall, cylin¬ 
drical, woody stem; with a highly 
colored flower, six stamens, and an 
inferior three-celled ovary; natives of 
Europe and most of the warmer parts 
of the world. The order includes the 
snowdrop, the snowflake, the daffodil, 
the belladonna-lily (belonging to the 
typical genus Amaryllis), the so-called 
Guernsey-lily (probably a native of 
Japan), the Brunsvigias, the blood- 
flowers (Haemanthus) of the Cape of 
Good Hope, different species of Narcis¬ 
sus, Agave (American aloe), etc. 

AM'ATEUR, any person who pur¬ 
sues an art, science, or other work not 
for money or other material considera¬ 
tion but for the pure love of the thing 
itself. In sports the definition of an 
amateur is made by the rules of the 
Amateur Athletic union; and this defini¬ 
tion may be regarded as the type for 
sports of all kinds. According to the 
rules of competition nobody is eligible 
who in any manner has received com¬ 
pensation of any kind for his work, or 
who has competed with a professional, 
or who has in any way realized money 
through any connection with sport 
itself, such as the sale of prizes, etc. 
In certain sports, such as golf, the lines 
are not so closely drawn, so that playing 
with a professional does not constitute 
one a professional. The rules of ama¬ 
teurism in cycling were for years a 
mere form, as every large manufacturer 
had his own racers on the track. 

AMAURO'SIS, a species of blindness, 
caused by disease of the nerves of vision. 
The most frequent causes are a long- 
continued direction of the eye on 
minute objects, long exposure to a 
bright light, to the fire of a forge, to 
snow, or irritating gases, overfulness of 
blood, disease of the brain, etc. If 
taken in time it may be cured or miti¬ 
gated; but confirmed amaurosis is 
usually incurable. 

AM'AZON, AM'AZONS, a river of 
South America, the largest in the world, 
formed by a great number of sources 
which rise in the Andes; general course 


north of east; length including windings 
between 3000 and 4000 miles ; area of 
drainage basin 2,300,000 sq. miles. It 
enters the Atlantic under the equator 
by a mouth 200 miles wide, divided into 
two principal and several smaller arms 
by the large island Marajo, and a num¬ 
ber of smaller islands. In its upper 


course navigation is interrupted by 
rapids, but from its mouth upward for 
a distance of 3300 miles (mostly in 
Brazil) there is no obstruction. From 
the sea to the Rio Negro, 750 miles in a 
straight line, the depth is nowhere less 
than 30 fathoms; up to the junction 
of the Ucayale there is depth sufficient 
for the largest vessels. The Amazonian 
water system affords some 50,000 miles 
of river suitable for navigation. The 
rapidity of the river is considerable, es¬ 
pecially during the rainy season (January 
to June), when it is subject to floods; but 
there is no great fall in its course. The 
tides reach up as far as 400 miles from 
its mouth. The singular phenomenon of 
the bore, or as it is called on the Amazon 
the pororoca, occurs at the mouth of 
the river at springtides on a grand scale. 
The river swarms with alligators, turtles, 
and a great variety of fish. The country 
through which it flows is extremely 
fertile, and is mostly covered with im¬ 
mense forests; it must at some future 
time support a numerous population, 
and be the theater of a busy commerce. 
Steamers and other craft ply on the 
river, the chief center of trade being Para, 
at its mouth. 

AMAZ'ONAS, the largest state of 
Brazil, traversed by the Amazon and 
its tributaries; area, 753,000 sq. miles; 
pop. 148,000. 

AM'AZONS, according to an ancient 
Greek tradition, the name of a com¬ 
munity of women, who permitted no 
men to reside among them, fought under 
the conduct of a queen, and long con¬ 
stituted a formidable state. They 
were said to burn off the right breast 
that it might not impede them in the use 
of the bow. 

AMBA'LA, a town of India, in the 
Punjab. The military cantonment ii 
several miles distant. Total pop. 78,638. 

AMBAS'SADOR, a minister of the 
highest rank, employed by one prince oi 
state at the court of another to manage 
the public concerns, or support the 
interests of his own prince or state, anc 
representing the power and dignity o! 
his sovereign or state. Ambassador! 
are ordinary when they reside perma- 































AMBER 


AMERICA 


nently at a foreign court, or extraor¬ 
dinary when they are sent on a special 
occasion. When ambassadors extraor¬ 
dinary have full powers, as of conclud¬ 
ing peace, making treaties, and the like, 
they are called plenipotentiaries. Am¬ 
bassadors are often called simply min¬ 
isters. Envoys are ministers employed 
on special occasions, and are of less 
dignity than ambassadors. The term 
ambassador, however, is also used in a 
more general sense for any diplomatic 
agent or minister. An ambassador and 
his suite are not amenable to the laws 
of the country in which they are residing. 

AM'BER, a semi-mineral substance 
of resinous composition, a sort of fossil 
resin, the produce of extinct Coniferae. 
It is usually of yellow or reddish-brown 
color; brittle; yields easily to the knife; 
is translucent, and possessed of a resi¬ 
nous luster. Specific gravity, T065. 
It burns with a yellow flame, emitting 
a pungent aromatic smoke, and leaving 
a light carbonaceous residue, which is 
employed as the basis of the finest black 
varnishes. By friction it becomes 
strongly electric. It is found in masses 
from the size of coarse sand to that of a 
man’s head, and occurs in beds of bitu¬ 
minous wood situated upon the shores of 
the Baltic and Adriatic Seas; also in 
Poland, France, Italy, and Demark. 
It is often washed up on the Prussian 
shores of the Baltic, and is also obtained 
by fishing for it with nets. Sometimes 
it is found on the east coast of Britain, in 
gravel pits round London, also in the 
United States. 

AM'BERGRIS, a substance derived 
from the intestines of the sperm-whale, 
and found floating or on the shore; 
yellowish or blackish white; very light; 
melts at 140°, and is entirely dissipated 
on red-hot coals; is soluble in ether, 
volatile oils, and partially in alcohol, 
and is chiefly composed of a peculiar 
fatty substance. Its odor is very agree¬ 
able, and hence it is used as a perfume. 

AMBIDEXTROUS, having the faculty 
of using the left hand as effectively as 
the right. 

AMBLYOP'SIS, a genus of blind 
fishes, containing only one species, found 
in the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky. 

AMBOY'NA, AMBOINA, or APON, 
one of the Molucca Islands in the In¬ 
dian Archipelago, close to the large 
island of Ceram; area, about 280 sq. 
miles. Its surface is generally hilly or 
mountainous, its general aspect beauti¬ 
ful, and its climate on the whole salu¬ 
brious, but it is not infrequently visited 
by earthquakes. It affords a variety of 
useful trees, including the cocoanut 
and sago palms. Cloves and nutmegs 
are the staple productions. The soil in 
the valleys and along the shores is very 
fertile, but a large portion remains un¬ 
cultivated. The natives are mostly of 
Malayan race. The capital, also called 
Amboyna, is situated on the Bay of 
Amboyna, and is well built and de¬ 
fended by a citadel. The streets are 
planted on each side with rows of fruit- 
trees. It is a free port. Pop. 10,500. 

AM'BROSE, Saint, a celebrated father 
of the church; born in a.d. 333 or 334, 
probably at Treves, where his father 
was prefect; died in 397. His kind¬ 
ness and wisdom gained him the es¬ 


teem and love of the people, and in 
374 he was unanimously called to the 
bishopric of Milan, though not yet 
baptized. His writings, which are 
numerous, show that his theological 
knowledge extended little beyond an 
acquaintance with the works of the 
Greek fathers. He wrote Latin hymns, 
but the Te Deum Laudamus, which has 
been ascribed to him, was written a 
century later. He introduced the Am¬ 
brosian Chant, a mode of singing more 
monotonous than the Gregorian which 
superseded it. He also compiled a form 
of ritual known by his name. 

AMBRO'SIA, in Greek mythology the 
food of the gods, as nectar was their 
drink. 

AM'BULANCE, a hospital establish¬ 
ment which accompanies an army in its 
movements in the field for the purpose 
of providing assistance and surgical 
treatment to the soldiers wounded in 
battle. The name is often given to one 
of the carts, wagons, or litters used to 
transfer the wounded from the spot 
where they fell to the hospital. One 
form of ambulance wagon is a strong 
but light vehicle with an upright frame, 
from which two stretchers are slung 
from the top for the accommodation of 
those most severely wounded] seats 
before and behind are provided for those 
suffering from less serious wounds. 
The hospital chests, containing surgical 
instruments, bandages, splints, etc., are 
placed in the bottom of the wagon 
or lashed to its under surfaces. A 
thorough ambulance system in connec¬ 
tion with armies in the field is of quite 
recent introduction. A training in 
ambulance work is now being recog¬ 
nized as of importance beyond the field 
of military affairs, and as being of the 
utmost service wherever serious acci¬ 
dents are likely to happen, as, for 
instance, in large cities and in connection 
with large industrial establishments. 

AM'BUSH, a term of strategy used 
to designate the act of hiding and 
taking the enemy by surprise. An 
ambush may be large or small, involv¬ 
ing only a few men or an entire army. 
It was this method of warfare which 
was used almost exclusively by the 
Boers in their recent war with England 
in South Africa. 

AMEN (a-men'), a Hebrew word, 
signifying “verily,” “truly,” transferred 
from the religious language of the Jews 
to that of the Christians, and used at 
the end of prayers as equivalent to 
“so be it,” “may this be granted.” 

AMEND'MENT, a proposal brought 
forward in a meeting of some public or 
other body, either in order to get an 
alteration introduced on some proposal 
already before the meeting, or entirely 
to overturn such proposal. In parlia¬ 
ment an amendment denotes an altera¬ 
tion made in the original draught of a 
bill while it is passing through the 
houses. Amendments may be made so 
as totally to alter the nature of the 
proposition; and this is a way of getting 
rid of a proposition, by making it bear 
a sense different from what was in¬ 
tended by the movers, who are thus 
compelled to abandon it. 

AMENO'PHIS (or AMENHOTEP) III., 
a Wing of ancient Egypt about 1500 


b.c.] warred successfully against Syrians 
and Ethiopians, built magnificent tem¬ 
ples and palaces at Thebes, where the 
so-called Memnon statue is a statute of 
this king. 

AMENORRHCE'A, absence or sus¬ 
pension of menstruation. The former 
may arise from general debility or from 
defective development, the latter from 
exposure to cold, from attacks of fever 
or other ailment, violent excitement, etc. 

AMENT A'CETE, an order of plants 
having their flowers arranged in amenta 
or catkins; now broken up into several 
orders, the chief of which are the birch, 
the willow, the liquidambar, the plane, 
the nut. 

AMENTUM, in botany, that kind of 
inflorescence which is commonly known 
as a catkin (as in the birch or willow), 
consisting of unisexual apetalous flow¬ 
ers in the axil of scales or bracts. 

AMERICA, or the NEW WORLD, 
the largest of the great divisions of the 
globe except Asia, is washed on the 
west by the Pacific, on the east by the 
Atlantic, on the north by the Arctic 
Ocean, on the south tapers to a point. 
On the northwest it approaches within 
about 50 miles of Asia, while on the 
northeast the island of Greenland ap¬ 
proaches within 370 miles of the Euro¬ 
pean island Iceland; but in the south 
the distance between the American 
mainland and Europe or Africa is very 
great. America as a whole forms the 
two triangular continents of North and 
South America, united by the narrow 
Isthmus of Panama, a fid having an 
entire length of about 10,000 miles; a 
maximum breadth (in North America) 
of 3500 miles; a coast line of 44,000 
miles; and a total area, including the 
islands, of nearly 16,000,000, of which 
N. America contains about 9,000,000 
sq. miles. South America is more com¬ 
pact in form than N. America, in this 
respect resembling Africa, while N. 
America more resembles Europe. Be¬ 
tween the two on the east side is the 
great basin which comprises the Gulf 
of Mexico, the Caribbean Soa, and the 
West India Islands. Like Europe also 
N. America possesses numerous islands, 
while those of S. America are less im¬ 
portant and confined almost to the 
southern extremity. 

Three-fourths of the area of America 
is comparatively flat, and this portion 
of the surface is bounded on the west 
by lofty mountain systems which 
stretch continuously from north to 
south between the extremities of the 
continent, generally at no great dis¬ 
tance from the west shore. In North 
America the Rocky Mountains, a broad 
series of masses partly consisting of 
plateaux, form the most important por¬ 
tion of the elevated surface, being con¬ 
tinued southward in the mountains and 
tableland of Mexico and the ranges of 
Central America. Separated by depres¬ 
sions from the Rocky Mountains proper, 
and running close to and parallel with 
the western coast, are several lofty 
ranges (Sierra Nevada, Cascade Moun¬ 
tains, etc.). Near the eastern coast, and 
forming an isolated mass, are the Appa¬ 
lachians, a system of much inferior 
magnitude. The loftiest mountains in 
N. America are Mount Logan (19,514 






AMERICA 


AMERICA 


ft.), Mount St. Elias (18,017), both in 
N. W. Canada; and Popocatepetl (18,- 
000 ft.). The depression of the Isthmus 
of Panama (about 260 ft.) forms a 
natural separation between the systems 
of the north and the south. In S. Amer¬ 
ica the Andes form a system of greater 
elevation but less breadth than the 
Rocky Mountains, and consist of a 
series of ranges (cordilleras) closely 
following the line of the west coast 
from the Isthmus of Panama to Cape 
Horn. The highest summits seem to be 
Aconcagua (22,860 ft.), Sorata or Illampu 
(21,484), and Sahama (21,054). Vol¬ 
canoes are numerous. Isolated moun¬ 
tain groups of minor importance are the 
highlands of Venezuela and of Brazil, 
the latter near the eastern coast, reach¬ 
ing a height of 10,000 feet. 

The fertile lowlands which lie to the 
east of the Rocky Mountains and the 
Andes form a depression extending 
through both continents from the north¬ 
ern to the southern oceans. They have 
somewhat different features and differ¬ 
ent names in different portions; in N. 
America are prairies and savannahs, 
in S. America llanos, selvas and pam¬ 
pas. 

Through these low grounds flow the 
numerous great rivers which form so 
characteristic a feature of America. 
The principal are the Mackenzie, Copper- 
mine, and Great Fish rivers, entering 
the Northern Ocean; the Churchill, 
Nelson, Severn, and Albany, entering 
Hudson’s Bay; the St. Lawrence, enter¬ 
ing the Atlantic; Mississippi and Rio 
del Norte, entering the Gulf of Mexico 
(all these being in N. America); the Mag¬ 
dalena, Orinoco, Amazon, Paranahiba, 
Rio de la Plata, Colorado, and Rio 
Negro, entering the Atlantic (all in S. 
America); and the Yukon, Fraser, Co¬ 
lumbia, San Joaquin, Sacramento, and 
Colorado, entering the Pacific. The 
rivers which flow into the Pacific, how¬ 
ever, owing to the fact that the great 
backbone of the continent, the Rocky 
Mountains and the Andes, lies so near 
the west coast, are of comparatively 
little importance, in S. America being 
all quite small. Sometimes rivers 
traversing the same plains, and nearly 
on the same levels, open communica¬ 
tions with each other, a remarkable in¬ 
stance being the Cassiquiari in S. Amer¬ 
ica, which, branching off from the Rio 
Negro and joining the Orinoco, forms a 
kind of natural canal, uniting the basins 
of the Orinoco and the Amazon. The 
Amazon or Maranon in S. America, the 
largest river in the world, has a course 
of about 3500 miles, and a basin of 
2,300,000 square miles; the Mississippi- 
Missouri, the largest river of North 
America, runs a longer course than the 
Amazon, but the area of its basin is not 
nearly so great. North America has the 
most extensive group of lakes in the 
world—Lakes Superior, Michigan, Hu¬ 
ron, Erie, and Ontario, which through 
the St. Lawrence send their drainage to 
the Atlantic. Thus by means of lakes 
and rivers the interior of both N. and S. 
America is opened up and made acces¬ 
sible. 

With regard to climate N. America 
naturally differs very much from S. 
America, and has more resemblance to 


the continents of Europe and Asia 
(regarded as a whole). In N. America, 
as in the older continent, the eastern 
arts are colder than the western, and 
ence the towns on the Atlantic coast 
have a winter temperature about 10° 
lower than those in corresponding lati¬ 
tudes of Europe. The winter tempera¬ 
ture of the geater part of N. America is 
indeed severe, though the intense cold 
is less felt on account of the dryness of 
the air. There is no regular season of 
rainfall unless in the south. Although 
two-thirds of S. America lies within the 
tropics the heat is not so great as might 
be expected, owing to the prevailing 
winds, the influences of the Andes, and 
other causes. The highest temperature 
experienced is probably not more than 
100° in the shade; at Rio de Janeiro the 
mean is about 74°, at Lima 72°. Over 
a great part of S. America there is a 
wet and dry season, varying in different 
regions; on the upper Amazon the rains 
last for ten months, being caused by the 
prevailing easterly winds bringing mois¬ 
ture from the Atlantic, which is con¬ 
densed on the eastern slopes of the 
Andes. In each of the Americas there 
is a region in which little or no rain falls; 
in N. America it extends over a part of 
the United States and northern Mexico, 
in S. America over a part of the coast 
region of Peru and Chile. 

America is rich in valuable minerals. 
It has supplied the world with immense 
quantities of gold and silver, which it 
still yields in no small amount, especially 
in the United States. It possesses inex¬ 
haustible stores of coal (U. States), with 
iron, copper, lead, tin, mercury, etc. 
Petroleum may be called one of its 
specialties, its petroleum wells having 
caused whole towns to spring into exist¬ 
ence. Diamonds and other precious 
stones are found. 

As regards vegetation America may 
be called a region of forests and verdure, 
vast tracts being covered by the grassy 
prairies, llanos, and pampas where the 
forests fail. In N. America the forests 
have been largely made use of by man; 
in S. America vast areas are covered with 
forests, which as yet are traversed only 
by the uncivilized Indian. In the north 
is the region of pines and firs; farther 
south come the deciduous trees, as the 
oak, beech, maple, elm, chestnut, etc. 
Then follow the evergreen forests of the 
tropical regions. The useful timber 
trees are very numerous; among the 
most characteristic of America are 
mahogany and other ornamental woods, 
and various dyewoods. In the tropical 
parts are numerous palms, cacti in 
great variety, and various species of the 
agave or American aloe. In the virgin 
forests of S. America the trees are often 
bound together into an impenetrable 
mass of vegetation by various kinds of 
climbing and twining plants. Among 
useful plants belonging to the American 
continent are maize, the potato, cacao, 
tobacco, cinchona, vanilla, Paraguay 
tea, etc. The most important plants 
introduced are wheat, rice, and other 
grains, sugar-cane, coffee, and cotton, 
with various fruits and vegetables. The 
vine is native to the continent, and both 
the American and introduced varieties 
are now largely cultivated. 


The animals of America include, 
among carnivora, the jaguar or Ameri¬ 
can tiger, found only in S. America; the 
puma or American lion, found mostly 
in S. America; the grizzly bear of N: 
America, fully as powerful an animal as 
either; the black bear, the skunk, the 
raccoon, the American or prairie-wolf, 
several species of fox, etc. The rodents 
are represented by the beaver, the por¬ 
cupine, and squirrels of several species; 
the marsupials by the opossum. Among 
ruminants are the bison, or, as it is com¬ 
monly called, the buffalo, the moose or 
elk, the Virginian stag, the musk-ox; 
and in S. America the llama (which 
takes the place of the camel of the Old 
World), the alpaca, and the vicufia. 
Other animals most distinctive of S. 
America are sloths, fitted to live only in 
its dense and boundless forests; ant- 
eaters and armadillos; monkeys with 
prehensile tails, in this and other respects 
differing from those of the Old World} 
the condor among the heights of the 
Andes, the nandu, rhea or three-toed 
ostrich, beautiful parrots and humming¬ 
birds. Among American reptiles are 
the boa-constrictor, the rattlesnake, the 
alligator or cayman, the iguana and 
other large lizards, large frogs and toads. 
The domestic animals of America, 
horses, cattle, and sheep, are of foreign 
origin. The electrical eel exists in the 
tropical waters. 

The population of America consists 
partly of an aboriginal race or races, 
partly of immigrants or their descend¬ 
ants. The aboriginal inhabitants are 
the American Indians or red men, being 
generally of a brownish-red color, and 
now forming a very small portion of 
the total population, especially in N. 
America, where the white population 
has almost exterminated them. These 
people are divided into branches, some 
of which have displayed a considerable 
aptitude for civilization. When the 
Europeans became acquainted with, the 
New World, Mexico, Central and part of 
S. America were inhabited by popula¬ 
tions which had made great advances 
in many things that pertain to civilized 
life, dwelling in large and well-built cities 
under a settled form of government, and 
practicing agriculture and the mechan¬ 
ical arts. Ever since the discovery of 
America at the close of the 15th 
century Europeans of all nations have 
crowded into it; and the comparatively 
feeble native races have rapidly dimin¬ 
ished, or lost their distinctive features 
by intermixtures with whites, and also 
with negroes brought from Africa to 
work as slaves. These mixed races are 
distinguished by a variety of names, as 
Mestizos, Mulattoes, Zambos, etc. In 
North America the white population is 
mainly of British origin, though to a 
considerable extent it also consists of 
Germans, Scandinavians, etc., and the 
descendants of such. In Central and 
South America the prevailing white 
nationality is the Spanish and Portu- 
ese. In the extreme North are the 
kimos—a scattered and stunted race 
closely allied to some of the peoples of 
northern Asia. That the aboriginal 
inhabitants of America passed over 
from Asia is tolerably certain, but when 
and from what part we do not know. 




AMERICAN INDIANS 


AMERICANISM 


The total population of the New World 
was estimated in 1900 at 135,000,000, 
of which perhaps 85,000,000 were whites, 
26,000,000 mixed races, 13,000,000 
negroes, and 11,000,000 Indians. As 
regards religion the bulk of the popula¬ 
tion of N. America is Protestant; of 
Central and S. America the religion is 
almost exclusively Roman Catholic. 
Several millions of the Indians are 
heathens.—The independent states of 
America are all republican in form of 
government, Brazil having become a 
republic in 1889. See North America, 
Central America, South America, West 
Indies, etc. 

The merit of first unlocking the 
American continent to modern Europe 
belongs to the Genoese navigator Chris¬ 
topher Columbus, who discovered, in 
October, 1492, one of the Bahamas, and 
named it San Salvador. Europeans, 
however, had on different former occa¬ 
sions discovered the American coasts, 
and the coasts of Massachusetts and 
Rhode Island were visited by Northmen 
and named Vinland in the year 1000. 
Still these discoveries had no influence 
on the enterprise of Columbus, and can¬ 
not detract in the least from his merit; 
they were forgotten, and had never been 
made known to the inhabitants of the 
rest of Europe. Though Columbus was 
the first of his time who set foot on the 
New World, it has taken its name not 
from him, but from Amerigo Vespucci. 
The mainland was first seen in 1497 by 
Sebastian Cabot, who sailed under the 
patronage of Henry VII. of England. 
For further particulars of discovery see 
North America and South America. 

The known history of America hardly 
goes beyond the period of its discovery 
by Columbus; but it possesses many 
monuments of antiquity that might take 
us many centuries backward, could we 
learn anything of their origin or of those 
by whom they were produced. Among 
such antiquities are great earthworks in 
the form of mounds, or of raised inclo¬ 
sures, crowning the tops of hills, river 
peninsulas, etc., and no doubt serving 
for defense. They inclose considerable 
areas, are surrounded by an exterior 
ditch, and by ramparts which are com¬ 
posed of mingled earth and stones, and 
are often of great extent in proportion to 
the area inclosed. They are always sup¬ 
plied either naturally or artificially with 
water, and give other indications of hav¬ 
ing been provided for a siege. Barrows 
and tumuli containing human bones, 
and which bear indications of having 
been used both as places of sepulture and 
as temples, are also numerous. They 
are in geometrical forms: circles, squares, 
parallelograms, etc. A mound on the 
plain of Cahokia in Illinois, opposite 
the city of St. Louis, is 700 feet long, 
500 feet broad, and 90 feet high. 
Another class of earth mounds represent 
gigantic animal forms in bas-relief on the 
ground. One is a man with two heads, 
the body 50 feet long and 25 feet broad 
across the breast; another represents a 
serpent 1000 feet in length, with grace¬ 
ful curves. The monuments of Mexico, 
Central America, and Peru are of a more 
advanced state of civilization, approach 
nearer to the historical period, and make 
the loss of authentic information more 


severely felt. Here there are numerous 
ruined towns with most elaborate sculp¬ 
tures, lofty pyramidal structures serving 
as temples or forts, statues, picture 
writing, hieroglyphics, roads, aque¬ 
ducts, bridges, etc. Some remarkable 
prehistoric remains discovered in recent 
years are what are known as the abodes 
of the ''cliff-dwellers.'’ These consist 
of habitations constructed on terraces 
and in caves high up the steep sides of 
canons in Colorado and other parts of 
the western states of N. America. Some 
of these buildings are several stories 
high. See also Mexico, Peru, etc. 
AMERICAN INDIANS. See Indians. 
AMERICANISM, a term, phrase, or 
idiom peculiar to the English language 
as spoken in America, and not forming 
part of the language as spoken in Eng¬ 
land. The following is a list of a few 
of the more noteworthy Americanisms: 
Approbate, to approve. 

Around or round, about or near. To 
hang around is to loiter about a place. 
Backwoods, the partially cleared forest 
regions in the western states. 

Bee, an assemblage of persons to unite 
their labors for the benefit of an in¬ 
dividual or family, or to carry out a 
joint scheme. 

Bogus, false, counterfeit. 

Boss, an employer or superintendent of 
laborers, a leader. 

Bug, a coleopterous insect, or what in 
England is called a beetle. 

Buggy, a four-wheeled vehicle. 

Bulldoze, to; to intimidate voters. 
Bunkum or buncombe, a speech made 
solely to please a constituency; talk 
for talking’s sake, and in an inflated 
style. 

Bureau, a chest of drawers; a dressing- 
table surmounted by a mirror. 
Calculate, to suppose, to believe, to think. 
Camp-meeting, a meeting held in the 
fields or woods for religious purposes, 
and where the assemblage encamp 
and remain several days. 

Cane-brake, a thicket of canes. 

Car, a carriage or wagon of a railway 
train. The Englishman “travels by 
rail” or “takes the train”; but the 
American takes or goes by the cars. 
Carpet-bagger, a needy political adven¬ 
turer who carries all his earthly goods 
in a carpet-bag. 

Caucus, a private meeting of the leading 
politicians of a party to agree upon the 
plans to be pursued in an approaching 
election. 

Chalk: a long chalk means a great dis¬ 
tance, a good deal. 

Chunk, a short thick piece of wood or any 
other material. 

Clever, good-natured, obliging. 

Cocktail, a stimulating drink made of 
brandy or gin mixed with sugar, and 
a very little water. 

Corn, maize; in England, wheat, or 
grain in general. 

Corn-husking, or corn-shucking, an 
occasion on which a farmer invites 
his neighbors to assist him in stripping 
the husks from his Indian corn. 
Cowhide, a whip made of twisted strips 
of rawhide. 

Creek, a small river or brook; not, as in 
England, a small arm of the sea. 
Cunning, small and pretty, nice, as it 
was such a cunning baby. 


Dander: to get one’s dander raised, to 
have one’s dander up, is to have been 
worked into a passion. 

Dead-heads, people who have free ad¬ 
mission to entertainments, or who 
have the use of public conveyances, 
or the like, free of charge. 

Depot, a railway station. 

Down east, in or into the New England 
States. A down-easter is a New Eng¬ 
lander. 

Drummer, a bagman or commercial 
traveler. 

Dry goods, a general term for such 
articles as are sold by linen-drapers, 
haberdashers, hosiers, etc. 

Dutch, the German language.—Dutch¬ 
man, a German. 

Fix, to; to put in order, to prepare, to 
adjust. To fix the hair, the table, the 
fire, is to dress the hair, lay the table, 
make up the fire. 

Fixings, arrangements, dress, embellish¬ 
ments, luggage, furniture, garnishings 
of any kind. 

Gerrymander, to arrange political divi¬ 
sions so that in an election one party 
may obtain an advantage over its 
opponent, even though the latter may 
possess a majority of votes in the state; 
from the deviser of such a scheme, 
named Gerry, governor of Massa¬ 
chusetts. 

Given name, a Christian name. 

Grit, courage, spirit, mettle. 

Guess, to; to believe, to suppose, to think, 
to fancy; also used emphatically, as 
“Joe, will you liquor up?” “I guess 
I will.” 

Gulch, a deep abrupt ravine, caused by 
the action of water. 

Happen in, to; to happen to come in or 

Help, a servant. 

High-falutin, inflated speech, bombast. 

Hoe-cake, a cake of Indian meal baked 
on a hoe or before the fire. 

Indian summer, the short season of 
pleasant weather usually occurring 
about the middle of November. 

Johnny Cake, a cake made of Indian 
corn meal mixed with milk or water 
and sometimes a little stewed pump¬ 
kin; the term is also applied to a New 
Englander. 

Julep, a drink composed of brandy or 
whisky with sugar, pounded ice, and 
some sprigs of mint. 

Loafer, a lounger, a vagabond. 

Log-rolling, the assembly of several 
parties of wood-cutters to help one of 
them in rolling their logs to the river 
after they are felled and trimmed; 
also employed in politics to signify 
a like system of mutual cooperation. 

Lot, a piece or division of land, an allot¬ 
ment. 

Lumber, timber sawed and split for use; 
as beams, joists, planks, staves, hoops, 
etc. 

Lynch law, an irregular species of justice 
executed by the populace or a mob, 
without legal authority or trail. 

Mail letters, to; to post letters. 

Make tracks, to; to run away. 

Mitten: to get the mitten is to meet with 
a refusal. 

Mizzle, to; to abscond, or run away. 

Mush, a kind of hasty-pudding. 

Muss, a state of confusion. 





AMERIGO VESPUCCI 


AMMON 


Notions, a term applied to every variety 
of smallwares. 

One-horse: a one-horse thing is a thing 
of no value or importance, a mean and 
trifling thing. 

Picaninny, a negro child. 

Pile, a quantity of money. 



Amerigo Vespucci. 


Planks, in a political sense, are the 
several principles which appertain 
to a party; platform is the collection 
of such principles. 

Reckon, to; to suppose, to think. 

Rile, to; to irritate, to drive into a 
passion. 

Rock, a stone of any size; a pebble; as 
to throw rocks at a dog. 

Rooster, the common domestic cock. 

Scalawag, a scamp, a scapegrace. 

Shanty, a mean structure such as squat¬ 
ters erect; a temporary hut. 

Skedaddle, to; to run away; a word 
introduced during the civil war. 

Skidoo, to get out. 

Smart, often used in the sense of con¬ 
siderable, a good deal, as a smart 
chance. 

Soft sawder, flattering, coaxing talk. 

Span of horses, two horses as nearly as 
possible alike, harnessed side by side. 

Spread-eagle style, a compound of exag¬ 
geration, bombast, mixed metaphor, 
etc. 

Spry, active. 

Stampede, the sudden flight of a crowd 
or number. 

Store, a shop, as a bookstore, a grocery 
store. 

Strike oil, to; to come upon petroleum: 
hence to make a lucky hit, especially 
financially. 

Stump speech, a bombastic speech cal¬ 
culated to please the popular ear, such 
speeches in newly-settled districts 
being often delivered from stumps 
of trees. 

Sun-up, sunset, sunrise. 

Tall, great, fine (used by Shakespeare 
pretty much in the same sense); tall 
talk is extravagant talk. 

Ticket: to vote the straight ticket is to 
vote for all the men or measures your 
party wishes. 

Truck, the small produce of gardens- 
truck patch, a plot in which the 
smaller fruits and vegetables are 
raised. 

Ugly, ill-tempered, vicious. 

Vamose, to; to run off (from the Span¬ 
ish vamos, let us go). 


Wilt, to; to fade, to decay, to droop, to 

wither. 

AMERIGO VESPUCCI (a-mer-e'go 
ves-pu'tche), a maritime discoverer, after 
whom America has been named; born, 
1451, at Florence, died, 1512, at Seville. 
In 1499 he coasted along the continent 
of America for several hundred leagues, 
and the publication of his narrative, 
while the prior discovery of Columbus 
was yet comparatively a secret, led to 
the giving of his name to the new con¬ 
tinent. 

AMES, Fisher, an American orator and 
congressman, born at Dedham, Mass., 
April 9, 1758. His efforts in favor of 
the Federal constitution in the Massa¬ 
chusetts convention of 1788 resulted in 
his election to congress, where he served 
for eight years. In his later years he 
served in the Massachusetts council, 
delivered a eulogy on Washington before 
the legislature, and produced a number 
of essays. In 1804 he declined the 
presidency of Harvard. He died July 
4, 1808. 

AMES, Nathan P., an American 
manufacturer, bom in Massachusetts in 
1803, died 1847. He was the owner of 
extensive cutlery and bronze works, 



and cast a number of well-known public 
monuments. 

AMES, Oaks, an American shovel 
manufacturer, railroad capitalist, and 
western pioneer. He was one of the 
builders of the Southern Pacific rail¬ 
road, was a member of congress from 
Massachusetts, and filled other public 
offices. Mr. Ames was born in 1804, 
and died in 1873. 

AMES, Oliver, American statesman, 
son of Oaks Ames. He was born in 
Massachusetts in 1831, died in 1895. 
He succeeded to his father’s immense 
weath. In 1886 he was elected governor 
of Massachusetts, and was twice re¬ 
elected. 

AMETAB'OLA, a division of insects, 
including only the apterous or wingless 
insects, as lice, spring-tails, etc., which 
do not undergo any metamorphosis, but 
which escape from the egg nearly under 
the same form which they preserve 
through life. 


AM'ETHYST, a violet-blue or purple 
variety of quartz, generally occurring 
crystallized in hexahedral prisms or 
pyramids, also in rolled fragments, com- 

f osed of imperfect prismatic cystals. 

t is wrought into various articles of 
jewelry. The oriental amethyst is a 
rare violet-colored gem, a variety of 
alumina or corundum, of much brilliance 
and beauty. 

AMHERST (am'erst), a seaport of 
Lower Burmah, 31 miles south of 
Moulmein, a health resort of Europeans. 
Pop. 5000.—The district of Amherst 
has an area of 15,189 sq. .miles; pop. 
301,086. 

AMHERST, Jeffery, Lord, bom 1717, 
died 1797; distinguished British gen¬ 
eral who fought at Dettingen and 
Fontenoy, and commanded in America, 
where he took Louisburg, Ticonderoga, 
and Quebec, and restored the British 
prestige in Canada. He was raised to the 
peerage, became commander-in-chief, 
and ultimately field-marshal. 

AMHERST, William Pitt, first earl, 
nephew of the above; Governor-general 
of India, 1823; prosecuted the first 
Burmese war, and suppressed the Bar- 
rackpore mutiny. Born 1773, died 1857. 

AMICE (am'is), an oblong piece of 
linen with an embroidered apparel 
sewed upon it, worn under the alb by 
priests of the R. Cath. Church when 
engaged in the service of the mass. 

AMIENS (a-me-an), a town of France, 
capital of the department of Somme, 
on the railway from Boulogne to Paris. 
Having water communication with the 
sea by the Somme, which is navigable 
for small vessels, it has a large trade and 
numerous important manufactures, es¬ 
pecially cottons and woolens. It was 
taken by the Germans in 1870. Pop. 
90,038.—The Peace of Amiens, con¬ 
cluded between Great Britain, France, 
Spain, and the Batavian Republic, 
March 27, 1802, put an end for a time 
to the great war which had lasted since 
1793. 

AMMERGAU (am'er-gou), a district 
in Upper Bavaria, having its center in 
the villages of Ober and Unter Ammer- 
gau. The former village is famous on 
account of the Passion Play which is 
performed there, at intervals usually 
of ten years. 



Ammon. 


AM'MON, an ancient Egyptian diety, 
one of the chief gods of the country, 
identified by the Greeks with their 
supreme god Zeus, while the Romans 
regarded him as the representative of 









AMMONIA 


AMPHIPODA 


Jupiter; represented as a ram, as a 
human being with a ram’s head, or 
simply with the horns of a ram. There 
was a celebrated temple of Ammon in 
the Oasis of Siwah in the Libyan desert. 

AMMO'NIA, an alkaline substance, 
which differs from the other alkalies by 
being gaseous, and is hence sometimes 
called the volatile alkali. It is a color¬ 
less pungent gas, composed of nitrogen 
and hydrogen. It was first procured in 
that state by Priestley, who termed it 
alkaline air. He obtained it from sal- 
ammoniac by the action of lime, by 
which method it is yet generally pre- 
ared. It is used for many purposes, 
oth in medicine and scientific chem¬ 
istry; not, however, in the gaseous state, 
but frequently in solution in water, 
under the names of liquid ammonia, 
aqueous ammonia, or spirits of harts¬ 
horn. It may be procured naturally 
from putrescent animal substances; 
artificially it is chiefly got from the dis¬ 
tillation of coal and of refuse animal 
substances, such as bones, clippings and 
shavings of horn, hoof, etc. It may also 
be obtained from vegetable matter 
when nitrogen is one of its elements. 
Sal-ammoniac is the chloride of am¬ 
monium. 

AMMONI'ACUM, a gum-resinous ex¬ 
udation from an umbelliferous plant. 
It has a fetid smell, is inflammable, 
soluble in water and spirit of wine; 
used as an antispasmodic, stimulant, 
and expectorant in chronic catarrh, 
bronchitic affections, and asthma; also 
used for plasters. 

AM'MONITE, a fossil Cephalopod, 
belonging to the genus Ammonites, 
allied to the Nautilus, having a many- 
chambered shell, in shape like the 


Ammonites. 

curved horns on the ancient statues of 
Jupiter Ammon; characteristic of the 
Trias, Lias, and Oolite formations, and 
sometimes found in immense numbers 
and of great size. 

AM'MONITES, a Semitic race fre¬ 
quently mentioned in Scripture, de¬ 
scended from Ben-Ammi, the son of Lot 
(Gen. xix. 38), often spoken of in con¬ 
junction with the Moabites. A preda¬ 
tory and Bedouin race, they inhabited 
the desert country east of Gad, their 
chief city being Rabbath-Ammon (Phil¬ 
adelphia). Wars between the Israelites 
and the Ammonites were frequent; 
they were overcome by Jephthah, Saul, 
David, Uzziah, Jotham, etc. They 
appear to have existed as a distinct 
people in the time of Justin Martyr, but 
have subsequently become merged in 
the aggregate of nameless Arab tribes.- 

AMMO'NIUM, the name given to the 
hypothetical base of ammonia, analo¬ 
gous to a metal as potassium. It has 
not been isolated, but it is believed to 
exist in an amalgam with mercury. 

P. E.—4 


AMMUNITION, military stores gen¬ 
erally; in modern usage confined to the 
articles used in the discharge of firearms 
and ordnance of all kinds, as powder, 
balls, shells, various kinds of shot, etc. 

AM'NESTY, the releasing of a number 
of persons who have been guilty of 
political offenses from the consequence 
of these offenses. 

AMCE'BA, a microscopic genus of 
rhizopodous Protozoa, common in fresh¬ 
water ponds and ditches. It exists as a 
mass of protoplasm, and pushes its body 


Amoeba, or fresh-water proteus, showing 
some of the shapes which it assumes. 

out into finger-like processes or pseudo¬ 
podia, and by means of these moves 
about or grasps particles of food. There 
is no distinct mouth, and food is en¬ 
gulfed within any portion of the soft sar- 
code body. Reproduction takes place 
by fission, or by a single pseudopodium 
detaching itself from the parent body 
and developing into a separate amoeba. 

AMONTILLA'DO, a dry kind of sherry 
wine of a light color, highly esteemed. 

AMOO-DARIA, a Russian territory 
of central Asia, on the east of the Amoo 
and southeast of the Sea of Aral; area, 
40,000 sq. miles; pop. 220,000. 

AMOOR', or AMUR', one of the largest 
rivers of eastern Asia, formed by the 
junction of the rivers Shilka and Argun; 
flows first in a southeastern and then in 
a northeastern direction till it falls into 
an arm of the Sea of Okhotsk, opposite 
the island of Saghalien, after a course of 
1500 miles. It forms, for a large portion 
of its course, part of the boundary-line 
between the Russian and the Chinese 
dominions, and is navigable throughout 
for four months in the year.—Amoor 
Territory. In 1858 Russia acquired 
from China the territory on the left 
bank of the Upper and Middle Amoor, 
together with that on both banks of the 
Lower Amoor. The western portion of 
the territory was organized as a separate 
province, with the name of the Amoor 
(area, 173,559 sq. miles; pop. 87,700). 
The eastern portion was joined to the 
Maritime Province of eastern Siberia. 

AM'ORITES, a powerful Canaanitish 
tribe at the time of the occupation of the 
country by the Israelites; occupied the 
whole of Gilead and Bashan, and formed 
two powerful kingdoms—a northern, 
under Og, who is called king of Bashan; 
and a southern, under Sihon, called king 
of the Amorites; first attacked and over¬ 
thrown by Joshua; subsequently sub¬ 
dued, and made tributary or driven to 
mingle with the Philistines and other 
remnants of the Canaanitish nations. 

AMORPHOUS ROCKS or MINERALS, 
those having no regular structure, or 






without crystallization, even in the 
minutest particles. 

AMORPHOZO'A, a term applied to 
some of the lower groups of animals, as 
the sponges and their allies, which have 
no regular symmetrical structure. 

AMOY', an important Chinese tra¬ 
ding port, on asmall island off the south¬ 
east coast opposite Formosa; has a safe 
and commodious harbor, and its mer¬ 
chants are among the wealthiest and 
most enterprising in China; one of the 
five ports opened to British commerce 
in 1843, now open to all countries. Pop. 
95,600. 

AMPERE (an-par), Andr4-Marie, a 
celebrated French mathematician and 
philosopher, founder of the science of 
electrodynamics, born at Lyons in 1775, 
died at Marseilles in 1836. What is 
known as Ampdre’s Theory is that mag¬ 
netism consists in the existence of elec¬ 
tric currents circulating round the par¬ 
ticles of magnetic bodies, being in differ¬ 
ent directions round different particles 
when the bodies are unmagnetized, but 
all in the same direction when they are 
magnetized. 

AMPHIB'IA, a class of vertebrate ani¬ 
mals, which in their early life breathe by 
gills or branchiae, and afterward partly 
or entirely by lungs. The Frog, breath¬ 
ing in its tadpole state by gills and after¬ 
ward throwing off these organs and 
breathing entirely by lungs in its adult 
state, is an example of the latter phase 
of amphibian existence. The Proteus of 
the underground caves of central 
Europe exemplifies forms in which 
the gills of early life are retained 
throughout life, and in which lungs 
are developed in addition to the gills. 
A second character of this group con¬ 
sists in the presence of two occipital 
“condyles,” or processes by means of 



Amphipoda.—1, Shore-jumper; 2, Portion 
showing the respiratory organs a a a. 

which the skull articulates with the 
spine or vertebral column; Reptiles 
possessing one condyle only. The class 
is divided into four orders: the Ophio- 
morpha (or serpentiform), represented 
by the Blind-worms, in which limbs are 
wanting and the body is snake-like; the 
Urodela or “Tailed” Amphibians, in¬ 
cluding the Newts, Proteus, Siren, etc.g 
the Anoura, or Tailless Amphibia, repre¬ 
sented by the Frogs and Toads; and the 
Labyrinthodontia, which includes the 
extinct forms known as Labyrintho- 
dons. 

AMPHI'ON, in Greek mythology, son 
of Zeus and Antiope, and husband of 
Niobe; had miraculous skill in music, 
being taught by Mercury, or, according 
to others, by Apollo. In poetic legend 
he is said to have availed himself of his 
skill when building the walls of Thebes— 
the stones moving and arranging them¬ 
selves in proper position at the sound 
of his lyre. 

AMPHIP'ODA, an order of sessile¬ 
eyed crustaceans, with feet directed 





AMPHIPROSTYLE 


AMYL 


partly forward and partly backward. 
Many species are found in springs and 
rivulets, others in salt water. The sand- 
hopper and shore-jumper are examples. 

AMPHIP'ROSTYLE, in architecture, 
eaid of a structure having the form of an 
ancient Greek or Roman oblong rec¬ 
tangular temple, with a prostyle or 
portico on each of its ends or fronts, but 
with no columns on its sides or flanks. 

AMPHISBAi'NA, a genus of serpenti- 
form, limbless, lacertilian reptiles; body 
cylindrical, destitute of scales, and 
divided into numerous annular seg¬ 
ments; the tail obtuse, and scarcely to 
be distinguished from the head, whence 
the belief that it moved equally well 
with either end foremost. There are 
several species, found in tropical Amer¬ 
ica. They feed on ants and earthworms, 
and were formerly, but erroneously, 
deemed poisonous. 

AMPHITHE'ATER, an ancient Ro¬ 
man edifice of an oval form without a 
roof, having a central area (the arena) 
encompassed with rows of seats, rising 
higher as they receded from the center, 
on which people used to sit to view the 
combats of gladiators and of wild beasts, 
and other sports. The Colosseum at 
Rome is the largest of all the ancient 
amphitheaters, being capable of con¬ 
taining from 50,000 to 80,000 persons. 
That at Verona is one of the best ex¬ 
amples remaining. Its dimensions are 
502 feet by 401, and 98 feet high. The 
name means “both-ways theater,” or 
“theater all round,” the theater form¬ 
ing only a semicircular edifice. 

AMPHITRI'TE, in Greek mythology, 
daughter of Oce&nus and Tethys, or of 
Nereus and Doris, and wife of Poseidon 
(or Neptune), represented as drawn in a 
chariot of shells by Tritons, with a tri¬ 
dent in her hand. 

AMPHIU'MA, a genus of amphibians 
which frequent the lakes and stagnant 
waters of North America. The adults 
retain the clefts at which the gills of the 
tadpole projected. 

AM'PHORA, a vessel used by the 
Greeks and Romans for holding liquids ; 
commonly tall and narrow, with two 
handles and a pointed end which fitted 



Filling an amphora. 


into a stand or was stuck in the ground 
to enable them to stand upright; used 
also as a cinerary urn, and as a liquid 
measure. 

AM'PLITUDE, in astronomy, the dis¬ 
tance of any celestial body (when re¬ 
ferred by a secondary circle to the hori¬ 
zon) from the east or west points. 

AMPUL'LA, in antiquity, a vessel 
bellying out like a jug, that contained 


unguents for the bath; also a vessel for 
dr inkin g at table. The ampulla has 
also been employed for ceremonial pur¬ 
poses, such as holding the oil or chrism 
used in various church rites and for 


Another canal, the North Holland Canal 
(46 m. long, 20 ft. deep), connects 
Amsterdam with the Helder. Between 
the harbor and the Zuider-zee the Y is 
now crossed by a great dam in which are 



Amsterdam—Scene on the Amstel. 


anointing monarchs at their coronation. 
The ampulla of the English sovereigns 
now in use is an eagle, weighing about 
10 oz., of the purest chased gold, which 
passed through various hands to the 
Black Prince. 

AMPUTATION, in surgery, that oper¬ 
ation by which a member is separated 
from the body according to the rules of 
the science. 

AM'RITSIR, or AMRITSAR, a flour¬ 
ishing commercial town of Hindu¬ 
stan, capital of a district of the same 
name, in the Punjab, the principal place 
of the religious worship of the Sikhs. 
It has considerable manufactures of 
shawls and silks; and receives its name 
from the sacred pond constructed by 
Ram Das, the apostle of the Sikhs, in 
which the Sikhs and other Hindus im¬ 
merse themselves that they may be 
purified from all sin. Pop. 162,429.— 
The district of Amritsir has an area of 
1601 miles. Pop. 992,697. 

AM'STERDAM, one of the chief com- 
merical cities of Europe, capital of Hol¬ 
land (but not the residence of the king), 
situated at the confluence of the Amstel 
with the Y or Ij (pronounced as eye), an 
arm of the Zuider-zee. On account of 
the lowness of the site of the city the 
greater part of it is built on piles. It is 
divided by numerous canals into about 
90 islands, which are connected by 
nearly 300 bridges. Many of the streets 
have a canal in the middle with broad 
brick-paved quays on either side, planted 
with rows of trees'; the houses are gen- 
ally of brick, many of them six or seven 
stories high, with pointed gables turned 
to the streets. Among its numerous 
industries may be mentioned as a spe¬ 
cialty the cutting and polishing of dia¬ 
monds. The harbor, formed by the Y, 
lies along the whole of the north side of 
the city, and is surrounded by various 
docks and basins. The trade is very 
great, being much facilitated by the 
great ship-canal (15 m. long, 22-26 ft. 
deep, constructed 1865-76) which con¬ 
nects the Y directly with the North Sea. 


locks to admit vessels and regulate the 
amount of water in the North Sea Canal. 
During the 17th and 18th centuries 
Amsterdam was one of the wealthiest 
and most flourishing cities in the world. 
Its forced alliance with France ruined 
its trade, but since 1813 its commerce 
has revived. Pop. 520,602. 

AMSTERDAM, a town of New York 
state, U. S., on the Mohawk river, 33 
miles [n.w. of Albany; a busy manufac¬ 
turing town. Pop. 23,000. 

AM'ULET, a piece of stone, metal, etc., 
marked with certain figures or charac¬ 
ters, which people in some countries 
wear about them, superstitiously deem¬ 
ing them a protection against diseases 
and enchantments. 

AMUR'. See Amoor. 



AMYG'DALOID, a term applied to an 
igneous rock, especially trap, containing 
round or almond-shaped vesicles or 
cavities partly or wholly filled with 
crystalline nodules of various minerals, 
particularly calcareous spar, quartz, 
agate, zeolite, chlorite, etc. 

AM'YL, in chemistry, a hypothetic 
radical believed to exist in many com¬ 
pounds, especially the fusel-oil series. 






































AMYLENE 


ANALYSIS 


and having the formula C 5 H 11 .—Amyl 
Nitrite, or Nitrite of Amyl, an amber- 
colored fluid, smelling and tasting like 
essence of pears, which has been em¬ 
ployed as an anaesthetic and also in 
relieving cardiac distress, as in angina 
pectoris. 

AM'YLENE, an ethereal liquid with 
an aromatic odor, prepared from fusel- 
oil. It possesses anaesthetic properties, 
and has been tried as a substitute for 
chloroform, but is very dangerous. 

AMYL'IC ALCOHOL, one of the prod¬ 
ucts of the fermentation of grain, etc., 
commonly known by the name of fusel- 
oil (which see). 

AMYRIDA'CEjE, a natural order of 
plants, consisting of tropical trees or 
shrubs, the leaves, bark, and fruit of 
which abound in fragrant resinous and 
balsamic juices. Myrrh, frankincense, 
and the gum-elemi of commerce are 
among their products. 

ANABAPTISTS, a name given to a 
Christian sect by their adversaries, be¬ 
cause, as they objected to infant bap¬ 
tism, they rebaptized those who joined 
their body. The founder of the sect 
appears to have been Nicolas Storch, 
a disciple of Luther’s, who seems to 
have aimed also at the reorganization 
of society based on civil and political 
equality. The application of the term 
Anabaptist to the general body of 
Baptists throughout the world is unwar¬ 
ranted, because these sects have nothing 
in common with the bodies which sprung 
up in various countries of Europe during 
the Reformation, except the practice of 
adult baptism. The Baptists them¬ 
selves repudiate the name Anabaptist, 
as they claim to baptize according to 
the original institution of the rite, and 
never repeat baptism in the case of those 
who in their opinion have been so 
baptized. 

ANAB'ASIS, the Greek title of Xeno¬ 
phon’s celebrated account of the expedi¬ 
tion of Cyrus the Younger against his 
brother Artaxerxes, king of Persia. 
The title is also given to Arrian’s work 
which records the campaigns of Alex¬ 
ander the Great. 

AN'ABLEPS, a genus of fishes of the 
perch family, found in the rivers of 
Guiana, consisting of but one species, 
remarkable for a peculiar structure of 



Anableps. 


the eyes, in which there is a division of 
the iris and cornea, by transverse liga¬ 
ments forming two pupils, and making 
the whole eye appear double. The 
young are brought forth alive. 

ANACANTHI'NI, an order of osseous 
fishes, including the cod, plaice, etc., 
with spineless fins, cycloid or ctenoid 
scales, the ventral fins either absent or 
below the pectorals, and ductless swim- 
bladder. 

ANACH'RONISM, an error of chronol- 
ogy by which things are represented 
as coexisting which did not coexist; 
applied also to anything foreign to or 
out of keeping with a specified time. 


Thus it is an anachronism when Shake¬ 
speare, in Troilus and Cressida, makes 
Hector quote Aristotle. 

ANACON'DA, the popular name of 
two of the largest species of the serpent 
tribe, viz., a Ceylonese species of the 
genus Python, said to have been met 
with 33 feet long; and a native of 
tropical America, allied to the boa-con¬ 
strictor, and the largest of the serpent 
tribe, attaining the length of 40 feet. 
They frequent swamps and rivers, are 
destitute of poison fangs, and kill their 
victims by constriction. 

ANACONDA, a city and county seat 
of Deer Lodge Co., Mont., 27 miles west 
by north of Butte, on the Northern 
Pacific, the Great Northern, and the 
Butte, Anaconda and Pacific railroads. 
The city is noted for its great copper- 
smelting works, which are among the 
largest in the world, having a daily 
capacity of some 5500 tons of ore. 
Railroad shops, foundries, machine 
shops, and brick works further repre¬ 
sent the industrial interests. Pop. 
12 , 000 . 

ANTE'MI A, a medical term applied to 
an unhealthy condition of the body, in 
which there is a diminution of the red 
corpuscles which the blood should con¬ 
tain. The principal symptoms are pale¬ 
ness and general want of color in the 
skin, languor, emaciation, want of appe¬ 
tite, fainting, palpitation, etc. 

ANTESTHET'ICS, medical agents em¬ 
ployed for the removal of pain, especially 
in surgical operations, by suspending 
sensibility either locally or generally. 
Various agents have been employed for 
both of these purposes from the earliest 
times, but the scientific use of anaes¬ 
thetics may be said to date from 1800, 
when Sir Humphry Davy made experi¬ 
ments on the anaesthetic properties of 
nitrous oxide, and recommended its use 
in surgery. In 1818 Faraday established 
the anaesthetic properties of sulphuric 
ether, but this agent made no advance 
beyond the region of experiment, till 
1844, when Dr. Wells, a dentist of 
Hartford, Connecticut, applied the 
inhalation of sulphuric ether in the 
extraction of teeth, but owing to some 
misadventure did not persevere with 
it. The example was followed in 1846 
by Dr. Morton, a Boston dentist, who 
also extended the use of ether to other 
surgical operations. The practice was 
soon after introduced into England by 
Mr. Liston, and a London dentist, 
Mr. Robinson. A few weeks later Sir 
James Simpson made the first applica¬ 
tion of ether in a case of midwifery. 
This was early in 1847. Toward the end 
of the same year Simpson had his 
attention called to the anaesthetic 
efficacy of chloroform, and announced 
it as a superior agent to ether. This 
agent has since been the most exten¬ 
sively used anaesthetic, though the use 
of ether still largely prevails in the 
United States. In their general effects 
ether and chloroform are very similar; 
but the latter tends to enfeeble the 
action of the heart more readily than 
the former. For this reason great 
caution has to be used in administering 
chloroform where there is weak heart 
action from disease. Local anaesthesia 
is produced by isolating the part of the 


body to be operated upon, and produc¬ 
ing insensibility of the nerves in that 
locality. Dr. Richardson’s method is 
to apply the spray of ether, which, by 
its rapid evaporation, chills and freezes 
the tissues and produces complete 
anaesthesia. This mode of treatment, 
besides its use in minor surgical oper¬ 
ations, has recently begun to have 
important remedial applications. A 
valuable local anaesthetic now employed 
is cocaine. 

AN'AGRAM, the transposition of the 
letters of a word or words so as to form 
a new word or phrase, a connection in 
meaning being frequently preserved; 
thus, evil, vile; Horatio Nelson, Honor 
est a Nilo (honor is from the Nile). 

AN'ALOGUE, in comparative anat¬ 
omy, an organ in one species or group 
having the same function as an organ 
of different structure in another species 
or group, as the wing of a bird and that 
of an insect, both serving for flight. 
Organs in different animals having a 
similar anatomical structure, develop¬ 
ment, and relative position, independent 
of function or form, such as the arm 
of a man and the wing of a bird, are 
termed homologues. 

ANAL'OGY is the mode of reason¬ 
ing from resemblance to resemblance. 
When we find on attentive examination 
resemblances in objects apparently 
diverse, and in which at first no such 
resemblances were discovered, a pre¬ 
sumption arises that other resemblances 
may be found by further examination 
in these or other objects likewise 
apparently diverse. It is on the belief 
in a unity in nature that all inferences 
from analogy rest. The general infer¬ 
ence from analogy is always perfectly 
valid. Wherever there is resemblance, 
similarity or identity of cause somewhere 
may be justly inferred; but to infer 
the particular cause without particular 
proof is always to reason falsely. Anal¬ 
ogy is of great use and constant applica¬ 
tion in science, in philosophy, and in the 
common business of life. 

ANAL'YSIS, the resolution of an 
object, whether of the senses or the intel¬ 
lect, into its component elements. In 
philosophy it is the mode of resolving a 
compound idea into its simple parts, in 
order to consider them more distinctly, 
and arrive at a more precise knowledge 
of the whole. It is opposed to synthesis, 
by which we combine and class our per¬ 
ceptions, and contrive expressions for 
our thoughts, so as to represent their 
several divisions, classes, and relations. 

Analysis, in mathematics, is, in the 
widest sense, the expression and develop¬ 
ment of the functions of quantities by 
calculation; in a narrower sense the 
resolving of problems by algebraic 
equations. The analysis of the ancients 
was exhibited only in geometry, and 
made use only of geometrical assistance, 
whereby it is distinguished from the 
analysis of the moderns, which extends 
to all measurable objects, and expresses 
in equations the mutual dependence of 
magnitudes. Analysis is divided into 
lower and higher, the lower comprising, 
besides arithmetic and algebra, the doc¬ 
trines of functions, of series, combina¬ 
tions, logarithms, and curves, the higher 
comprising the differential and in- 






ANAM 


ANAXIMENES 


tegral calculus, and the calculus of 
variations. 

In chemistry, analysis is the process of 
decomposing a compound substance 
with a view to determine either (a) what 
elements it contains (qualitative analy¬ 
sis), or (b) how much of each element is 
resent (quantitative analysis). Thus 
y the first process we learn that water 
is a compound of hydrogen and oxygen, 
and by the second that it consists of one 
part of hydrogen by weight to eight parts 
of oxygen. 

ANAM', a country of Asia occupying 
the e. side of the Southeastern or Indo- 
Chinese Peninsula, along the China Sea, 
having a length of about 850 miles, with 
a breadth varying from over 400 miles 
in the n. to 100 in the middle. It is 
composed of three parts: Tonquin in 
the n.; Cochin-China in the s.; and the 
territory of the Laos tribes, s.w. of Ton¬ 
quin (together, area, 170,000 square 
miles, pop. 15,000,000, 9,000,000 being 
in Tonquin). 

AN'ANAS. See Pineapple. 

AN'ARCHISTS, a revolutionary sect 
or body setting forth as the social ideal 
the extreme form of individual freedom, 
and holding that all government is in¬ 
jurious and immoral, that the destruc¬ 
tion of every social form now existing 
must be the first step to the creation of 
a new world. Their recognition as an 
independent sect may be dated from the 
secession of Bakunin and his followers 
from the Social Democrats at the con¬ 
gress of the Hague in 1872, since which 
they have maintained an active propa¬ 
ganda. Their principal journals have 
been La volte (Paris), the Freiheit 
(New York), Liberty (Boston), and the 
Anarchist (London). The congress at 
London in 1881 decided that all means 
were justifiable as against the organized 
forces of modern society. 

Much disputation arises from the con¬ 
fusion of anarchists with nihilists and 
with socialists. On the other hand, 
philosophical anarchism is confounded 
with revolutionary anarchism. Anar¬ 
chists of the latter type have during the 
past 25 years assassinated, or attempted 
to assassinate, numerous rulers or heads 
of government, but in every case they 
have paid the death penalty for the deed. 
The most notable anarchistic demonstra¬ 
tion was that of the Haymarket Square 
riot of Chicago on May 4, 1886, in which 
7 policemen were killed and 60 wounded. 
Philosophical anarchism does not coun¬ 
tenance the use of violence, but holds 
that human society will eventually 
evolve into a state in which there will be 
no need of any kind of government. Its 
foremost apostle was Herbert Spencer. 

ANARTHROP'ODA, one of the two 
great divisions (the Arthropoda being 
the other) of the Annulosa, or ringed 
animals, in which there are no articulated 
appendages. It includes the leeches, 
earthworms, tubeworms, etc. 

A'NAS, a genus of web-footed birds, 
containing the true ducks. 

ANATH'EMA, originally a gift hung 
up in a temple and dedicated to some 
god, a votive offering; but it gradually 
came to be used for expulsion, curse. 
The Roman Catholic Church pronounces 
the sentence of anathema against heretics, 
schismatics, and all who wilfully pursue 


a course of conduct condemned by the 
church. The subject of the anathema 
is declared an outcast from the church, 
all the failthful are forbidden to associate 
with him, and utter destruction is 
denounced against him, both body and 
soul. 

ANATTDA2, a family of swimming 
birds, including the ducks, swans, geese, 
etc. 

ANAT'OMY, in the literal sense, 
means simply a cutting up, but is now 
generally applied both to the art of dis¬ 
secting or artificially separating the 
different parts of an organized body 
(vegetable or animal) with a view to 
discover their situation, structure, and 
economy; and to the science which treats 
of the internal structure of organized 
bodies. The branch which treats of the 
structure of plants is called vegetable 
anatomy or phytotomy, and that which 
treats of the structure of animals animal 
anatomy or zootomy, a special branch 
of the latter being human anatomy or 
anthropotomy. Comparative anatomy 
is the science which compares the 
anatomy of different classes or species 
of animals, as that of man with quad¬ 
rupeds, or that of quadrupeds with 
fishes; while special anatomy treats of 
the construction, form, and structure of 
parts in a single animal. The special 
anatomy of an animal may be studied 
from various standpoints: with relation 
to the succession of forms which it 
exhibits from its first stage to its adult 
form (developmental or embryotical 
anatomy), with reference to the general 
properties and structure of the tissues or 
textures (general anatomy, histology), 
with reference to the changes in structure 
of organs or parts produced by disease 
and congenital malformations (morbid 
or pathological anatomy), or with refer¬ 
ence to the function, use, or purpose 
performed by the organs or parts (teleo¬ 
logical or physiological anatomy). Ac¬ 
cording to the parts of the body described 
the different divisions of human anatomy 
receive different names; as, osteology, 
the description of the bones; myology, 
of the muscles; desmology, of the liga¬ 
ments and sinews; splanchnology, of the 
viscera or internal organs, in which are 
reckoned the lungs, stomach, and intes¬ 
tines, the liver, spleen, kidneys, bladder, 
pancreas, etc. Angiology describes the 
vessels through which the liquids in the 
body are conducted, including the blood¬ 
vessels, which are divided into arteries 
and veins, and the lymphatic vessels, 
some of which absorb matters from the 
bowels, while others are distributed 
through the whole body, collecting 
juices from the tissues and carrying 
them back into the blood. Neurology 
describes the system of the nerves and 
of the brain; dermatology treats of the 
skin. 

Among the ancient writers or author¬ 
ities on human anatomy may be men¬ 
tioned Hippocrates the younger (460- 
377 B.c.), Aristotle (384-322 B.c.), 
Herophilus and Erasistratus of Alex¬ 
andria (fl. about 300 b.c.), Celsus (53 
b.c.-37 a.d.), and Galen of Pergamus 
(140-200), the most celebrated of all 
the ancient authorities on the science. 
From his time till the revival of learn¬ 
ing in Europe in the 14th century 


anatomy was checked in its progress. 
In 1315 Mondino, professor at Bologna, 
first publicly performed dissection, and 
published a System of Anatomy, which 
was a text-book in the schools of Italy 
for about 200 years. In the 16th cen¬ 
tury Fallopio of Padua, Eustachi of 
Venice, Vesalius of Brussels, Varoli of 
Bologna, and many others, enriched 
anatomy with new discoveries. In the 
17th century Harvey discovered the 
circulation of the blood, Asellius dis¬ 
covered the manner in which the nutri¬ 
tious part of the food is conveyed into 
the circulation, while the lymphatic sys¬ 
tem was detected and described by the 
Dane T. Bartoline. Among the renowned 
anatomists of later times we can only 
mention Malpighi, Boerhaave, William 
and John Hunter, the younger Meckel, 
Bichat, Rosenmiiller, Quain, Sir A. 
Cooper, Sir C. Bell, Carus, Joh. Miiller, 
Hackel, Gegenbaur, Owen, and Huxley. 

ANAXAG'ORAS, an ancient Greek 
philosopher of the Ionic school, born at 
Clazomense, in Ionia, probably about 
500 b.c. When only about twenty 
years of age he settled at Athens, and 
soon gained a high reputation, and 
gathered round him a circle of renowned 
pupils, including Pericles, Euripides, 
Socrates, etc. At the age of fifty he was 
publicly charged with impiety and con¬ 
demned to death, but the sentence was 
commuted to perpetual banishment. 
He thereupon went to Lampsacus, where 
he died about 428. Anaxagoras be¬ 
longed to the atomic school of Ionic 
philosophers. He held that there was 
an infinite number of different kinds of 
elementary atoms, and that these, in 
themselves motionless and originally 
existing in a state of chaos, were put in 
motion by an eternal, immaterial, 
spiritual, elementary being, Nous (In¬ 
telligence), from which motion the 
world was produced. The stars were, 
according to him, of earthy materials; 
the sun a glowing mass, about as large 
as the Peloponnesus; the earth was flat; 
the moon a dark, inhabitable body, re¬ 
ceiving its light from the sun; the comets 
wandering stars. 

ANAXEMAN'DER, an ancient Greek 
(Ionic) philosopher, was born at Miletus 
in 611 b.c., and died 547. The funda¬ 
mental principle of his philosophy is 
that the source of all things is an unde¬ 
fined substance infinite in quantity. 
The firmament is composed of heat and 
cold, the stars of air and fire. The sun 
occupies the highest place in the heavens, 
has a circumference twenty-eight times 
larger than the earth, and resembles a 
cylinder, from which streams of fire 
issue. The moon is likewise a cylinder, 
nineteen times larger than the earth. 
The earth has the shape of a cylinder, 
and is placed in the midst of the uni¬ 
verse, where it remains suspended. 
Anaximander occupied himself a great 
deal with mathematics and geography. 
To him is credited the invention of 
geographical maps and the first applica¬ 
tion of the gnomon or style fixed on a 
horizontal plane to determine the sol¬ 
stices and equinoxes. 

ANAXIMENES (an-aks-im'e-nez) OF 
MILETUS, an ancient Greek philoso¬ 
pher, according to whom air was the 
first principle of all things. Finite things 




ANCHOR 


ANDES 


■were formed from the infinite air by 
compression and rarefaction produced 
by eternally existent motion; and heat 
and cold resulted from varying degrees 
of density of the primal element. He 
flourished about 550 b.c. 

AN'CHOR, an implement for holding 
a ship or other vessel at rest in the water. 
In ancient times large stones or crooked 
pieces of wood heavily weighted with 
metal were used for this purpose. The 



Anchor. 


anchor now used is of iron, formed with 
a strong shank, at one extremity of 
which is the crown, from which branch 
out two arms, terminating in broad 
palms or flukes, the sharp extremity of 
which is the peak or bill; at the other 
end of the shank is the stock (fixed at 
right angles to the plane of the arms), 
behind which is the ring, to which a 
cable can be attached. The principal 
use of the stock is to cause the arms to 
fall so as one of the flukes shall enter the 
ground. 

AN'CHORITES, in the early church 
a class of religious persons who generally 
passed their lives in cells, from which 
they never removed. Their habitations 
were, in many instances, entirely sepa¬ 
rated from the abodes of other men, 
sometimes in the depth of wildernesses, 
in pits or caverns; at other times several 
of these individuals fixed their habita¬ 
tions in the vicinity of each other, but 
they always lived personally separate. 
The continual prevalence of bloody 
wars, civil commotions, and persecu¬ 
tions at the beginning of the Christian 
era must have made retirement and 
religious meditation agreeable to men 
of quiet and contemplative minds. This 
spirit, however, as might have been 
expected, soon led to fanatical excesses; 
many anchorites went without proper 
clothing, wore heavy chains, and we 
find at the close of the 4th century 
Simeon Stylites passing thirty years on 
the top of a column without ever de¬ 
scending from it, and finally dying there. 
In Egypt and Syria, where Christianity 
became blended with the Grecian philos¬ 
ophy and strongly tinged with the 
peculiar notions of the East, the anchor¬ 
ites were most numerous; in Europe 
there were comparatively few, and on 
the development and establishment of 
the monastic system they completely 
disappeared. 

ANCHOVY (an-cho'vi), a small fish 
of the Herring family. The common 
anchovy, so esteemed for its rich and 
peculiar flavor, is not much larger than 
the middle finger. It is caught in vast 
numbers in the Mediterranean, and fre¬ 
quently on the coasts of France, Hol¬ 
land, and the south of England, and 
pickled for exportation. A favorite 
6auce is made by pounding the pickled 
fish in water, simmering for a short 
time, adding a little cayenne pepper, 
and straining the whole through a hair- 
sieve. 


ANCO'NA, a seaport of Italy, capital 
of the province of the same name, on the 
Adriatic, 130 miles n.e. of Rome, with 
harbor works begun by Trajan, who 
built the ancient mole or quay. A 
triumphal arch of white marble, erected 
in honor of Trajan, stands on the mole. 
The harbor, once the finest on the coast, 
has been recently improved; Ancona is 
now a station of the Italian fleet, and 
the commerce is increasing. The town 
is indifferently built, but has some re¬ 
markable edifices; among others, the 
cathedral. There is a colossal statue of 
Count Cavour. Pop. 56,825.—The prov¬ 
ince has an area of 740 square miles, and 
a population of 302,460. 

ANDALU'SIA, a large and fertile dis¬ 
trict in the south of Spain, bounded n. 
by Estramadura and New Castile, e. by 
Murcia, s. by the Mediterranean Sea, 
and w. by Portugal and the Atlantic; 
area, about 33,650 sq. miles, including 
the modern provinces of Seville, Huelva, 
Cadiz, Jaen, Cordova, Granada, Al- 
meria, and Malaga. It is traversed 
throughout its whole extent by ranges 
of mountains, the loftiest being the 
Sierra Nevada, many summits of which 
are covered with perpetual snow (Mula- 
hacen is 11,678 feet). Minerals abound, 
and several mines have been opened by 
English companies, especially in the 
province of Huelva, where the Tharsis 
and Rio Tinto copper-mines are situ¬ 
ated. The principal river is the Guadal¬ 
quivir. The vine, myrtle, olive, palm, 
banana, carob, etc., grow abundantly 
in the valley of the Guadalquivir. 
Wheat, maize, barley, and many vari¬ 
eties of fruit grow almost spontane¬ 
ously; besides which honey, silk, and 
cochineal form important articles of 
culture. The horses and mules are the 
best in the Peninsula; the bulls are 
sought for bull-fighting over all Spain; 
sheep are reared in vast numbers. 
Agriculture is in a backward state, and 
the manufactures are by no means 
extensive. The Andalusians are de¬ 
scended in part from the Moors, of 
whom they still preserve decided char¬ 
acteristics. Pop. 3,282,448. 

AN'DAMANS, a chain of islands on 
the east side of the Bay of Bengal, the 

rincipal being the North, Middle, 

outh, and Little Andamans. Middle 
Andaman is about 60 miles long, and 
15 or 16 miles broad; North and 
South Andaman are each about 50 miles 
long. The inhabitants are about 
10,000 in number, and are mostly in a 
state of nature, living almost naked in 
the rudest habitations. They are small, 
generally much less than 5 feet, well- 
formed, and active, skilful archers and 
canoeists, and excellent swimmers and 
divers. These islands have been used 
since 1858 as a penal settlement by the 
Indian government, the settlement 
being at Port Blair, on South Anadman. 

ANDANTE (an-dan'ta), in music, 
denotes a movement somewhat slow, 
graceful, distinct, and soothing. The 
word is also applied substantively to 
that part of a sonata or symphony 
having a movement of this character. 

AN'DERSEN, Hans Christian, a Da¬ 
nish novelist, poet, and writer of fairy 
tales, was born of poor parents at 
Odense, 2d April, 1805. In 1835 ap 


peared the first volume of his Fairy 
Tales, of which successive volumes con¬ 
tinued to be published year by year at 
Christmas, and which have been the 
most popular and wide-spread of his 
works. He died 4th August, 1875, 
having had the pleasure of seeing many 
of his works translated into most of 
the European languages. 

ANDERSEN, Mary Antoinette, an 
American actress, born at Sacramento, 
Cal., in 1859, but reared in Kentucky. 
Educated in convents of the Roman 
Catholic Church, of which church she 
is a devout member. She made her 
debut as Juliet at Louisville in 1875. 
Her first visit to the East was made in 
1877, and her success there was im¬ 
mediate. In 1884-5 she visited London 
and was well received. Her principal 
roles were Rosalind in As You Like It, 
Julia in The Hunchback, Meg Merri- 
lies, Perdita in Winter’s Tale, Evadne, 
and Juliet. In 1890 she was married to 
Antonio Navarro de Viana and has since 
her marriage resided in England. 

AN'DERSON, a city and railroad 
center, the county seat of Madison Co., 
Ind., 36 miles northeast of Indianapolis, 
on the west fork of the White River, 
and the Chicago and Southeastern, 
the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and 
St. Louis, and other railroads. An 
abundant supply of natural gas pro¬ 
motes the manufacturing industries, 
which include iron, steel, glass, wire 
nails, strawboards, tiles, etc. The city 
is the center of an extensive system of 
interurban electric railways. Near the 
city are the historic mounds of the so- 
called “mound builders.” Pop. 23,000. 

ANDERSON, Rasmus Bjorn, an Amer¬ 
ican author and diplomat, born in 
Wisconsin in 1846. From 1875 to 1883 
he taught Scandinavian languages and 
literature in the University of Wis¬ 
consin and from 1885 to 1889 was 
U. S. minister to Denmark. He has 
published several works on Scandi¬ 
navian subjects. 

ANDERSON, Robert, a Scotch author, 
born in 1750, died 1830. His prin¬ 
cipal work is a comprehensive com¬ 
pilation of the British poets. 

ANDES (an'dez), or, as they are called 
in Spanish South America, Cordilleras 
de los Andes, or simply Cordilleras, a 
range of mountains stretching along the 
whole of the west coast of South Amer¬ 
ica, from Cape Horn to the Isthmus of 
Panama and the Caribbean Sea. In ab¬ 
solute length (4500 miles) no single 
chain of mountains approaches the 
Andes, and only a certain number of 
the higher peaks of the Himalayan 
chain rise higher above the sea-level; 
which peak is the highest of all is not 
yet settled. Several main sections of 
this huge chain are distinguishable. 
The Southern Andes present a lofty 
main chain, with a minor chain running 
parallel to it on the east, reaching from 
Tierra del Fuego and the Straits of 
Magellan, northward to about lat. 28° s., 
and rising in Aconcagua to a height of 
22,860 feet. North of this is the double 
chain of the Central Andes, inclosing 
the wide and lofty plateaux of Bolivia 
and Peru, which lie at an elevation of 
more than 12,000 feet above the sea. 
The mountain system is here at its 






ANDIRON 


ANDROMEDA 


broadest, being about 500 miles across. 
Here are also several very lofty peaks, as 
Illampu or Sorata (21,484 feet), Sahama 
(21,054), Illimani (21,024). Farther 
north the outer and inner ranges draw 
closer together, and in Ecuador there 
is but a single system of elevated masses, 
generally described as forming two 
parallel chains. In this section are 
crowded together a number of lofty 
peaks, most of them volcanoes, either 
extinct or active. Of the latter class are 
Pichincha (15,918 feet), with a crater 
2500 feet deep; Tunguragua (16,685 
feet); Sangay (17,460 feet); and 
Cotopaxi (19,550 feet). The loftiest 
summit here appears to be Chimborazo 
(20,581 feet); others are Antisana 
(19,260 feet) and Cayambe (19,200 feet). 
Northward of this section the Andes 
break into three distinct ranges, the 
eastmost running northeastward into 
Venezuela, the westmost running north¬ 
westward to the Isthmus of Panama. 
In the central range is the volcano of 
Tolima (17,660 feet). The western 
slope of the Andes is generally exceed¬ 
ingly steep, the eastern much less so, 
the mountains sinking gradually to the 
plains. The whole range gives evidence 
of volcanic action, but it consists almost 
entirely of sedimentary rocks. Thus 
mountains may be found rising to the 
height of over 20,000 feet, and fossilif- 
erous to their summits (as Illimani and 
Sorata or Illampu). There are about 
thirty volcanoes in a state of activity. 
The loftiest of these burning mountains 
seems to be Gualateiri, in Peru (21,960 
feet). The heights of the others vary 
from 13,000 to 20,000 feet. All the 
districts of the Andes system have 
suffered severely from earthquakes, 
towns having been either destroyed or 
greatly injured by these visitations. 
Peaks crowned with perpetual snow are 
seen all along the range, and glaciers 
are also met with, more especially 
from Aconcagua southward. The 
passes are generally at a great height, 
the most important being from 10,000 
to 15,000 feet. Railways have been con¬ 
structed to cross the chain at a similar 
elevation. The Andes are extremely 
rich in the precious metals, gold, silver, 
copper, platinum, mercury, and tin all 
being wrought: lead and iron are also 
found. The llama and its congeners— 
the guanaco, vicuna, and alpaca—are 
characteristic of the Andes. Among 
birds, the condor is the most remarkable. 
The vegetation necessarily varies much 
according to elevation, latitude, rain¬ 
fall, etc., but generally is rich and varied. 
Except in the south and north little 
rain falls on the western side of the 
range, and in the center there is a con¬ 
siderable desert area. On the east side 
the rainfall is heavy in the equatorial 
regions, but in the south is very scanty 
or altogether deficient. From the 
Andes rise two of the largest water sys¬ 
tems of the world—the Amazon and 
its affluents, and the La Plata and its 
affluents. Besides which, in the north, 
from its slopes flow the Magdalena to 
the Caribbean Sea, and some tributaries 
to the Orinoco. The mountain chain 
pressing so close upon the Pacific 
Ocean, no streams of importance flow 
from its western slopes. The number 


of lakes is not great; the largest and 
most important is that of Titicaca on 
the Bolivian plateau. In the Andes 
are towns at a greater elevation than 
anywhere else in the world, the high¬ 
est being the silver mining town of 
Cerro de Pasco (14,270 feet), the next 
being Potosi. 

ANDIRON (and'i-ern), a horizontal 
iron bar raised on short legs, with an 
upright standard at one end, used to 
support pieces of wood when burning 
in an open hearth, one andiron being 
placed on each side of the hearth. 

AN'DOVER, a town in Massachusetts, 
25 miles n.n.w. of Boston, chiefly 
remarkable for its literary institutions— 
Phillip’s Academy, founded in 1778; 
the Andover Theological Seminary, 
founded in 1807; and a female academy 
founded in 1829. Pop. 6142. 

ANDRASSY (an-dra'she), Count Ju¬ 
lius, Hungarian statesman, born 1823; 
took part in the revolution of 1848, was 
condemned to death, but escaped and 
went into exile; appointed premier when 
self-government was restored to Hun¬ 
gary in 1867; became imperial minis¬ 
ter for foreign affairs in 1871; retired 
from public life 1879; died 1890. 

ANDRE (an'dra), Major John, ad¬ 
jutant-general in the British army dur¬ 
ing the American revolutionary war. 
Employed to negotiate the defection of 
the American general Arnold, and the 
delivery of the works at West Point, he 



Major Andrf. 


was apprehended in disguise, September 
23, 1780, within the American lines; 
declared a spy from the enemy, and 
hanged Oct. 2, 1780. His remains were 
taken to England in 1821 and interred 
in Westminster Abbey, where a monu¬ 
ment has been erected to his memory. 

AN'DREW, John Albion, governor of 
Massachusetts during the civil war. He 
was born in Maine in 1818, and became 
a lawyer in Boston. Having been 
elected governor in 1860, he perfected a 
state militia, so that when the war broke 
out Massachusetts was entirely prepared 
for the call. He retired in 1866, after 
being reelected for each succeeding term, 
and he died in 1867. 

AN'DREW, St., brother of St. Peter, 
and the first disciple whom Christ chose. 
He is said to have preached in Scythia, 
in Thrace and Asia Minor, and in 
Achaia (Greece), and according to tra¬ 
dition he was crucified at Patrse, now 
Patras, in Achaia, on a cross of the form 
X- Hence such a cross is now known 
as a St. Andrew’s cross. The Russians 


revere him as the apostle who brought 
the gospel to them; the Scots, as the 
patron saint of their country. The day 
dedicated to him is the 30th of Novem¬ 
ber. The Russian order of St. Andrew, 
the highest of the empire, was instituted 
by Peter the Great in 1698. For the 
Scottish Knights of St. Andrew or the 
Thistle, see Thistle. 

ANDREWS, Elisha Benjamin, an 
educator and present chancellor of the 
University of Nebraska. Born in New 
Hampshire, in 1844, be fought on the 
Union side during the civil war. He was 
educated at Brown University and at 
Newton Theological Institution, and, 
after teaching in numerous schools, 
Cornell University among them, he 
became president of Brown in 1889. In 
1898 he resigned because of the hostility 
he aroused by his advocacy of free silver, 
and, after two years’ service as superin¬ 
tendent of schools in Chicago, he was 
appointed to the chancellorship of the 
University of Nebraska. He is the 
author of several text-books. 

AN'DREWS, St., an ancient city and 
parliamentaiy burgh in Fifeshire, Scot¬ 
land, 31 miles northeast from Edin¬ 
burgh ; was erected into a royal burgh by 
David I. in 1140, and after having been 
an episcopal, became an archiepiscopal 
see in 1472, and was for long the ecclesi¬ 
astical capital of Scotland. The cathe¬ 
dral, now in ruins, was begun about 
1160, and took 157 years to finish. 
The old castle, founded about 1200, and 
rebuilt in the 14th century, is also an 
almost shapeless ruin. In it James III. 
was born and Cardinal Beaton assassi¬ 
nated, and in front of it George Wishart 
was burned. The University of St. 
Andrews, the oldest of the Scotch uni¬ 
versities, founded in 1411, consists of 
the united colleges of St. Salvator and 
St. Leonard and the college of St. Mary, 
both at St. Andrews, and embraces also 
University College, Dundee. In 1579 
the colleges of St. Salvator and St. 
Leonard were restricted to the teaching 
of arts and medicine, and that of St. 
Mary to theology. In 1747 the two 
former colleges were united by act of 
parliament. University College, Dun¬ 
dee, was founded in 1880. Pop. 7621. 

AN'DREWS, William Draper, an 
American inventor, born in Massachu¬ 
setts in 1818, died in 1896. He invented 
the centrifugal pump in 1844, and sub¬ 
sequently improved upon it, securing 
numerous patents, from which he de¬ 
rived a large revenue. 

AN'DRIA, a town of South Italy, 
province of Bari, with a fine cathedral, 
founded in 1046; the church of Sant’ 
Agostino, with a beautiful pointed 
Gothic portal; a college; manufactures of 
majolica, and a good trade. Pop. 37,192. 

ANDROMACHE (an-drom'a-ke), in 
Greek mythology, wife of Hector, one of 
the most attractive female characters of 
Homer’s Iliad. The passage describing 
her parting with Hector when he was 
setting out to his last battle is well 
knowm and much admired. Euripides 
and Racine have made her the chief 
character of tragedies. 

ANDROM'EDA, in Greek mythology, 
daughter of the Ethiopian king Cepheus 
and of Cassiopeia. Cassiopeia having 
boasted that her daughter surpassed the 






ANDRONICUS 


ANGLE 


Nereids, if not Hera (Juno) herself, in 
beauty, the offended goddesses prevailed 
on their father, Poseidon (Neptune), to 
afflict the country with a horrid sea- 
monster, which threatened universal 
destruction. To appease the offended 
od, Andromeda was chained to a rock, 
ut was rescued by Perseus; and after 
death was changed into a constellation. 

ANDRONI'CUS, the name of four 
emperors of Constantinople: ANDRONI¬ 
CUS I., Comnenus, born 1110, murdered 
1185.—ANDRONICUS II., Palseologus, 
born 1258, died 1332. His reign is cel¬ 
ebrated for the invasion of the Turks. 
—ANDRONICUS III., Palseologus the 
Younger, born 1296, died 1341.—AN¬ 
DRONICUS IV., Palseologus, reigned 
in the absence of John IV. In 1373 he 
gave way to his brother Manuel, and died 
a monk. 

ANDROS ISLANDS, a group of isles 
belonging to the Bahamas, lying south¬ 
west of New Providence, not far from 
the east entrance to the Gulf of Florida. 
The passages through them are danger¬ 
ous. 

AN'ECDOTE, originally some particu¬ 
lar relative to a subject not noticed in 
previous works on that subject; now 
any particular or detached incident or 
fact of an interesting nature; a single 
passage of private life. 

ANELEC'TRODE, the positive pole 
of a galvanic batteiy. 

ANEMOM'ETER, an instrument for 
measuring the force and velocity of the 
wind. This force is usually measured 
by the pressure of the wind upon a 
square plate attached to one end of a 



spiral spring (with its axis horizontal), 
which yields more or less according to 
the force of the wind, and transmits its 
motion to a pencil which leaves a trace 
upon paper moved by clockwork. For 
indicating the velocity of the wind, the 
instrument which has yielded the best 
results consists of four hemispherical 
cups A attached to the ends of equal 
horizontal arms, forming a horizontal 
cross which turns freely about a vertical 
axis B, which is strengthened and sup¬ 
ported at C. By means of an endless 
screw D carried by the axis a train of 
wheel-work is set in motion; and the 
indication is given by a hand which 
moves round a dial; or in some instru¬ 
ments by several hands moving round 
different dials like those of a gas- 
meter. It is found that the center of 
each cup moves with a velocity which is 
almost exactly one-third of that of the 
wind. There are various other forms 
of instruments, one of which is portable, 
and is especially intended for measuring 
the velocity of currents of air passing 
through mines, and the ventilating 
spaces of hospitals and other public 
buildings. The direction of the wind 


as indicated by a vane can also be made 
to leave a continuous record by various 
contrivances; one of the most common 
being a pinion carried by the shaft of a 
vane, and driving a rack which carries 
a pencil. 

ANEM'ONE, wind-flower, a genus of 
plants belonging to the Buttercup family, 
containing many species, found in tem¬ 
perate regions. 

ANEM'ONE, Sea. See Sea-anemone. 

ANEROID BAROMETER. See Ba¬ 
rometer. 

AN'EURISM, the dilatation or expan¬ 
sion of some part of an artery. Aneur¬ 
isms arise partly from the too violent 
motion of the blood, and partly from 
degenerative changes occurring in the 
coats of the artery diminishing their 
elasticity. They are therefore more 
frequent in the great branches; in par¬ 
ticular, in the vicinity of the heart, in the 
arch of the aorta, and in the extremities, 
where the arteries are exposed to fre¬ 
quent injuries by stretching, violent 
bodily exertions, thrusts, falls, and con¬ 
tusions. An internal aneurism may 
burst and cause death. 

ANGEL, one of those spiritual intel¬ 
ligences who are regarded as dwelling in 
heaven and employed as the ministers 
or agents of God. To these the name 
of good angels is sometimes given, to 
distinguish them from bad angels, who 
were originally created to occupy the 
same blissful abode, but lost it by rebel¬ 
lion. Scripture frequently speaks of 
angels, but with great reserve, Michael 
and Gabriel alone being mentioned by 
name in the canonical books, while 
Raphael is mentioned in the Apocrypha. 
The angels are represented in Scripture 
as in the most elevated state of intel¬ 
ligence, purity, and bliss, ever doing the 
will of God so perfectly that we can seek 
for nothing higher or better than to aim 
at being like them. There are indica¬ 
tions of a diversity of rank and power 
among them, and something like angelic 
orders. They are represented as fre¬ 
quently taking part in communications 
made from heaven to earth, as directly 
and actively ministering to the good of 
believers, and shielding or delivering 
them from evils incident to their earthly 
lot. That every person has a good and 
a bad angel attendant on him was an 
early belief, and is held to some extent 
yet. Roman Catholics show a certain 
veneration or worship to angels, and beg 
their prayers and their kind offices; 
Protestants consider this unlawful. 

ANGEL-FISH, a fish nearly allied to 
the sharks, very ugly and voracious, 
preying on other fish. It is from 6 to 8 
feet long, and takes its name from its 
pectoral fins, which are very large, ex¬ 
tending horizontally like wings when 
spread. This fish connects the rays 
with the sharks, but it differs from both 
in having its mouth placed at the ex¬ 
tremity of the head. It is common on 
the south coasts of Britain, and is also 
called Monk-fish and Fiddle-fish. 

ANGELICO (an-jel'i-ko), Fra, the 
common appellation of Fra Giovanni da 
Fiesole, one of the most celebrated of the 
early Italian painters. Born 1387, he 
entered the Dominican order in 1407, 
and was employed by Cosmo de Medici 
in painting the monastery of St. Mark 


and the church of St. Annunziata with 
frescos. These pictures gained him so 
much celebrity that Nicholas V. in¬ 
vited him to Rome, to ornament his 
private chapel in the Vatican, and 
offered him the archbishopric of Flor¬ 
ence, which was declined. He died at 
Rome 1455. 

ANGELO (an'je-lo), Michael. See 
Buonarotti. 

AN'GELUS, in the Rom. Cath. Church, 
a short form of prayer in honor of the 
incarnation, consisting mainly of versicles 
and responses, the angelic salutation 
three times repeated, and a collect, so 
named from the word with which it 
commences, “Angelus Domini” (Angel 
of the Lord). Hence, also, the bell 
tolled in the morning, at noon, and in the 
evening to indicate the time when the 
angelus is to be recited. 

ANGER, an emotion of an aggressive, 
destructive, or vindictive character 
against the thing or person causing it. 
According to Bain the emotion is pleas¬ 
ant (except where it is introduced by 
too great a shock, or where the con¬ 
sciousness of moral obliquity counter¬ 
acts the pleasantness) and develops by 
an expansion—both mental and physical 
—of the individual. As the agent of 
justice, the angered person acquires an 
amount of self-esteem, which is reflected 
in a tendency to muscular activity, deep¬ 
ened respiration, and aggressive pos¬ 
tures. On the other hand, when anger 
is complicated by the emotions of fear, 
hatred, envy, or jealousy, or when it 
is baffled, it acquires a different char¬ 
acter. It then becomes unpleasantly 
toned, is accompanied by choking and 
stuffiness, trembling and weakness, and 
a loss of muscular force. But even in 
anger which is intrinsically unpleasant, 
a successful termination of the attempt 
to injure the object of the emotion 
brings a moment of satisfaction and 
pleasure, as in the humiliation of a 
rival. 

ANGERS (an-zha), a town and river- 
port of France, capital of the depart¬ 
ment of Maine-et-Loire, and formerly of 
the province of Anjou, on the banks of 
the Maine, 5£ miles from the Loire, 150 
miles southwest of Paris. In the neigh¬ 
borhood are immense slate quarries. 
Pop. 82,966. 

ANGINA PECTORIS (an-ji'na pek'to- 
ris), or HEART-SPASM, a disease char¬ 
acterized by an extremely acute con¬ 
striction, felt generally in the lower part 
of the sternum, and extending along the 
whole side of the chest and into the cor¬ 
responding arm, a sense of suffocation, 
faintness, and apprehension of approach¬ 
ing death: seldom experienced by any 
but those with organic heart-disease. 
The disease rarely occurs before middle 
age and is more frequent in men than in 
women. Those liable to attack must 
lead a quiet, temperate life, avoiding all 
scenes which would unduly rouse their 
emotions. The first attack is occasion¬ 
ally fatal, but usually death occurs as 
the result of repeated seizures. The 
paroxism may be relieved by opiates, or 
the inhalation, under due precaution, of 
anaesthetic vapors. 

ANGLE, the point where two lines 
meet, or the meeting of two lines in a 
point. A plane rectilineal angle is 










ANGLER 


ANILISM 


formed by two straight lines which meet 
each other, but are not in the same 
straight line; it may be considered the 
degree of opening or divergence of the 
two straight lines which thus meet 
each other. A right angle is an angle 
formed by a straight line falling on an¬ 
other perpendicularly, or an angle 
which is measured by an arc of 90 
degrees. When a straight line, as A B 
(fig. 1), standing on another straight line 
C D, makes the two angles ABC and 



A B D equal to each other, each of 
these angles is called a right angle. 
An acute angle is that which is less than 
a right angle, as E B C. An obtuse 
angle is that which is greater than a 
right angle, as E B D. Acute and obtuse 
angles are both called oblique, in oppo¬ 
sition to right angles. Exterior or 
external angles, the angles of any rec¬ 
tilineal figure without it, made by pro¬ 
ducing the sides; thus, if the sides A B, 
B C, C A of the triangle ABC (fig. 2) be 
produced to the points F D E, the 
angles CBF, ACD, BAE are called 
exterior or external angles. A solid 
angle is that which is made by more than 
two plane angles meeting in one point 
and not lying in the same plane, as 
the angle of a cube. A spherical angle 
is an angle on the surface of a sphere, 
contained between the arcs of two 
great circles which intersect each other. 

ANGLER, also from its habits and 
appearance called Fishing-frog and Sea- 
devil, a remarkable fish often found on 
the British coasts. It is from 3 to 5 
feet long; the head is very wide, de¬ 
pressed, with protuberances, and bear¬ 
ing long separate movable tendrils; the. 
mouth is capacious, and armed with 
formidable teeth. Its voracity is 
extreme, and it is said to lie concealed in 
the mud, and attract the smaller fishes 
within its reach by gently waving the 
filamentous appendages on its head. 

ANGLES, a Low German tribe who 
in the earliest historical period had 
their seats in the district about Angeln, 
in the duchy of Sleswig, and who in the 
5th century and subsequently crossed 
over to Britain along with bands of 
Saxons and Jutes (and probably Frisians 
also), and colonized a great part of 
what from them has received the name 
of England, as well as a portion of the 
Lowlands of Scotland. The Angles 
formed the largest body among the 
Germanic settlers in Britain, and 
founded the three kingdoms of East 
Anglia, Mercia, and Northumbria. 

ANGLESEY (ang'gl-se), an island and 
county of North Wales, in the Irish Sea, 
separated from the mainland by the 
Menai Strait; 20 miles long and 17 
miles broad; area, 193,511 acres. The 
Menai Strait is crossed by a magnificent 
euspension.bridge, 580 feet between the 
piers and 100 feet above high-water 


mark, and also by the great Britannia 
Tubular Railway Bridge. Pop. 50,590. 

ANGLICAN CHURCH, a term which 
strictly embraces only the Church of 
England and the Protestant episcopal 
churches in Ireland, Scotland, and the 
colonies, but is sometimes used to in¬ 
clude also the episcopal churches of the 
United States. The doctrines of the 
Anglican Church are laid down in the 
Thirty-nine Articles, and its ritual is 
contained in the Book of Common 
Prayer. Within the body there is room 
for considerable latitude of belief and 
doctrine, and three sections are some¬ 
times spoken of by the names of the 
High Church, Low Church, and Broad 
Church. 

ANGLING, the art of catching fish 
with a hook or angle baited with worms, 
small fish, flies, etc. 

ANGLOMA'NIA, the manner which 
affects to imitate the English. Anglo¬ 
mania has been common in Europe 
many times during the past three or 
four centuries. It was raging in France 
reviously to the revolution, and has 
een very fashionable in Germany. 
In the United States Anglomania has 
had its exemplars from time out of 
mind. Today, especially in Boston 
and New York, and in less degree in the 
cities of the middle west and west, an 
English manner and English accent are 
regarded as the very best form. 

ANGLO-SAXONS, the name common¬ 
ly given to the nation or people formed 
by the amalgamation of the Angles, 
Saxons, and Jutes, who settled in 
Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries 
after Christ, the Anglo-Saxons being 
simply the English people of the earlier 
period of English history. The tribes 
who were thus the ancestors of the bulk 
of the English-speaking nationalities 
came from north Germany, where they 
inhabited the parts about the mouths 
of the Elbe and Weser, and the first 
body of them who gained a footing in 
Britain are said to have landed in 449, 
and to have been led by Hengist and 
Horsa. From the preponderance of the 
Angles the whole country came to be 
called Engla-land, that is, the land of 
the Angles or English. 

ANGO'LA, a Portuguese territory in 
western Africa, south of the Congo, the 
name being applied sometimes to the 
whole Portuguese territory here from 
about lat. 6° s. tolat. 17° s. (area, 300,- 
000 sq. m.; pop. 2,000,000). The prin¬ 
cipal town is the seaport of St. Paul de 
Loanda, which was long the great Por¬ 
tuguese slave-mart. Exports ivory, 
palm-oil, coffee, hides, gum, wax, etc. 
Pop. 600,000. 

ANGO'RA, a town in the interior of 
Asiatic Turkey, 215 miles e.s.e. of Con¬ 
stantinople. All the animals of this 
region are long-haired, especially the 
goats (see Goat), sheep, and cats. 
This hair forms an important export 
as well as the fabric called camlet here 
manufactured from it; other exports 
being goats’ skins, dye-stuffs, gums, 
honey and Wax, etc. A railway con¬ 
nects it with Skutari. Pop. 35,000. 

ANGORA CAT, the large and long¬ 
haired white variety of the common 
cat, said to belong originally to An¬ 
gora. 


ANGORA GOAT, a variety of the com¬ 
mon goat with long silky hair. See 
Goat. 

ANGOSTURA BARK, the aromatic 
bitter medicinal bark obtained chiefly 



Angostura-bark tree. 


from a tree of 10 to 20 feet high, grow¬ 
ing in the northern regions of South 
America. The bark is valuable as a 
tonic and febrifuge, and is also used for 
a kind of bitters. 

ANGOULEME (an-go-lam), an ancient 
town of western France, capital of dep. 
Charente, on the Charente, 60 miles 
n.n.e. of Bordeaux, on the summit of a 
rocky hill. There are manufactures of 
paper, woolens, linens, distilleries, sugar- 
works, tanneries, etc. Pop. 34,647. 

AN'HALT, a duchy of North Ger¬ 
many, lying partly in the plains of the 
Middle Elbe, and partly in the valleys 
and uplands of the Lower Harz, and 
almost entirely surrounded by Prussia; 
area, 906 sq. miles; pop. 316,027, almost 
all Protestants. The chief towns are 
Dessau, Bernburg, Kothen, and Zerbst. 

ANTLINE, a substance which has 
recently become of great importance, 
as being the basis of a number of bril¬ 
liant and durable dyes. It is found in 
small quantities in coal tar, but the 
aniline of commerce is obtained from 
benzene or benzole, a constituent of 
coal-tar, consisting of hydrogen and 
carbon. Benzene, when acted on by 
nitric acid, produces nitrobenzene; 
and this substance again, when treated 
with nascent hydrogen, generally pro¬ 
duced by the action of acetic acid upon 
iron-filings or scraps, produces aniline. 
It is a colorless oily liquid, somewhat 
heavier than water, with a peculiar 
vinous smell, and a burning taste. When 
acted on by arsenious acid, bichromate 
of potassium, stannic chloride, etc., 
aniline produces a great variety of 
compounds, many of which are pos¬ 
sessed of very beautiful colors, and are 
known by the names of aniline purple, 
aniline green, roseine, violine, bleu de 
Paris, magenta, etc. 

AN'ILISM, aniline poisoning, a name 
given to the aggregate of symptoms 
which often show themselves in those 
employed in aniline works, resulting 
from the inhalation of aniline vapors. 
It may be either acute or chronic. In 
a slight attack of the former kind, the 
lips, cheeks, and ears become of a bluish 
color, and the person’s walk may be 
unsteady; in severe cases there is loss 
of consciousness. Chronic anilism is 
accompanied by derangement of the 
digestive organs and of the nervous 








ANIMAL 


ANNA COMNENA 


system, headaches, eruptions on the 
skin, muscular weakness, etc. 

ANIMAL, an organized and sentient 
living being. Life in the earlier periods 
of natural history was attributed almost 
exclusively to animals. With the prog¬ 
ress of science, however, it was extended 
to plants. In the case of the higher 
animals and plants there is no difficulty 
in assigning the individual to one of 
the two great kingdoms of organic 
nature, but in their lowest manifesta¬ 
tions the vegetable and animal king¬ 
doms are brought into such immediate 
contact that it becomes almost impossi¬ 
ble to assign them precise limits and 
to say with certainty where the one 
begins and the other ends. From form 
no absolute distinction can be fixed 
between animals and plants. Many 
animals, such as the sea-shrubs, sea- 
mats, etc., so resemble plants in exter¬ 
nal appearance that they were, and 
even yet popularly are, looked upon 
as such. With regard to internal struc¬ 
ture no line of demarkation can be laid 
down, all plants and animals being, in 
this respect, fundamentally similar; 
that is, alike composed of molecular, 
cellular, and fibrous tissues. Neither 
are the chemical characters of animal 
and vegetable substances more distinct. 
Animals contain in their tissues and 
fluids a larger proportion of nitrogen 
than plants, while plants are richer 
in carbonaceous compounds than the 
former. In some animals, moreover, 
substances almost exclusively confined 
to plants are found. Thus the outer 
wall of Sea-squirts contains cellulose, a 
substance largely found in plant-tissues; 
while chlorophyll, the coloring-matter 
of plants, occurs in Hydria and many 
other lower animals. Power of motion, 
again, though broadly distinctive of 
animals, cannot be said to be absolutely 
characteristic of them. Thus many 
animals, as oysters, sponges, corals, etc., 
in their mature condition are rooted 
or fixed, while the embryos of many 
plants, together with numerous fully 
developed forms, are endowed with 
locomotive power by means of vibratile, 
hair-like processes called cilia. The 
distinctive points between animals and 
plants which are most to be relied on 
are those derived from the nature and 
mode of assimilation of the food. 
Plants feed on inorganic matters, con¬ 
sisting of water, ammonia, carbonic 
acid, and mineral matters. They can 
only take in food which is presented to 
them in a liquid or gaseous state. The 
exceptions to these rules are found 
chiefly in the case of plants which live 
parasitically on other plants or on ani¬ 
mals, in which cases the plant may be 
said to feed on organic matters, repre¬ 
sented by the juices of their hosts. 
Animals, on the contrary, require organ¬ 
ized matters for food. They feed either 
upon plants or upon other animals. 
But even carnivorous animals can be 
shown to be dependent upon plants for 
subsistence; since the animals upon 
which Carnivora prey are in their turn 
supported by plants. Animals, further, 
can subsist on solid food in addition to 
liquids and gases; but many animals 
(such as the Tapeworms) live by the 
mere imbibition of fluids which are 


absorbed by their tissues, such forms 
possessing no distinct digestive system. 
Animals require a due supply of oxygen 
gas for their sustenance, this gas being 
used in respiration. Plants, on the con¬ 
trary, require carbonic acid. The ani¬ 
mal exhales or gives out carbonic acid 
as the part result of its tissue-waste, 
while the plant taking in this gas is 
enabled to decompose it into its con¬ 
stituent carbon and oxygen. The plant 
retains the former for the uses of its 
economy, and liberates the oxygen, 
which is thus restored to the atmos¬ 
phere for the use of the animal. Ani¬ 
mals receive their food into the interior 
of their bodies, and assimilation takes 
place in their internal surfaces. Plants, 
on the other hand, receive their food 
into their external surfaces, and assimi¬ 
lation is effected in the external parts 
as are exemplified in the leaf-surfaces 
under the influence of sunlight. All 
animals possess a certain amount of 
heat or temperature which is necessary 
for the performance of vital action. 
The only classes of animals in which a 
constantly-elevated temperature is kept 
up are birds and mammals. The bodily 
heat of the former varies from 100° F. 
to 112° F., and of the latter from 96° F. 
to 104° F. The mean or average heat 
of the human body is about 99° F., and 
it never falls much below this in health. 
Below birds animals are named “cold¬ 
blooded,” this term meaning in its 
strictly physiological sense that their 
temperature is usually that of the 
medium in which they live, and that it 
varies with that of the surrounding 
medium. “Warm-blooded” animals, on 
the contrary, do not exhibit such varia¬ 
tions, but mostly retain their normal 
temperature in any atmosphere. The 
cause of the evolution of heat in the 
animal body is referred to the union 
(by a process resembling ordinary com¬ 
bustion) of the carbon and hydrogen 
of the system with the oxygen taken in 
from the air in the process of respira¬ 
tion. 

ANIMAL CHEMISTRY, the depart¬ 
ment of organic chemistry which in¬ 
vestigates the composition of the fluids 
and the solids of animals, and the chem¬ 
ical action that takes place in animal 
bodies. There are four elements, some¬ 
times distinctively named organic ele¬ 
ments, which are invariably found in 
living bodies, viz., carbon, hydrogen, 
oxygen, and nitrogen. To these may 
be added, as frequent constituents of 
the human body, sulphur, phosphorus, 
lime, sodium, potassium, chlorine, and 
iron. The four organic elements are 
found in all the fluids and solids of the 
body. Sulphur occurs in blood and in 
many of the secretions. Phosphorus is 
also common, being found in nerves, 
in the teeth, and in fluids. Chlorine 
occurs almost universally throughout 
the body; lime is found in bone, in the 
teeth, and in the secretions; iron occurs 
in the blood, in urine, and in bile; and 
sodium, like chlorine, is of almost uni¬ 
versal occurence. Potassium occurs in 
muscles, in nerves, and in the blood- 
corpuscles. Minute quantities of cop¬ 
per, silicon, manganese, lead, and 
lithium are also found in the human 
body. The compounds formed in the 


human organism are divisible into the 
organic and inorganic. The most fre¬ 
quent of the latter is water, of which 
two-thirds (by weight) of the body are 
composed. The organic compounds 
may, like the foods from which they are 
formed, be divided into the nitrogenous 
and non-nitrogenous. Of the former 
the chief are albumen (found in blood, 
lymph, and chyle), casein (found in 
milk), myosin (in muscle), gelatin (ob¬ 
tained from bone), and others. The 
non-nitrogenous compounds are repre¬ 
sented by organic acids, such as formic, 
acetic, butyric, stearic, etc.; by animal 
starches, sugar ; and by fats and oils, as 
stearin and olein. 

ANIMALCULE (an-i-mal'kul), a gen¬ 
eral name given to many forms of ani¬ 
mal life from their minute size. 

ANIMAL HEAT. See Animal. 

ANIMAL MAGNETISM. See Mes¬ 
merism. 

ANIMALS, Cruelty to. See Cruelty. 

ANIMAL WORSHIP, a practice found 
to prevail, or to have prevailed, in the 
most widely distant parts of the world, 
both the Old and the New, but nowhere 
to such an amazing extent as in ancient 
EgypL notwithstanding its high civiliza¬ 
tion. Nearly all the more important 
animals found in the country were re¬ 
garded as sacred in some part of Egypt, 
and the degree of reverence paid to them 
was such that throughout Egypt the 
killing of a hawk or an ibis, whether 
voluntary or not, was punished with 
death. The worship, however, was not, 
except in a few instances, paid to them 
as actual deities. The animals were 
merely regarded as sacred to the deities, 
and the worship paid to them was 
symbolical. 

ANISE (an'is), an annual plant, a 
native of the Levant, and cultivated in 
Spain, France, Italy, Malta, etc., 
whence the fruit, popularly called 
aniseed, is imported. This fruit is 
ovate, with ten narrow ribs, between 
which are oil-vessels. It has an aro¬ 
matic smell, and is largely employed 
to flavor liquors (aniseed or anisette), 
sweetmeats, etc. 

ANISEED. See Anise. 

ANJOU (an-zho), an ancient province 
of France, now forming the department 
of Maine-et-Loire, and parts of the 
departments of Indre-et-Loire, May- 
enne, and Sarthe; area, about 3000 sq. 
miles. 

ANKLE. See Foot. 

ANKYLO'SIS, or ANCHYLO'SIS, stiff¬ 
ness of the joints caused by a more or 
less complete coalescence of the bones 
through ossification, often the result of 
inflammation or injury. False anky¬ 
losis is stiffness of a joint when the dis¬ 
ease is not in the joint itself, but in the 
tendinous and muscular parts by which 
it is surrounded. 

ANNA COMNE'NA, daughter of Alex¬ 
ius Comnenus I., Byzantine emperor. 
She was born 1083, and died 1148. 
After her father’s death she endeavored 
to secure the succession to her husband, 
Nicephorus Briennius, but was baffled 
by his want of energy and ambition. 
She wrote (in Greek) a life of her father 
Alexius, which, in the midst of much 
fulsome panegyric, contains some valu¬ 
able and interesting information. She 






ANNA IVANOVNA 


ANNUITY 


forms a character in Sir Walter Scott’s 
Count Robert of Paris. 

ANNA IVANOV'NA, Empress of Rus¬ 
sia; born in 1693, the daughter of 
Ivan, the elder half-brother of Peter 
the Great. She was married in 1710 
to the Duke of Courland, in the follow¬ 
ing year was left a widow, and in 1730 
ascended the throne of the czars on the 
condition proposed by the senate, that 
she would limit the absolute power of 
the czars, and do nothing without the 
advice of the council composed of the 
leading members of the Russian aristoc¬ 
racy. But no sooner had she ascended 
the throne than she declared her promise 
null, and proclaimed herself autocrat of 
all the Russias. She chose as her 
favorite Ernest John von Biren or 
Biron, who was soon all-powerful in 
Russia, and ruled with great severity. 
Several of the leading nobles were 
executed, and many thousand men 
exiled to Siberia. In 1737 Anna forced 
the Courlanders to choose Biren as their 
duke, and nominated him at her death 
regent of the empire during the minority 
of Prince Ivan (of Brunswick). Anna 
died in 1740. 

AN'NALS, a history of events in 
chronological order, each event being 
recorded under the year in which it 
occurred. 

ANNAM'. See Anam. 

ANNAP'OLIS, the capital of Mary¬ 
land, on the Severn, near its mouth in 
Chesapeake Bay. It contains a college 



State Capitol, Annapolis, Md. 

(St. John’s), a statehouse, and the 
United States naval academy. Pop 
9000. 

ANN ARBOR, a town in Michigan, 
on the Huron river, about 40 miles west 
of Detroit; the seat of the state univer¬ 
sity, has flour-mills, and manufactures 
of woolens, iron, and agricultural imple¬ 
ments. Pop. 16,000. 

ANNE, Queen of Great Britain and 
Ireland, was bom at Twickenham, near 
London, 6th February, 1664. She was 
the second daughter of James II., then 
Duke of York, and Anne, his wife, 
daughter of the Earl of Clarendon. 
After the death of William III. in 1702 
she ascended the English throne. Her 
character was essentially weak, and she 
was governed first by Marlborough and 
his wife, and afterward by Mrs. Mas- 


ham. Most of the principal events of her 
reign are connected with the war of the 
Spanish Succession. The only impor¬ 
tant acquisition that England made by 
it was Gibraltar, which was captured in 
1704, Another very important event 



Queen Anne. 


of this reign was the union of England 
and Scotland under the name of Great 
Britain, which was accomplished in 
1707. She seems to have long cherished 
the wish of securing the succession to 
her brother James, but this was frus¬ 
trated by the internal dissensions of the 
cabinet. Grieved at the disappoint¬ 
ment of her secret wishes, she fell into 
a state of weakness and lethargy, and 
died, July 20, 1714. The reign of Anne 
was distinguished not only by the 
brilliant successes of the British arms, 
but also on account of the number of 
admirable and excellent writers who 
flourished at this time, among whom 
were Pope, Swift, and Addison. 

ANNE '(of Austria), daughter of 
Philip III. of Spain, was bom at Madrid 
in 1602, and in 1615 was married to 
Louis XIII. of France. Richelieu, fear¬ 
ing the influence of her foreign connec¬ 
tions, did everything he could to humble 
her. In 1643 her husband died, and 
she was left regent, but placed under 
the control of a council. But the parlia¬ 
ment overthrew this arrangement, and 
intrusted her with full sovereign rights 
during the minority of her son Louis 
XIV. She, however, brought upon her¬ 
self the hatred of the nobles by her 
boundless confidence in Cardinal Maz- 
arin, and was forced to flee from Paris 
during the wars of the Fronde. She 
ultimately quelled all opposition, and 
was able in 1661 to transmit to her son 
unimpaired the royal authority. She 
spent the remainder of her life in retire¬ 
ment, and died January 20, 1666. 

ANNEALING (an-el'ing), a process to 
which many articles of metal and glass 
are subjected after making, in order to 
render them more tenacious, and which 
consists in heating them and allowing 
them to cool slowly. When the metals 
are worked by the hammer, or rolled 
into plates, or drawn into wire, they 
acquire a certain amount of brittleness, 
which destroys their usefulness, and has 
to be remedied by annealing. The tem¬ 
pering of steel is one kind of annealing. 
Annealing is particularly employed in 
glass-houses, and consists in putting the 
glass vessels, as soon as they are formed 
and while they are yet hot, into a fur¬ 
nace or oven, in which they are suffered 


to cool gradually. The toughness is 
greatly increased by cooling the articles 
in oil. 

ANNEXATION, the act of a state in 
acquiring territory, near or remote, 
whether independent or belonging to 
another power. It has been recently 
decided by the Supreme Court of the 
United States, in the so-called insular 
cases (1901), that Porto Rico remained 
foreign territory, notwithstanding the 
destruction of the Spanish sovereignty 
and government and the occupation of 
the island by the military forces _ of 
the United States until the ratification 
of the treaty of peace with Spain in 
1898, and that it was this act which 
extended the sovereignty of the United 
States over that island. Where the 
transfer of title is not acquiesced in by 
the former sovereign, there must be an 
effective occupation and a virtually 
complete destruction of the previously 
existing authority. But the annexation 
may be complete notwithstanding the 
active or passive opposition of the 
inhabitants of the territory affected. 

AN'NUAL, in botany, a plant that 
springs from seed, grows up, produces 
seed, and then dies, all within a single 
year or season. 

AN'NUAL, in literature, the name 
given to a class of publications which 
at one time enjoyed an immense yearly 
circulation, and were distinguished by 
great magnificence both of binding and 
illustration, which rendered them much 
sought after as Christmas and New 
Year presents. Their contents were 
chiefly prose tales and ballads, lyrics, 
and other poetry. 

ANNU'ITY, a sum of money paid 
annually to a person, and continuing 
either a certain number of years, or for 
an uncertain period, to be determined 
by a particular event, as the death of 
the recipient or annuitant, or that of 
the party liable to pay the annuity; 
or the annuity may be perpetual. The 
payments are made at the end of each 
year, or semi-annually, or at other 
eriods. An annuity is usually raised 
y the present payment of a certain 
sum as a consideration whereby the 
party making the payment, or some 
other person named by him, becomes 
entitled to an annuity, and the rules 
and principles by which this present 
value is to be computed have been the 
subjects of careful investigation. The 
present value of a perpetual annuity is 
evidently a sum of money that will 
yield an interest equal to the annuity, 
and payable at the same periods; and 
an annuity of this description, payable 
quarterly, will evidently be of greater 
value than one of the same amount 
payable annually, since the annuitant 
has the additional advantage of the 
interest on three of the quarterly pay¬ 
ments until the expiration of the year. 
In other words, it requires a greater 
present capital to be put at interest to 
yield a given sum per annum, payable 
quarterly, than to yield the same annual 
sum payable at the end of each year. 
The present value of an annuity for a 
limited period is a sum which, if put at 
interest, will at the end of that period 
give an amount equal to the sum of all 
the payments of the annuity and inter- 


















ANNUNCIATION 


ANTARCTIC 


est; and, accordingly, if it be proposed 
to invest a certain sum of money in the 
purchase of an annuity for a given 
number of years the comparative value 
of the two may be precisely estimated, 
the rate of interest being given. 

ANNUNCIATION, the declaration of 
the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary 
informing her that she was to become 
the mother of our Lord.—Annunciation 
or Lady Day is a feast of the R. C. church 
in honor of the annunciation, celebra ted 
on the 25th of March.—There are two 
orders of nuns of the Annunciation, one 
originally French, founded in 1501 by 
Joanna of Valois, the other Italian, 
founded in 1604 by Maria Vittoria 
Fornari of Genoa. 

AN'ODE, the positive pole of the 
voltaic current, being that part of the 
surface of a decomposing body which 
the electric current enters: opposed to 
cathode, the way by which it departs. 

AN'ODYNE, a medicine, such as an 
opiate or narcotic, which allays pain. 

ANOINTING, rubbing the body or 
some part of it with oil, often perfumed. 
From time immemorial the nations of 
the East have been in the habit of 
anointing themselves for the sake of 
health and beauty. The Greeks and 
Romans anointed themselves after the 
bath. Wrestlers anointed themselves 
in order to render it more difficult for 
their antagonists to get hold of them. 
In Egypt it seems to have been common 
to anoint the head of guests when they 
entered the house where they were to 
be entertained, as shown in the cut. In 
the Mosaic law a sacred character was 
attached to the anointing of the gar¬ 
ments of the priests and things belong¬ 
ing to the ceremonial of worship. The 
Jewish priests and kings were anointed 
when inducted into office, and were 
called the anointed of the Lord, to show 
that their persons were sacred and their 
office from God. In the Old Testament 



Egyptian anointing a guest. 


also the prophecies respecting the 
Redeemer style him Messias, that is, the 
Anointed, which is also the meaning of 
his Greek name Christ. The custom of 
anointing still exists in the Roman 
Catholic Church in the ordination of 

{ iriests and the confirmation of be- 
ievers and the sacrament of extreme 
unction. The ceremony is also fre¬ 
quently a part of the coronation of 
kings. 

ANOM'ALY, in astronomy, the angle 
which a line drawn from a planet to the 
sun has passed through since the planet 


was last at its perihelion or nearest 
distance to the sun. The anomalistic 
year is the interval between two suc¬ 
cessive times at which the earth is in 
perihelion, or 365 days 6 hours 13 min¬ 
utes 45 seconds. In consequence of the 
advance of the earth’s perihelion among 
the stars in the same direction as the 
earth’s motion and of the precession of 


the equinoxes, which carries the equi¬ 
noxes back in the opposite direction 
to the earth’s motion, the anomalistic 
year is longer than the sidereal year, 
and still longer than the tropical or 
common year. 

ANON'YMOUS, literally, “without 
name,” applied to anything which is the 
work of a person whose name is unknown 
or who keeps his name secret. Pseu¬ 
donym is a term used for an assumed 
name. The knowledge of the anony¬ 
mous and pseudonymous literature is 
indispensable to the bibliographer, and 
large dictionaries given the titles and 
writers of such works have been pub¬ 
lished. 

ANSO'NIA, a city in New Haven Co., 
Conn., 12 miles west by north of New 
Haven, on the Naugatuck river, and on 
the Berkshire and Nangatuck divisions 
of the New York, New Haven and 
Hartford Railroad. Ansonia is noted 
as a manufacturing center, the products 
including heavy machinery, rollers for 
paper-making and wheat-milling, cop¬ 
per, brass, and wire goods, electrical 
appliances, clocks, etc. Pop. 14,000. 

ANSPACH (an'spag). See Ansbach. 

ANT, the common name of insects of 
various genera found in most temperate 
and tropical regions. They are small but 
powerful insects, and have long been 
noted for their remarkable intelligence 
and interesting habits. They live in 
communities regulated by definite laws, 
each member of the society bearing a 
well-defined and separate part in the 
work of the colony. Each community 
consists of males; of females much 
larger than the males; and of barren 
females, otherwise called neuters, work¬ 
ers, or nurses. The neuters are wingless, 
and the males and females only acquire 
wings for their “nuptial flight,” after 


which the males perish, and the few 
females which escape the pursuit of 
their numerous enemies divest them¬ 
selves of their wings, and either return 
to established nests, or become the 
foundresses of new colonies. The 
neuters perform all the labors of the 
ant-hill or abode of the community; 
they excavate the galleries, procure 


food, and feed the larvae or young ants> 
which are destitute of organs of motion. 
In fine weather they carefully convey 
them to the surface for the benefit of the 
sun’s heat, and as attentively carry 
them to a place of safety either when 
bad weather is threatened or the ant¬ 
hill is disturbed. In like manner they 
watch over the safety of the nymphs 
or pupae about to acquire their perfect 
growth. Some communities possess a 
special type of neuters, known as “sol¬ 
diers,” from the duties that specially 
fall upon them, and from their powerful 
biting jaws. There is a very consider¬ 
able variety in the materials, size, and 
form of ant-hills, or nests, according to 
the peculiar nature or instinct of the 
species. 

ANTAL'KALI, a substance which 
neutralizes an alkali, and is used medic¬ 
inally to counteract an alkaline tendency 
in the system. All true acids have this 
power. 

ANTANANARIVO (an-tan-an-a-re'vo), 
the capital of Madagascar, situated in 
the central province of Im6rina. Antan¬ 
anarivo is the residence of the French 
governor of Madagascar, and there is a 
strong French garrison. It has manu¬ 
factures of metal work, cutlery, silk, 
etc. Pop. about 100,000. 

ANTARCTIC (ant-ark'tik), relating 
to the southern pole or to the region 
near it. The Antarctic Circle is a circle 
parallel to the equator and distant from 
the south pole 23° 28', marking the 
area within which the sun does not set 
when on the tropic of Capricorn. The 
Antarctic Circle has been arbitrarily 
fixed on as the limits of the Antarctic 
Ocean, it being the average limit of the 
pack-ice; but the name is often ex¬ 
tended to embrace a much wider area. 
The lands in or near the Antarctic 



Antananarivo. 


























ANT-EATER 


ANTICHRIST 


Circle are but imperfectly known, the 
work of exploration having been hither¬ 
to baffled by what seems an insur¬ 
mountable ice-barrier. Sir James Ross 
in 1841—12, discovered Victoria Land 
(extending to about 79° s. lat.), with its 
volcanoes Erebus (12,400 ft.) and Ter¬ 
ror (10,900 ft.). The South Shetland Is¬ 
lands, Enderby Land, Graham’s Land, 
etc., have also been discovered in this 
ocean. Capt. Scott in 1902 reached 82° 
17 / which is 532 miles from the pole. 

ANT-EATER, a name given to mam¬ 
mals of various genera that prey chiefly 
on ants. The head is remarkably elon¬ 
gated, the jaws destitute of teeth, and 
the mouth furnished with a long, ex¬ 
tensile tongue covered with glutinous 
saliva, by the aid of which the animals 
secure their insect prey. The eyes are 
particularly small, the ears short and 
round, and the legs, especially the an¬ 
terior, very robust, and furnished with 
long, compressed, acute nails, admirably 
adapted for breaking into the ant-hills. 
The most remarkable species is the 
ant-bear, a native of the warmer parts 
of South America. It is from 4 to 5 feet 
in length from the tip of the muzzle to 
the origin of the black bushy tail, 
which is about two feet long. The body 
is covered with long hair, particularly 
along the neck and back. It is a harm- 



Ant-bcar. 


less and solitary animal, and spends 
most of its time in sleep. Some are 
adapted for climbing trees in quest of 
the insects on which they feed, having 
prehensile tails. All are natives of South 
America. 

ANTECE'DENT, in grammar, the 
noun to which a relative or other pro¬ 
noun refers; as, Solomon was the prince 
who built the temple, where the word 
prince is the antecedent of who —In 
logic, that member of a hypothetical or 
conditional proposition which contains 
the condition, and which is introduced 
by if or some equivalent word or words; 
as, if the sun is fixed, the earth must 
move. Here the first and conditional 
proposition is the antecedent, the second 
the consequent. 

ANTEDILUVIAN, before the flood or 
deluge of Noah’s time; relating to what 
happened before the deluge. In geology 
the term has been applied to organisms, 
traces of which are found in a fossil state 
in formations preceding the Diluvial, 
particularly to extinct animals such as 
the paleotherium, the mastodon, etc. 

AN'TELOPE, the name given to the 
members of a large family of Ruminant 
Ungulata or Hoofed Mammalia, closely 
resembling the Deer in general appear¬ 
ance, but essentially different in nature 
from the latter animals. They are in¬ 
cluded with the Sheep and Oxen in the 


family of the Cavicornia or “Hollow¬ 
horned” Ruminants. Their horns, un¬ 
like those of the Deer, are not deciduous, 
but are permanent; are never branched, 
but are often twisted spirally, and may 
be borne by both sexes. They are found 
in greatest number and variety in 
Africa. Well-known species are the 
chamois (European), the gazelle, the 
addax, the eland, the koodoo, the gnu, 
the springbok, the sasin or Indian ante¬ 
lope, and the prongbuck of America. 

ANTEN'NAs, the name given to the 
movable jointed organs of touch and 
hearing attached to the heads of insects, 



Antennas. 



1, 1, Filiform Antennae of Cucujo Firefly of 
Brazil. 2, Denticulate Antenna; 3, Bipinnate; 
i, Lamellicorn; 5, Clavate; 6, Geniculate; 7, 
Antenna and Antennule of Crustacean. 


myriapods, etc., and commonly called 
horns or feelers. They present a very 
great variety of forms. 

ANTHEM, originally a hymn sung 
in alternate parts; in modern usage, a 
sacred tune or piece of music set to 
words taken from the Psalms or other 
parts of the Scriptures, first- introduced 
into church service in Elizabeth’s reign; 
a developed motet. The anthem may 
be for one, two, or any number of voices, 
but seldom exceeds five parts, and may 
or may not have an organ accompani¬ 
ment written for it. 

ANTHE'MION, an ornament or orna¬ 
mental series used in Greek and Roman 
decoration, which is derived from floral 
forms, more especially the honeysuckle. 



Anthemion. 

It was much used for the ornamentation 
of friezes and interiors, for the decora¬ 
tion of fictile vases, the borders of 

rirPQQAq pto 

ANTHOL'OGY, the name given to 
several collections of short poems which 
have come down from antiquity. 

ANTHONY, St., the founder of 
monastic institutions; born near Her- 
aclea, in Upper Egypt, a.d. 251. Giv¬ 
ing up all his property, he retired to the 
desert, where he was followed by a num¬ 
ber of disciples, who thus formed the 
first community of monks. He died at 
the age of 105.—St. Anthony’s Fire, a 
name given to erysipelas. 


ANTHONY, Susan B., the founder of 
the woman suffrage movement in the 
United States. She was born in Massa¬ 
chusetts in 1820, partook in the aboli¬ 
tionist movement, and in 1868 founded 
The Revolution, a journal advocating 
woman’s rights. She voted at the elec¬ 
tion of 1872 and was arrested and fined. 
She wrote several tracts and books, 
principally on woman’s rights. 

ANTHRACITE, glance or blind coal, 
a non-bituminous coal of a shining 
luster, approaching to metallic, and 
which burns without smoke, with a 
weak or no flame, and with intense heat. 
It consists of, on an average, 90 per cent 
carbon, 3 hydrogen, and 5 ashes. It 
has some of the properties of coke or 
charcoal, and, like that substance, repre¬ 
sents an extreme metamorphism of coal 
under the influence of heat or of vol¬ 
canic disturbance. It is found in Eng¬ 
land, Scotland, and Ireland, and in 
large quantities in the United States, 
chiefly in Pennsylvania. 

AN'THRAX, a fatal disease to which 
cattle, horses, sheep, and other animals 
are subject, always associated with the 
presence of an extremely minute micro¬ 
organism in the blood. It frequently 
assumes an epizootic form, and extends 
over large districts, affecting all classes 
of animals which are exposed to the 
exciting causes. It is also called splenic 
fever, and is communicable to man, 
appearing as carbuncle, malignant pus¬ 
tule, or wool-sorter’s disease. 

ANTHROPOL'OGY, the science of 
man and mankind, including the study 
of man’s place in nature, that is, of the 
measure of his agreement with and 
divergence from other animals; of his 
physical structure and psychological 
nature, together with the extent to 
which these act and react on each other; 
and of the various tribes of men, deter¬ 
mining how these may have been pro¬ 
duced or modified by external condi¬ 
tions, and consequently taking account 
also of the advance or retrogression of 
the human race. It puts under contri¬ 
bution all sciences which have man for 
their object, as archaeology, compara¬ 
tive anatomy, physiology, psychology, 
climatology, etc. See Ethnology. 

ANTHROPOMOR'PHISM, the repre¬ 
sentation or conception of the Deity 
under a human form, or with human 
attributes and affections. Anthropo¬ 
morphism is founded in the natural 
inaptitude of the human mind for con¬ 
ceiving spiritual things except through 
sensuous images, and in its consequent 
tendency to accept such expressions as 
those of Scripture when it speaks of the 
eye, the ear, and the hand of God of 
his seeing and hearing, of his remember¬ 
ing and forgetting, of his making man 
in his own image, etc., in a too literal 

S6US0. 

ANTHROPOPH'AGI, the name given 
to those individuals or tribes by whom 
human flesh is eaten: man-eaters, canni¬ 
bals. The Caribs are said to have been 
cannibals at the time of the Spanish 
conquest of America, and the word 
“cannibal” is derived from their name. 

ANTICHRIST, a word occurring in 
the first and second epistles of St. John, 
and nowhere else in Scripture, in pas¬ 
sages having an evident reference to a 








ANTICLINAL LINE OR AXIS 


ANTIOCH 


personage real or symbolical mentioned 
or alluded to in various other passages 
both of the Old and New Testaments. 
In every age the church has held through 
all its sects some definite expectation of 
a formidable adversary of truth and 
righteousness prefigured under this 
name. Thus Roman Catholics have 
found Antichrist in heresy, and Prot¬ 
estants in Romanism. In one point the 



a, a, a, Anticlinal line, b, b, Synclinal line. 

sects have generally been agreed, namely 
in regarding the various intimations on 
this subject in the Old and New Testa¬ 
ments as a homogeneous declaration or 
warning, inspired by the spirit of proph¬ 
ecy, of danger to the true religion from 
some disaffection and revolt organized 
in the latter days by Satan. Most mod¬ 
ern critics take a different view of the 
matter. They do not regard the various 
Scriptural writers who have dealt with 
this subj'ect as having had any common 
inspiration or design. They believe that 
each writer from his own point of view, 
guided by mere human sagacity, gives 
expression in his predictions to his own 
individual apprehensions, or narrates 
as prediction what he already knows. 
It is the near political horizon which 
suggests the danger, or contemporary 
history the substance of the prophecy; 
thus the Antichrist of Daniel is Anti- 
ochus Epiphanes, that of St. John Nero, 
that of St. Paul some adversary of 
Christianity about to appear in the time 
of the Emperor Claudius. 

ANTICLI'NAL LINE OR AXIS, in 
geology, the ridge of a wave-like curve 
made by a series of superimposed strata, 
the strata dipping from it on either side 
as from the ridge of a house: a synclinal 
line runs along the trough of such a 
wave. 

ANTICOSTI, an island of Canada, in 
the mouth of the St. Lawrence, 125 
miles long by 30 miles broad. The in¬ 
terior is mountainous and wooded, but 
there is much good land, and it is well 
adapted for agriculture. The fisheries 
are valuable. The population is scanty, 
however. 

ANTIDOTE, a medicine to counter¬ 
act the effects of poison. 

ANTIETAM (an-te'tam), a small 
stream in the United States which falls 
into the Potomac about 50 miles n.w. 
of Washington; scene of an indecisive 
battle between the Federal and Con¬ 
federate armies, 17th Sept., 1862. 

AN'TI-FED'ERALISTS, a certain po¬ 
litical party in the United States. 
The Federalists believed in a national 
system of government, while the Anti- 
Federalists believed in a decentralized 
and strictly federal system of govern¬ 
ment. The Federalists had the advan¬ 
tages of possessing a positive program 
and of gaining the first two points in 
the conflict when the national constitu¬ 
tion was adopted and when they com¬ 
mitted the national government to the 
exercise of such extensive powers as 


the creation of a national bank. The 
Anti-Federalists were thus merely a 
party of political opposition to the party 
in power. When, however, the Feder¬ 
alists, in the Alien and Sedition Acts, 
seemed to encroach both upon the 
liberty of the individual and upon the 
jurisdiction of the States, the opposi¬ 
tion of the Anti-Federalists became 
acute and their fundamental proposi¬ 
tions were stated in the Virginia and 
Kentucky Resolutions. This crisis re¬ 
sulted in the triumph of the Anti- 
Federalists under the leardership of 
Jefferson in the election of 1800; but 
soon thereafter the leaders of the party 
began to abandon its original creed of 
the strict interpretation of the constitu¬ 
tion and the narrow limitation of the 
powers of the national government. 
The first step in this direction was the 
purchase of Louisiana; and when finally 
the Federalists party was driven en¬ 
tirely out of existence, its character¬ 
istic principles remained effective as the 
chief principle of the Anti-Federalist 
party. 

ANTIFRICTION METAL, a name 
given to various alloys of tin, zinc, 
copper, antimony, lead, etc., which 
oppose little resistance to motion, with 
great resistance to the effects of friction, 
so far as concerns the wearing away of 
the surfaces of contact. 

ANTIGONE (an-tig'o-ne), in Greek 
mythology, the daughter of ffidipus and 
Jocasta, celebrated for her devotion to 
her father and to her brother Polynices, 
for burying whom against the decree of 
King Creon she suffered death. 

ANTIGUA (an-te'ga), one of the Brit¬ 
ish West Indies, the most important of 
the Leeward group; 28 miles long, 20 
broad; area, 108 square miles. Discov¬ 
ered by Columbus, 1493. Its shores are 


open cotton or worsted work, to pre¬ 
serve them from being soiled, as by the 
oil applied to the hair. 

ANTI-MONOPOLY PARTY, a political 
party organized at Chicago May 14, 
1884, with Benjamin F. Butler as its 
candidate for president. Its demands 
were an interstate commerce law, an 
income tax, free trade, and legalized 
labor unionism. It was afterward 
merged with the Greenback and Popu¬ 
list parties. 

ANTIMONY, a brittle metal of a 
bluish-white or silver-white color and a 
crystalline or laminated structure. It 
melts at 842° F., and burns with a 
bluish-white flame. The mineral called 
stibnite, or antimony-glance, is a tri¬ 
sulphide, and is the chief ore from which 
the metal is obtained. It is found in 
many places, including France, Spain, 
Hungary, Italy, Canada, Australia, and 
Borneo. The metal, or, as it was for¬ 
merly called, the regulus of antimony, 
does not rust or tarnish when exposed 
to the air. When alloyed with other 
metals it hardens them, and is there¬ 
fore used in the manufacture of alloys, 
such as Britannia-metal, type-metal, 
and pewter. In bells it renders the 
sound more clear; it renders tin more 
white and sonorous as well as harder, 
and gives to printing types more firm¬ 
ness and smoothness. The salts of 
antimony are very poisonous. The 
protoxide is the active base of tartar 
emetic and James’s powder, and is 
justly regarded as a most valuable 
remedy in many diseases.—Yellow anti¬ 
mony is a preparation of antimony of a 
deep yellow color, used in enamel and 
porcelain painting. It is of various 
tints, and the brilliancy of the brighter 
hues is not affected by foul air. 

ANTIN'OMY, the opposition of one 



St. John, Antigua. 


high and rocky; the surface is varied and 
fertile. The capital, St. John, the resi¬ 
dence of the governor of the Leeward 
Islands, stands on the shore of a well- 
sheltered harbor in the north-west part 
of the island. The staple articles of ex¬ 
port are sugar, molasses, and rum. 
Pop. (including Barbuda), 56,175. 

ANTILLES (an-til'ez), another name 
for the West Indian Islands. 

ANTIMACASS'AR, a covering for 
chairs, sofas, couches, etc., made of 


law of rule to another law or rule; in 
the Kantian philosophy, that natural 
contradiction which results from the law 
of reason, when, passing the limits of 
experience, we seek to conceive the com¬ 
plex of external phenomena, or nature, 
as a world or cosmos. 

ANTIOCH (an'ti-ok), a famous city 
of ancient times, the capital of the 
Greek kings of Syria, on the left bank 
of the Orontes, about 21 miles from the 
sea, in a beautiful and fertile plain; 











ANTIOCHUS 


ANTISPASMODIC 


founded by Seleucus Nicator in 300 B.C., 
and named after his father Antiochus. 
In Roman times it was the seat of the 
Syrian governors, and the center of a 
widely-extended commerce. It was 
called the “Queen of the East” and 
“The Beautiful.” Antioch is frequently 
mentioned in the New Testament, and 
it was here that the disciples of our 
Savior were first called Christians 
(Acts xi. 26). There was another An¬ 
tioch, in Pisidia, at which Paul preached 
on his first missionary journey. 

ANTIOCHUS (an-ti'o-kus), a name of 
several Graeco-Syrian kings of the 
dynasty of the Seleucidae. ANTIOCHUS 
I., called (“savior”), wasson of Seleucus, 
general of Alexander the Great, and 
founder of the dynasty. He was born 
about b.c. 324. During the greater 
part of his reign he was engaged in a 
protracted struggle with the Gauls who 
had crossed from Europe, and by whom 
he was killed in battle b.c. 261.—ANTI¬ 
OCHUS II., surnamed Theos (god), 
succeeded his father, was murdered in 


was assigned to Antipater, who suc¬ 
ceeded in establishing the Macedonian 
rule in Greece on a firm footing. He 
died in b.c. 317 at an advanced age. 

ANTIP'ATHY, a special dislike exhib¬ 
ited by individuals to particular objects 
or persons, usually resulting from phys¬ 
ical or nervous organization. An antip¬ 
athy is often an unaccountable repug¬ 
nance to what people in general regard 
with no particular dislike, as certain 
sounds, smells, articles of food, etc., and 
it may be manifested by fainting or 
extreme discomfort. 

ANTIPODES (an-tip'o-dez), the name 
given relatively to people or places on 
opposite sides of the earth, so situated 
that a line drawn from one to the other 
passes through the center of the earth 
and forms a true diameter. The longi¬ 
tudes of two such places differ by 180°. 
The difference in their time is about 
twelve hours, and their seasons are re¬ 
versed. 

AN'TIPOPE, the name applied to 
those who at different periods have pro¬ 



Medal of Antiochus Epiphanes. 


b.c. 246 by Laodice, his wife, whom he 
had put away to marry Berenice, 
daughter of Ptolemy.—ANTIOCHUS 
HI., surnamed the Great, grandson of the 
preceding, was born b.c. 242, succeeded 
in b.c. 223. Antiochus gained an im¬ 
portant adviser in Hannibal, who had 
fled for refuge to his court; but he lost 
the opportunity of an invasion of Italy 
while the Romans were engaged in war 
with the Gauls, of which the Cartha¬ 
ginian urged him to avail himself. The 
Romans defeated him by sea and land, 
and he was finally overthrown by Scipio 
at Mount Sipylus, in Asia Minor, b.c. 
190. He was killed while plundering 
a temple in Elymais to procure money 
to pay the Romans.—ANTIOCHUS IV., 
called Epiphanes, youngest son of the 
above, is chiefly remarkable for his 
attempt to extirpate the Jewish religion, 
and to establish in its place the poly¬ 
theism of the Greeks. This led to the 
insurrection of the Maccabees, by which 
the Jews ultimately recovered their 
independence. He died b.c. 164. 

ANTIOQUIA (an-te-6-ke'a), a town of 
S. America, in Colombia, on the river 
Cauca; founded in 1542. Pop. 10,000. 
It gives name to a department of the 
republic; area, 22,316 sq. miles; pop. 
464,887. Capital, Medellin. 

ANTIP'ATER, a general and friend of 
Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander 
the Great. On the death of Alexander, 
in 323 b.c., the regency of Macedonia 


duced a schism in the Roman Catholic 
Church by opposing the authority of the 
pope, under the pretense that they were 
themselves popes. The Roman Church 
cannot admit that there ever existed two 
popes; but the fact is, that in several 
cases both competitors for the papal 
chair (sometimes there were three or 
even four) were equally popes; that 
is to say, the claims of all were equally 
good. Each was frequently supported 
by whole nations, and the schism was 
nothing but the struggle of political in¬ 
terests. 

ANTIPY'RIN, a drug obtained from 
coal-tar products, valuable in reducing 
fever and in relieving pain, being much 
used in nervous headache and neural¬ 
gia. 

ANTIQUARIES, those devoted to the 
study of ancient times through their 
relics, as old places of sepulcher, remains 
of ancient habitations, early monu¬ 
ments, implements or weapons, statues, 
coins, medals, paintings, Inscriptions, 
books, and manuscripts, with the view 
of arriving at a knowledge of the rela¬ 
tions, modes of living, habits, and 
general condition of the people who 
created or employed them. Societies 
or associations of antiquaries have been 
formed in all countries of European 
civilization. 

ANTIQUES (an-teks'), a term specifi¬ 
cally applied to the remains of ancient 
art, as statues, paintings, vases, cameos, 


and the like, and more especially to the 
works of Grecian and Roman antiquity. 

ANTI-RENTISM, a movement organ¬ 
ized to uproot a kind of feudalism 
existing in certain counties in New York. 
It lasted from 1839 to 1847, during 
which time there were many evictions. 
The system of feudal tenures was 
broken up in 1846 by the insertion in 
the new constitution of New York of 
a clause abolishing all feudal tenures 
and limiting agricultural leases to 
twelve years. 

ANTIRRHINUM (an-ti-ri'num), a ge¬ 
nus of annual or perennial plants, com¬ 
monly known as snapdragon, on account 
of the peculiarity of the blossoms, which, 
by pressing between the finger and 
thumb, may be made to open and shut 
like a mouth. They all produce showy 
flowers, and are much cultivated in 
gardens. 

ANTI-SEMITISM, a term describing 
i movement in Russia, France, Austria, 
Germany, and other countries in Europe, 
by which it is sought to limit the influ¬ 
ence of the Jews and otherwise harass 
them. In Germany the leaders of the 
movement have been among the most 
eminent of German scholars. 

Since its organization in Germany 
the Anti-Semitic Party has been organ¬ 
ized in Russia, Austria, Greece, and 
Holland. As the Jews in Russia are to a 
great extent kept out of the ordinary 
trades, many of them have resorted to 
the business of money lending, and by 
means of mortgages placed to secure 
loans they have obtained control of small 
landed properties. This fact, coupled 
with religious prejudice, caused the 
Anti-Semitic movement in Russia, about 
twenty years ago, to assume a most 
violent form. Laws preventing them 
from entering professions and from 
living in places other than towns and 
hamlets were vigorously enforced. In 
some cities, where a majority of the 
people were Jews, they were expelled 
without warning. The fierce perse¬ 
cution to which the Jews have been 
subjected in Russia and Roumania has 
caused an emigration on a vast 6cale to 
the United States. 

ANTISEP'TIC, an agent by which the 
putrefaction of vegetable or animal 
matters is prevented or arrested. There 
are a great number of substances having 
this preservative property, among which 
are salt, alcohol, vegetable charcoal, 
creosote, corrosive sublimate, tannic 
acid, sulphurous acid, sulphuric ether, 
chloroform, arsenic, wood-spirit, aloes, 
camphor, benzine, aniline, etc. The 
packing of fish in ice, and the curing 
of herring and other fish with salt, are 
familiar antiseptic processes. The dif¬ 
ferent antiseptics act in different ways. 
The term is applied in a specific man¬ 
ner to that mode of treatment in sur¬ 
gery by which air is excluded from 
wounds, or allowed access only through 
substances capable of destroying the 
germs in the atmosphere, on whose 
presence suppuration is assumed to 
depend. 

ANTISPASMOD'IC, a medicine proper 
for the cure of spasms and convulsions; 
such belong largely to the class of ethers, 
as sulphuric ether, chloric ether, nitrie 
ether, etc. 









ANTISTHENES 


ANTONIUS 


ANTISTHENES (an-tis'the-nez), a 
Greek philosopher and the founder of 
the school of Cynics, born at Athens 
about b.c. 444. He was first a disciple 
of Gorgias and then of Socrates, at whose 
death he was present. His philosophy 
was a one-sided development of the 
Socratic teaching. He held virtue to 
consist in complete self-denial and in 



Marie Antoinette. 


disregard of riches, honor, or pleasure 
of every kind. He himself lived as a 
beggar. He died in Athens at an ad¬ 
vanced age. 

ANTITOX'IN, a substance secreted in 
the blood of animals which counteracts 
the effects of the toxin, or toxins 
(poisonous substances), produced in the 
animal by the germs which find their 
way into the body and multiply there. 
Natural antitoxins make the body 
immune to germ diseases, but although 
it has been impossible as yet to manu¬ 
facture these substances except in the 
animal body, this method has been 
found quite efficatious in the treatment 
of disease. The germs of diphtheria, for 
example, are injected into a mule or a 
horse. The animal becomes infected, 
but recovers. On its recovery a second 
inj'ection is given, and so on until 
further injections have no effect. The 
animal is then “immune.” Serum 
taken from the body of the immunized 
animal is then injected into a human 
patient suffering with the disease, and 
recovery quickly follows. This art 
is called serum therapy, and it is be¬ 
lieved that almost all germ diseases will 
eventually be conquered by it. 

ANTITRINITA'RIANS, all who do not 
receive the doctrine of the divine Trin¬ 
ity, or the existence of three persons in 
the Godhead; especially applied to 
those who oppose such a doctrine on 
philosophical grounds, as contrasted 
with Unitarians, who reject the doctrine 
as not warranted by Scripture. 

ANT-LION, the larva of an insect 
which in its perfect state greatly resem- 1 


bles a dragon-fly; curious on account of 
its ingenious method of catching the in¬ 
sects—chiefly ants—on which it feeds. 
It digs a funnel-shaped hole in the driest 
and finest sand it can find, and, when 
the pit is deep enough, and the sides are 
quite smooth and sloping, it buries 
itself at the bottom with only its formid¬ 
able mandibles projecting, and waits 
till some luckless insect stumbles over 
the edge, when it is immediately seized, 
its juices sucked, and the dead body 
jerked from the hole. 

ANTOINETTE (an-twa-net), Marie 
(Marie Antoinette Joseph Jeanne de 
Lorraine), Archduchess of Austria and 
Queen of France, the youngest daughter 
of the Emperor Francis I. and of Maria 
Theresa, was born at Vienna, 2d Novem¬ 
ber, 1755; executed at Paris, 16th Oct. 
1793. She was married at the age of 
fifteen to the Dauphin, afterward Louis 
XVI., but her manners were ill-suited to 
the French court, and she made many 
enemies among the highest families by 
her contempt for its ceremonies, which 
excited her ridicule. The freedom of 
her manners, indeed, even after she be¬ 
came queen, was a cause of scandal. 
The extraordinary affair of the diamond 
necklace, in which the Cardinal Louis 
de Rohan, the great quack Cagliostro, 
and a certain Countess de Lamotte were 
the chief actors, tarnished her name, 
and added force to the calumnies against 
her. Though it was proved in the 
examination which she demanded that 
she had never ordered the necklace, 
her enemies succeeded in casting a 
stigma on her, and the credulous people 
laid every public disaster to her charge. 
There is no doubt she had great influ¬ 
ence over the king, and that she con¬ 
stantly opposed all measures of reform. 
The enthusiastic reception given her at 
the guards’ ball at Versailles on 1st Oc¬ 
tober, 1789, raised the general indigna¬ 
tion to the highest pitch, and was fol¬ 
lowed in a few days by the insurrection 
of women, and the attack on Versailles. 
When practically prisoners in the Tuile- 
ries it was she who advised the flight 
of the royal family in June, 1791, which 
ended in their capture and return. On 
10th August, 1792, she heard her hus¬ 
band’s deposition pronounced by the 
Legislative Assembly, and accompanied 
him to the prison in the Temple, where 
she displayed the magnanimity of a 
heroine and the patient endurance of a 
martyr. In January, 1793, she parted 
with her husband, who had been con¬ 
demned by the Convention; in August 
she was removed to the Conciergerie; 
and in October she was charged before 
the revolutionary tribunal with having 
dissipated the finances, exhausted the 
treasury, corresponded with the foreign 
enemies of France, and favored the 
domestic foes of the country. She 
defended herself with firmness, decision, 
and indignation; and heard the sentence 
of death pronounced with perfect calm¬ 
ness—a calmness which did not forsake 
her when the sentence was carried out 
the following morning. Her son, eight 
years of age, died shortly afterward, as 
was generally believed by poison, and 
her daughter was suffered to quit France, 
and afterward married her cousin the 
Duke of Angouleme. 


ANTONI'NUS, Marcus Aurelius. See 
Aurelius. 

ANTONI'NUS PIUS, Titus Aurelius 
Fulvus, Roman emperor, was born at 
Lavinium, near Rome, a.d. 86, died a.d. 
161. In a.d. 120 he became consul, and 
he was one of the four persons of con¬ 
sular rank among whom Hadrian 
divided the supreme administration of 
Italy. He then went as proconsul to 
Asia, and after his return to Rome 
became more and more {be object of 
Hadrian’s confidence. In a.d. 138 he 
was selected by that emperor as his 
successor, and the same year he ascended 
the throne. The persecutions of the 
Christians he speedily abolished. He 



Coin of Antoninus Pius. 


carried on but a few wars. In Britain 
he extended the Roman dominion, and 
by raising a new wall put a stop to the 
invasions of the Piets and Scots. The 
senate gave him the surname Pius, that 
is, dutiful or showing filial affection, be¬ 
cause to keep alive the memory of 
Hadrian he had built a temple in his 
honor. He was succeeded by Marcus 
Aurelius, his adopted son. 

ANTO'NIUS, Marcus (Mark Antony), 
Roman triumvir, born 83 b.c., was 
connected with the family of Caesar by 
his mother. Debauchery and prod¬ 
igality marked his youth. To escape 
his creditors he went to Greece in 58, 
and from thence followed the consul 
Gabinius on a campaign in Syria as 
commander of the cavalry. He served 
in Gaul under Caesar in 52 and 51. 
In 50 he returned to Rome to support 
the interests of Caesar against the aristo- 
cratical party headed by Pompey, and 
was appointed tribune. When war 
broke out between Caesar and Pompey, 
Antony led reinforcements to Caesar 
in Greece, and in the battle of Pharsalia 
he commanded the left wing. He alter- 
ward returned to Rome with the ap¬ 
pointment of master of the horse and 

g overnor of Italy (47). In b.c. 44 he 
ecame Caesar’s colleague in the consul¬ 
ship. Soon after Caesar was assassinat¬ 
ed, and Antony would have shared the 
same fate had not Brutus stood up in 
his behalf. Antony, by the reading of 
Caesar’s will, and by the oration which 
he delivered over his body, excited the 
people to anger and revenge, and the 
murderers were obliged to flee. After 
several quarrels and reconciliations 
with Octavianus, Caesar’s heir (see 
Augustus), Antony departed to Cisalpine 
Gaul, which province had been con¬ 
ferred upon him against the will of the 
senate. But Cicero thundered against 
him in his famous Philippics; the sen¬ 
ate declared him a public enemy, and 






ANTONY 


APENNINES 


intrusted the conduct of the war against 
him to Octavianus and the consuls 
Hirtius and Pansa. After a campaign 
of varied fortunes Antony fled with his 
troops over the Alps. Here he was 
joined by Lepidus, who commanded in 
Gaul, and through whose mediation 
Antony and Octavianus were again rec¬ 
onciled. It was agreed that the Roman 
world should be divided among the 
three conspirators, who were called 
triumvirs. Antony was to take Gaul; 
Lepidus, Spain; and Octavianus, Africa 
and Sicily. They decided upon the 
proscription of their mutual enemies, 
each giving up his friends to the others, 
the most celebrated of the victims being 
Cicero the orator. Antony and Octavi- 
anus departed in 42 for Macedonia, 
where the united forces of their enemies, 
Brutus and Cassius, formed a powerful 
army, which was, however, speedily de¬ 
feated at Philippi. Antony next visited 
Athens, and thence proceeded to Asia. 
In Cilicia he ordered Cleopatra, queen 
of Egypt, to apologize for her inso¬ 
lent behavior to the triumviri. She ap¬ 
peared in person, and her charms 
fettered him forever. He followed her 
to Alexandria, where he bestowed not 
even a thought upon the affairs of the 
world, till he was aroused by a report 
that hostilities had commenced in Italy 
between his own relatives and Octavia¬ 
nus. A short war followed, which was 
decided in favor of Octavianus before 
the arrival of Antony in Italy. A recon¬ 
ciliation was effected, which was sealed 
by the marriage of Antony with Octavia, 
he sister of Octavianus. A new division 
of the Roman dominions was now made 
fin 40), by which Antony obtained the 
east, Octavianus the west. After his 
return to Asia Antony gave himself up 
entirely to Cleopatra, assuming the 
style of an Eastern despot, and 60 
alienating many of his adherents and 
embittering public opinion against him 
at Rome. At length war was declared 
at Rome against the Queen of Egypt, 
and Antony was deprived of his consul¬ 
ship and government. Each party 
assembled its forces, and Antony lost, 
in the naval battle at Actium (b.c. 31), 
the dominion of the world. He followed 
Cleopatra to Alexandria, and on the 
arrival of Octavianus his fleet and 
cavalry deserted, and his infantry 
was defeated. Deceived by a false re¬ 
port which Cleopatra had disseminated 
of her death, he fell upon his own sword 
(b.c. 30). 

ANTONY, Mark. See Antonius, Mar¬ 
cus. 

AN'TRIM, a county of Ireland, prov¬ 
ince of Ulster, in the northeast of the 
island; area, 762,080 acres, of which 
about a third are arable. The eastern 
and nothern districts are comparatively 
mountainous, with tracts of heath and 
bog, but no part rises to a great height. 
The principal towns are Belfast, Bally¬ 
mena, and Larne. Pop. 461,240.—The 
town of Antrim, at the north end of 
Lough Neagh, is a small place with a 
pop. of 1385. 

ANT'WERP, the chief port of Bel¬ 
gium, and the capital of a province of 
the same name, on the Scheldt, about 
50 miles from the open sea. The cathe¬ 
dral, with a spire 400 feet high, one of the 


largest and most beautiful specimens of 
Gothic architecture in Belgium, con¬ 
tains Rubens’s celebrated masterpieces, 
the Descent from the Cross, the Eleva¬ 
tion of the Cross, and The Assumption. 
The other churches of note are St. 
James’s, St. Andrew’s, and St. Paul’s, 
all enriched with paintings by Rubens, 



Antwerp cathedral, from the egg market. 


Vandyck, and other masters. Antwerp 
is mentioned as early as the 8th cen¬ 
tury, and in the 11th and 12th it had at¬ 
tained a high degree of prosperity. In 
the 16th century it is said to have had 
a pop. of 200,000. The wars between 
the Netherlands and Spain greatly in¬ 
jured its commerce, which was almost 
ruined by the closing of the navigation 
of the Scheldt in accordance with the 
peace of Westphalia (1648). It was only 
in the 19th century that its prosperity 
revived.—Pop. 282,000. The province 
consists of a fertile plain 1100 sq. miles 
in area, and has a pop. of 825,156. 

A'NUS, the opening at the lower or 
posterior extremity of the alimentary 
canal through which the excrement or 
waste products of digestion are ex¬ 
pelled. 

AN'VIL, an instrument on which 
pieces of metal are laid for the purpose 
of being hammered. The common 
smith’s anvil is generally made of seven 
pieces; namely, the core or body; the 
four corners for the purpose of enlarging 
its base; the projecting end, which con¬ 
tains a square hole for the reception of a 
set or chisel to cut off pieces of iron; and 
the beak or conical end, used for turn¬ 
ing pieces of iron into a circular form, 
etc. These pieces are each separately 
welded to the core and hammered so as 
to form a regular surface with the whole. 
When the anvil has received its due form 
it is faced with steel, and is then tem¬ 
pered in cold water. The smith’s anvil 
is generally placed loose upon a wooden 
block. The anvil for heavy operations, 
such as the forging of ordnance and 
shafting, consists of a huge iron block 
deeply embedded, and resting on piles 
of masonry. 

AOR'TA, in anatomy, the great artery 
or trunk of the arterial system, proceed¬ 
ing from the left ventricle of the heart, 


and giving origin to all the arteries ex¬ 
cept the pulmonary. It first rises to¬ 
ward the top of the breast-bone, when 
it is called the ascending aorta;; then 
makes a great curve, called the trans¬ 
verse or great arch of the aorta, whence 
it gives off branches to the head and 
upper extremities; thence proceeding 
toward the lower extremities, under the 
name of the descending aorta, it gives 
off branches to the trunk; and finally 
divides into the two iliacs, which supply 
the pelvis and lower extremities. 

APACHES (a-pa'chez), a warlike race 
of Indians inhabiting the more unsettled 
parts of the United States adjoining 
Mexico, and also the north of Mexico. 
They live chiefly on horseback, support 
themselves by the chase and plunder, 
and they still maintain their independ¬ 
ence and hostility to the whites. 

AP'ANAGE, an allowance which the 
younger princes of a reigning house in 
some European countries receive from 
the revenues of the country, generally 
together with a grant of public domains, 
that they may be enabled to live in a 
manner becoming their rank. 

APARTMENT HOUSES, houses built 
to accommodate a number of families 
each in its own set of rooms, which form 
a separate dwelling with an entrance of 
its own. The term is chiefly used in 
America, where such dwellings are of 
comparatively recent introduction. In 
New York, Chicago, and other Ameri¬ 
can cities there are now great blocks of 
such houses, which provide excellent and 
commodious dwellings at a lower rent 
than if each were a separate building. 

APE, a common name of a number of 
quadrumanous animals inhabiting the 
Old World (Asia and the Asiatic islands, 
and Africa), and including a variety of 
species. The word ape was formerly 
applied indiscriminately to all quad¬ 
rumanous mammals; but it is now 
limited to the anthropoid or man-like 
monkeys. The family includes the 
chimpanzee, gorilla, orang-outang, etc., 
and has been divided into three genera, 
Troglodytes, Simia, and Hylob&tes. See 
Chimpanzee, Gibbon, Gorilla, Orang, etc. 

AP'ENNINES, a prolongation of the 
Alps, forming the “backbone of Italy.” 
Beginning at Savona, on the Gulf of 
Genoa, the Apennines traverse the whole 
of the peninsula and also cross over into 
Sicily, the Strait of Messina being re¬ 
garded merely as a gap in the chain. 
The average height of the mountains 
composing the range is about 4000 feet, 
and nowhere do they reach the limits of 
perpetual snow, though some summits 
exceed 9000 feet in height. Monte 
Corno, called also Gran Sasso d’ltalia 
(Great Rock of Italy), which rises among 
the mountains of the Abruzzi, is the 
loftiest of the chain, rising to the height 
of 9541 feet, Monte Majella (9151) being 
next. Monte Gargano, which juts out 
into the Adriatic from the ankle of 
Italy, is a mountainous mass upward 
of 5000 feet high, completely separated 
from the main chain. On the Adriatic 
side the mountains descend more ab¬ 
ruptly to the sea than on the western or 
Mediterranean side, and the streams are 
comparatively short and rapid. On the 
western side are the valleys of the Arno, 
Tiber, Garigliano, and Volturno, the 












APERIENT 


APOLLO 


largest rivers that rise in the Apennines, 
and the only ones of importance in the 
peninsular portion of Italy. They con¬ 
sist almost entirely of limestone rocks, 
and are exceedingly rich in the finest 
marbles. On the south slopes volcanic 
masses are not uncommon. Mount 
Vesuvius, the only active volcano on 
the continent of Europe, is an instance. 
The lower slopes are well clothed with 
vegetation, the summits are sterile and 
bare. 

APE'RIENT, a medicine which, in 
moderate doses, gently but completely 
opens the bowels: examples, castor-oil, 
Epsom salts, senna, etc. 

APHA'SIA, in pathology, a symptom 
of certain morbid conditions of the 
nervous system, in which the patient 
loses the power of expressing ideas by 
means of words, or loses the appropriate 
use of words, the vocal organs the while 
remaining intact and the intelligence 
sound. There is sometimes an entire 
loss of words as connected with ideas, 
and sometimes only the loss of a few. 
In one form of the disease, called 
aphemia, the patient can think and 
write, but cannot speak; in another, 
called agraphia, he can think and speak, 
but cannot express his ideas in writing. 
In a great majority of cases, where post¬ 
mortem examinations have been made, 
morbid changes have been found in the 
left frontal convolution of the brain. 

APHE'LION, that part of the orbit of 
the earth or any other planet in which 
it is at the point remotest from the sun. 

APHO'NIA, in pathology, the greater 
or less impairment, or the complete loss 
of the. power of emitting vocal sound. 
The slightest and less permanent forms 
often arise from extreme nervousness, 
fright, and hysteria. Slight forms of 
structural aphonia are of a catarrhal 
nature, resulting from more or less con¬ 
gestion and tumefaction of the mucous 
and submucous tissues of the larynx 
and adjoining parts. Severer cases are 
frequently occasioned by serious in¬ 
filtration into the submucous tissue, 
with or without inflammation of the 
mucous membrane of the larynx and 
of its vicinity. The voice may also be 
affected in different degrees by inflam¬ 
matory affections of the fauces and 
tonsils; by tumors in these situations; 
by morbid growths pressing on or im¬ 
plicating the larynx or trachea; by 
aneurisms; and most frequently by 
chronic laryngitis and its consequences, 
especially thickening, ulceration, etc. 

APH'ORISM, a brief, sententious say¬ 
ing, in which a comprehensive meaning 
is involved, as “Familiarity breeds con¬ 
tempt”; "Necessity has no law.” 

APHRODITE (af-ro-dl'te), the god¬ 
dess of love among the Greeks; usually 
regarded as equivalent to the Roman 
Venus. A festival called Aphrodisia 
was celebrated to her in various parts 
of Greece, but especially in Cyprus. 
See Venus. 

APHTHAE (af'the), a disease occurring 
especially in infants, but occasionally 
seen in old persons, and consisting of 
small white ulcers upon the tongue, 
gums, inside of the lips, and palate, 
resembling particles of curdled milk: 
commonly called thrush or milk- 
thrush. 


A'PIA, the chief place and trading 
center of the Samoa Islands, on the 
north side of the island of Upolu. 

A'PIOS, a genus of leguminous climb¬ 
ing plants producing edible tubers on 
underground shoots. An American 
species has been used as a substitute 
for the potato, but its tubers, though 
numerous, are small. 

A'PIS, a bull to which divine honors 
were paid by the ancient Egyptians, 
who regarded him as a symbol of Osiris. 
At Memphis he had a splendid residence, 
containing extensive walks and courts 



Apis. 


for his entertainment, and he was waited 
upon by a large train of priests, who 
looked upon his every movement as 
oracular. He was not suffered to live 
beyond twenty-five years, being secretly 
killed by the priests and thrown into a 
sacred well. Another bull, character¬ 
ized by certain marks, as a black color, 
a triangle of white on the forehead, a 
white crescent-shaped spot on the right 
side, etc., was selected in his place. His 
birthday was annually celebrated, and 
his death was a season of public mourn¬ 
ing. 

A'PITJM, a genus of umbelliferous 
plants, including celery. 

APLANAT'IC, in optics, a term 
specifically applied to reflectors, lenses, 
and combinations of them, capable of 
transmitting light without spherical 
aberration. An aplanatic lens is a lens 
constructed of different media to correct 
the effects of the unequal refrangibility 
of the different rays. 

APOC'ALYPSE, the name frequently 
given to the last book of the New Testa¬ 
ment, in the English version called The 
Revelation of St. John the Divine. It 
is generally believed that the Apoca¬ 
lypse was written by the apostle John 
in his old age (95-97 a.d.) in the Isle of 
Patmos, whither he had been banished 
by the Roman Emperor Domitian. 
Anciently its genuineness was main¬ 
tained by Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, 
Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and 
many others; while it was doubted by 
Dionysius of Alexandria, Cyril of Jeru¬ 
salem, Chrysostom, and, nearer our 
own times, by Luther and a majority of 
the eminent German commentators. 
The Apocalypse has been explained 
differently by almost every writer who 
has ventured to interpret it, and has 
furnished all sorts of sects and fanatics 
with quotations to support their creeds 
or pretensions. The modem interpret¬ 
ers may be divided into three schools 
—namely, the historical school, who 
hold that the prophecy embraces the 
whole history of the church and its foes 


from the time of its writing to the end 
of the world; the Praeterists, who hold 
that the whole or nearly the whole of 
the prophecy has been already fulfilled, 
and that it refers chiefly to the triumph 
of Christianity over Paganism and 
Judaism; and the Futurists, who throw 
the whole prophecy, except the first 
three chapters, forward upon a time not 
yet reached by the church—a period of 
no very long duration, which is immedi¬ 
ately to precede Christ’s second coming. 

APOCALYPTIC NUMBER, the mystic 
number 666 found in Rev. xiii. 18. As 
early as the 2d century ecclesiastical 
writers found that the name Antichrist 
was indicated by the Greek characters 
expressive of this number. By Irenaeus 
the word Lateinos was found in the 
letters of the number, and the Roman 
empire was therefore considered to be 
Antichrist. Protestants generally be¬ 
lieve it has reference to the Papacy, 
and, on the other hand, Catholics con¬ 
nect it with Protestantism. 

APOCAR'POUS, in botany, a term 
applied to such fruits as are the produce 
of a single flower, and are formed of one 
carpel, or a number of carpels free and 
separate from each other. 

APOC'RYPHA, a term applied in the 
earliest churches to various sacred or 
professedly inspired writings, sometimes 
given to those whose authors were 
unknown, sometimes to those with a 
hidden meaning, and sometimes to those 
considered objectionable. The term is 
specially applied to the fourteen un¬ 
dermentioned books which were writ¬ 
ten during the two centuries preceding 
the birth of Christ: the first and second 
Books of Esdras, Tobit, Judith, the rest 
of the Book of Esther, the Wisdom of 
Solomon, the Wisdom of Jesus the son 
of Sirach, or Ecclesiasticus, Baruch the 
Prophet, the Song of the Three Children, 
Susanna and the Elders, Bel and the 
Dragon, the Prayer of Manasses, and 
the first and second Books of Macca¬ 
bees. 

AP'OGEE (-je), that point in the orbit 
of the moon or a planet where it is at 
its greatest distance from the earth; 
properly this particular part of the 
moon’s orbit. 

APOLLINA'RIS WATER, a natural 

aerated water, belonging to the class of 
acidulated soda waters, and derived 
from the Apollinarisbrunnen, a spring 
in the valley of the Ahr, near the Rhine, 
in Rhenish Prussia, forming a highly 
esteemed beverage. 

APOL'LO, son of Zeus (Jupiter) and 
Leto (Latona), who, being persecuted by 
the jealousy of Hera (Juno), after tedious 
wanderings and nine days’ labor, was 
delivered of him and his twin sister, 
Artemis (Diana), on the island of Delos. 
Skilled in the use of the bow, he slew the 
serpent Python on the fifth day after 
his birth; afterward, with his sister 
Art&nis, he killed the children of Niobe. 
He aided Zeus in the war with the 
Titans and the giants. He destroyed 
the Cyclopes, because they forged the 
thunderbolts with which Zeus killed 
his son and favorite Asklepios (iEscu- 
lapius). According to some traditions 
he invented the lyre, though this is 
generally ascribed to Hermes (Mercury). 
Apollo was originally the sun-god; and 


P. E.—5 






APOLOGUE 


APPARENT 


though in Homer he appears distinct 
from Helios (the sun), yet his real 
nature is hinted at even here by the 
epithet Phoebus, that is, the radiant or 
beaming. In later times the view was 
almost universal that Apollo and Helios 
were identical. From being the god of 
light and purity in a physical sense he 



Apollo, from a bas-relief at Rome. 


gradually became the god of moral 
and spiritual light and purity, the 
source of all intellectual, social, and 
political progress. He thus came to be 
regarded as the god of song and proph¬ 
ecy, the god that wards off and heals 
bodily suffering and disease, the insti- 
tutor and guardian of civil and political 
order, and the founder of cities. His 
worship was introduced at Rome at an 
early period, probably in the time of the 
Tarquins. Among the ancient statues 
of Apollo that have come down to us, 
the most remarkable is the one called 
the Apollo Belvidere, from the Belvidere 
Gallery in the Vatican at Rome. This 
statue was found in the ruins of An- 
tium in 1503, and was purchased by 
Pope Julian II. It is now supposed to 
be a copy of a Greek statue of the third 
century b.c., and dates probably from 
the reign of Nero. 

APOLOGUE (ap'o-log), a story or 
relation of fictitious events intended to 
convey some useful truths. It differs 
from a parable in that the latter is drawn 
from events that pass among mankind, 
whereas the apologue may be founded 
on supposed actions of brutes or inani¬ 
mate things. jEsop’s fables are good 
examples of apologues. 

APOL'OGY, a term at one time ap¬ 
plied to a defense of one who is accused, 
or of certain doctrines called in question’. 
Of this nature are the Apologies of 
Socrates, attributed respectively to Plato 
and Xenophon. The name passed over 
to Christian authors, who gave the name 
of apologies to the writings which were 
designed to defend Christianity against 
the attacks and accusations of its 
enemies, particularly the pagan philoso¬ 
phers, and to justify its professors be¬ 
fore the emperors. Of this sort were 
those by Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, 
Tertullian, Tatian, and others. 

APOPHTHEGM (ap'o-them), a short 
pithy sentence or maxim. Julius Caesar 
wrote a collection of them, and we have 
a collection by Lord Bacon. 


AP'OPLEXY, abolition or sudden 
diminution of sensation and voluntary 
motion, from suspension of the func¬ 
tions of the cerebrum, resulting from 
congestion or rupture of the blood¬ 
vessels of the brain and resulting pres¬ 
sure on this organ. In a complete 
apoplexy the person falls suddenly, is 
unable to move his limbs or to speak, 
gives no proof of seeing, hearing, or 
feeling, and the breathing is stertorous 
or snoring, like that of a person in deep 
sleep. The premonitory symptoms of 
this dangerous disease are drowsiness, 
giddiness, dulness of hearing, frequent 
yawning, disordered vision, noise in the 
ears, vertigo, etc. It is most frequent 
between the ages of fifty and seventy. 
A large head, short neck, full chest, 
sanguine and plethoric constitution, and 
corpulency are generally considered 
signs of predisposition to it; but the 
state of the heart’s action, with a ple¬ 
thoric condition of the vascular system, 
has a more marked influence. Out of 
63 cases carefully investigated only 10 
were fat and plethoric, 23 being thin, 
and the rest of ordinary habit. Among 
the common predisposing causes are 
long and intense thought, continued 
anxiety, habitual indulgence of the 
temper and passions, sedentary and 
luxurious living, sexual indulgence, 
intoxication, etc. More or less complete 
recovery from a first and second attack 
is common, but a third is almost in¬ 
variably fatal. 

APOSTASY, a renunciation of opin¬ 
ions or practices and the adoption of 
contrary ones, usually applied to renun¬ 
ciation of religious opinions. It is al¬ 
ways an expression of reproach. What 
one party calls apostasy is termed by 
the other conversion. Catholics, also, 
call those persons apostates who for¬ 
sake a religious order or renounce their 
religious vows without a lawful dis¬ 
pensation. 

A POSTERIO'RI. See A priori. 

APOS'TLES, the twelve men whom 
Jesus selected to attend him during his 
ministry, and to promulgate his religion. 
Their names were as follows: Simon 
Peter, and Andrew his brother; James, 
and John his brother, sons of Zebedee; 
Philip; Bartholomew; Thomas; Mat¬ 
thew; James, the son of Alpheus; Leb- 
beus his brother, called Judas or Jude; 
Simon, the Canaanite; and Judas 
Iscariot. To these were subsequently 
added Matthias (chosen by lot in place of 
Judas Iscariot) and Paul. The Bible 
gives the name of apostle to Barnabas 
also, who accompanied Paul on his mis¬ 
sions (Acts xiv. 14). In a wider sense 
those preachers who first taught Chris¬ 
tianity in heathen countries are some¬ 
times termed apostles; for example, St. 
Denis, the apostle of the Gauls; St. 
Boniface, the apostle of Germany; 
St. Augustin, the apostle of England; 
Francis Xavier, the apostle of the 
Indies; Adalbert of Prague, apostle of 
Prussia Proper. During the life of the 
Savior the apostles more than once 
showed a misunderstanding of the 
object of his mission, and during his 
sufferings evinced little courage and 
firmness of friendship for their great and 
benevolent Teacher. After his death 
they received the Holy Ghost on the 


day of Pentecost, that they might be 
enabled to fulfil the important duties 
for which they had been chosen. Their 
subsequent history is only imperfectly 
known. According to one interpreta¬ 
tion of Matthew xvi. 18 Christ seems to 
appoint St Peter the first of the apos¬ 
tles; and the pope claims supreme 
authority from the power which Christ 
thus gave to St. Peter, of whom all the 
popes, according to the Catholic dogma, 
are successors in an uninterrupted line. 

APOSTLES’ CREED, a well-known 
formula or declaration of Christian 
belief, formerly believed to be the work 
of the apostles themselves, but it can 
only he traced to the 4th century. See 

APOSTROPHE, a rhetorical figure by 
which the orator changes the course of 
his speech, and makes a short impas¬ 
sioned address to one absent as if he 
were present, or to things without life 
and sense as if they had life and sense. 
The same term is also applied to a 
comma when used to contract a word, or 
to mark the possessive case, as in 
“John’s book.” 

APOTH'ECARY, in a general sense, 
one who keeps a shop or laboratory for 
preparing, compounding, and vending 
medicines, and for the making up of 
medical prescriptions. 

APOTHEO'SIS, a solemnity among 
the ancients by which a mortal was 
raised to the rank of the gods. 

APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS (ap-pa- 
la'chi-an), also called Alleghanies, a vast 
mountain range in N. America extend¬ 
ing for 1300 miles from Cape Gasp6, on 
the Gulf of St. Lawrence, s.w. to Ala¬ 
bama. The system has been divided 
into three great sections: the northern 
(including the Adirondacks, the Green 
Mountains, the White Mountains, etc.), 
from Cape Gasp6 to New York; the cen¬ 
tral (including a large portion of the 
Blue Ridge, the Alleghanies proper, and 
numerous lesser ranges), from New York 
to the valley of the New River; and the 
southern (including the continuation of 
the Blue Ridge, the Black Mountains, 
the Smoky Mountains, etc.), from the 
New River southward. The chain con¬ 
sists of several ranges generally parallel 
to each other, the altitude of the indi¬ 
vidual mountains increasing on ap¬ 
proaching the south. The highest peaks 
rise over 6600 feet (not one at all ap¬ 
proaching the snow-level), but the mean 
height is about 2500 feet. Lake Cham¬ 
plain is the only lake of great importance 
in the system, but numerous rivers of 
considerable size take their rise here. 
Magnetite, hematite, and other iron ores 
occur in great abundance, and the coal- 
measures are among the most extensive 
in the world. Gold, silver, lead, and 
copper are also found, but not in paying 
quantities, while marble, limestone, fire- 
clay, gypsum, and salt abound. The 
forests covering many of the ranges 
yield large quantities of valuable timber, 
such as sugar-maple, white birch, beech, 
ash, oak, cherry tree, white poplar, white 
and yellow pine, etc., while they form 
the haunts of large numbers of bears, 
panthers, wild cats, and wolves. 

APPANAGE. See Apanage. 

APPAR'ENT, among mathematicians 
and astronomers, applied to things as 



























APPARITION 


APPLE 


they appear to the eye, in distinction 
from what they really are. Thus they 
speak of apparent motion, magnitude, 
distance, height, etc. The apparent 
magnitude of a heavenly body is the 
angle subtended at the spectator’s eye 
by the diameter of that body, and this, 
of course, depends on the distance as 
well as the real magnitude of the body; 
apparent motion is the motion a body 
seems to have in consequence of our own 
motion, as the motion of the sun from 
east to west, etc. 

APPARITION, according to a belief 
held by some, a disembodied spirit man¬ 
ifesting itself to mortal sight; according 
to the common theory an illusion invol¬ 
untarily generated, by means of which 
figures or forms, not present to the 
actual sense, are nevertheless depic¬ 
tured with a vividness and intensity 
sufficient to create a temporary belief of 
their reality. Such illusions are now 
generally held to result from an over¬ 
excited brain, a strong imagination, or 
some bodily malady. In perfect health 
the mind not only possesses a control 
over its powers, but the impressions of 
the external objects alone occupy its 
attention, and the play of imagination 
is consequently checked, except in sleep, 
when its operations are relatively more 
feeble and faint. But in the unhealthy 
state of the mind, when its attention is 
partly withdrawn from the contempla¬ 
tion of external objects, the impressions 
of its own creation, or rather reproduc¬ 
tion, will either overpower or combine 
themselves with the impressions of ex¬ 
ternal objects, and thus generate illu¬ 
sions which in the one case appear alone, 
while in the other they are seen pro¬ 
jected among those external objects to 
which the eyeball is directed. This 
theory explains satisfactorily a large 
majority of the stories of apparitions; 
still there are some which it seems in¬ 
sufficient to account for. In recent 
times, though the belief in ghosts of the 
old and orthodox class may be said to 
have almost died out, a new and kindred 
faith has arisen, that of Spiritualism. 

APPEAL', in legal phraseology, the 
removal of a cause from an inferior tri¬ 
bunal to a superior, in order that the 
latter may revise, and if it seem needful 
reverse or amend, the decision of the 
former. 

APPENDICITIS, an inflammation of 
the vermiform appendix. The V. appen¬ 
dix is found in all except a very few 
mammals, and varies in size from a mere 
rudiment to a large and very useful part 
of the intestine. It is smallest in flesh¬ 
eating animals, and in man is from three 
to six inches long, with a diameter about 
that of an ordinary lead pencil or less. 
It comes off the csecum, or blind gut, of 
the large intestine and, in man, has no 
function whatsoever. As it opens upon 
the intestine, it sometimes receives for¬ 
eign substances, including bacteria, the 
irritation from which sets up inflamma¬ 
tion which is often followed by suppura¬ 
tion and perforation, necessitating an 
operation by which it is removed. 
Appendicectomy (the operation) is now 
commonplace and safe. Typical symp¬ 
toms of appendicitis are pain in the 
region (right side of the abdomen below 
the navel), fever, constipation, and 


pain on pressure. These four symptoms 
usually accompany the disease. Early 
operation has saved thousands of lives 
which otherwise would have been lost 
through inflammation of the appendix. 



Large intestine, showing the appendix. 


Autopsies show that, two-thirds of the 
human race are afflicted with appen¬ 
dicitis. The disease is comparatively 
rare in persons past middle life. 

AP'PETITE, in its widest sense, means 
the natural desire for gratification, either 
of the body or the mind; but is generally 
applied to the recurrent and intermit¬ 
tent desire for food. A healthy appetite 
is favored by work, exercise, plain liv¬ 
ing, and cheerfulness; absence of this 
feeling, or defective appetite, indi¬ 
cates diseased action of the stomach, 
or of the nervous system or circula¬ 
tion, or it may result from vicious habits. 
Depraved appetite, or a desire for un¬ 
natural food, as chalk, ashes, dirt, 
soap, etc., depends often in the case of 
children on vicious tastes or habits; in 
grown up persons it may be symptomatic 
of dyspepsia, pregnancy, or chlorosis. 
Insatiable or canine appetite or voracity 
when it occurs in childhood is gener¬ 
ally symptomatic of worms; in adults 
common causes are pregnancy, vi¬ 
cious habits, and indigestion caused 
by stomach complaints or gluttony, 
when the gnawing pains of disease are 
mistaken for hunger. 




Construction of the Appian Way. 

APPIAN WAY, the oldest and most 
renowned Roman road, was constructed 
during the censorship of Appius Clau¬ 


dius Caecus (b,c. 313-310). It was built 
with large square stones on a raised 
platform, and was made direct from the 
ates of Rome to Capua, in Campania, 
t was afterward extended through 
Samnium and Apulia to Brundusium, 
the modern Brindisi. It was partially 
restored by Pius VI., and in 1850-53 it 
was excavated by order of Pius IX. as 
far as the eleventh milestone from Rome. 

APPIUS CLAUDIUS, surnamed Caecus, 
or the blind, an ancient Roman, elected 
censor b.c. 312, which office he held 
four years. While in this position he 
made every effort to weaken the power 
of the plebs, and constructed the road 
and aqueduct named after him. He 
was subsequently twice consul, and 
once dictator. In his old age he became 
blind, but in b.c. 280 he made a famous 
speech in which he induced the senate 
to reject the terms of peace fixed by 
Pyrrhus. He is the [earliest Roman 
writer of prose and verse whose name 
we know. 

APPIUS CLAUDIUS CRASSUS, one 
of the Roman decemvirs, appointed b.c. 
451 to draw up a new code of laws. 
He and his colleagues plotted to retain 
their power permanently, and at the 
expiry of their year of office refused to 
give up their authority. The people 
were incensed against them, and the 
following circumstances led to their 
overthrow. Appius Claudius had con¬ 
ceived an evil passion for Virginia, the 
daughter of Lucius Virginius, then ab¬ 
sent with the army in the war with the 
-<Equi and Sabines. At the instigation of 
Appius, Marcus Claudius, one of his 
clients, claimed Virginia as the daughter 
of one of his own female slaves, and the 
decemvir, acting as judge, decided that 
in the meantime she should remain in 
the custody of the claimant. Virginius, 
hastily summoned from the army, ap¬ 
peared with his daughter next day in 
the forum, and appealed to the people; 
but Appius Claudius again adjudged 
her to Marcus Claudius. Unable to 
rescue his daughter, the unhappy father 
stabbed her to the heart. The decemvirs 
were deposed by the indignant people 
b.c. 449, and Appius Claudius died in 
prison or was strangled. 

APPLE, the fruit of a well-known tree 
of the nat. order Rosacese, or the tree 
itself. The apple belongs to the tem¬ 
perate regions of the globe, over which 
it is almost universally spread and 
cultivated. The tree attains a mod¬ 
erate height, with spreading branches; 
the leaf is ovate; and the flowers are 
produced from the wood of the former 
year, but more generally from very 
short shoots or spurs from wood of two 
years’ growth. The original of all the 
varieties of the cultivated apple is the 
wild crab, which has a small and ex¬ 
tremely sour fruit, and is a native of 
most of the countries of Europe. The 
apple was probably introduced into 
Britain by the Romans. To the facility 
of multiplying varieties by grafting is 
to be ascribed the amazing extension 
of the sorts of apples. Many of the more 
marked varieties are known by general 
names, as pippins, codlins, rennets, etc. 
Apples for the table are characterized 
by a firm juicy pulp, a sweetish acid 
flavor, regular form, and beautiful 














APPLE OF DISCORD 


APTERYX 


coloring; those for cooking by the prop¬ 
erty of forming by the aid of heat into 
a pulpy mass of equal consistency, as 
also by their large size and keeping 
properties'! apples for cider must have a 
considerable degree of astringency, with 
richness of juice. The propagation of 
apple-trees is accomplished by seeds, 
cuttings, suckers, layers, budding, or 
grafting, the last being almost the uni¬ 
versal practice. The tree thrives best 
in a rich deep loam or marshy clay, but 
will thrive in any soil provided it is not 
too wet or too dry. The wood of the 
apple-tree or the common crab is hard, 
close-grained, and often richly colored, 
and is suitable for turning and cabinet 
work. The fermented juice of the crab 
is employed in cookery and medicine. 

APPLE OF DISCORD, according to 
the story in the Greek mythology, the 
golden apple thrown into an assembly 
of the gods by the goddess of discord 
(Eris), bearing the inscription “for the 
fairest.” Aphrodite (Venus), Hera 
(Juno), and Pallas (Minerva) became 
competitors for it, and its adjudication 
to the first by Paris so inflamed the 
jealousy and hatred of Hera to all of the 
Trojan race (to which Paris belonged) 



Apricot. 


that she did not cease her machinations 
till Troy was destroyed. 

APPLE OF SODOM, a fruit described 
by old writers as externally of fair 
appearance, but turning to ashes when 
plucked; probably the fruit of Solanum 
sodomeum. 

AP'PLETON, a city and the county 
seat of Outagamie Co., Wis., 100 miles 
n.w. of Milwaukee, on the Chicago and 
Northwestern, and Chicago, Milwaukee, 
and St. Paul railroads. It is situated 
on the falls of the Fox river, which by 
a series of dams is navigable for steam¬ 
boats, and, with a fall of about fifty 
feet, supplies extensive water power for 
various manufactures, of which paper is 
the most important. Pop. 17,185. 

APPOGGIATURA (ap-poj-a-to'ra), in 
music, a small additional note of em¬ 
bellishment preceding the note to which 
it is attached, and taking away from 
the principal note a portion of its time. 

APPOINT'MENT, a term in English 
law signifying the exercise of some 
power, reserved in a conveyance or 
settlement, of burdening, selling, or 
otherwise disposing of the lands or 


property conveyed. Such a reserved 
power is termed a power of appointment. 

APPOMATTOX COURT-HOUSE, a 
village in Virginia, 20 miles e. of 
Lynchburg. Here, on 9th April, 1865, 
Gen. Lee surrendered to Gen. Grant, 
and thus virtually concluded the - civil 
war. 

APPORTIONMENT, the process by 
which congress, after each census, fixes 
the number of representatives to which 
the various states of the union are en¬ 
titled. The first apportionment was fixed 
by the constitution, every 30,000 popu¬ 
lation being entitled to a representa¬ 
tive. The number grew with each 
decade until now, with 45 states in the 
union, instead of 13, each constituency 
has 193,175 population, with a total of 
386 representatives. 

APPOSITION, in grammar, the rela¬ 
tion in which one or more nouns or sub¬ 
stantive phrases or clauses stand to a 
noun or pronoun, which they explain 
or characterize without being predicated 
of it, and with which they agree in case; 
as Cicero, the orator, lived in the first 
century before Christ; the opinion, that 
a severe winter is generally followed by 
a good summer, is a vulgar error. 

APPRAIS'ER, a person employed to 
value property, and duly licensed to do 
so by license taken out every year. The 
valuation must be duly set down in 
writing, and there is a certain fixed scale 
of charges for the appraiser’s services. 

APPREHEN'SION, the seizing of a 
person as a criminal whether taken in 
the act or on suspicion, and with or 
without a warrant, a warrant being 
necessary when the person apprehend¬ 
ing is not present at the commission of 
the offense. See Arrest. 

APPRENTICE, one bound by in¬ 
denture to serve some particular indi¬ 
vidual or company of individuals for a 
specified time, in order to be instructed 
in some art, science, or trade. 

APPROPRIATION, the act of desig¬ 
nating a certain sum of money, or of 
other property, for a specific use, as 
an appropriation for the army, navy, 
police, etc. In the United States the 
constitution provides that “no money 
shall be drawn from the treasury but 
in consequence of appropriations made 
by law.” 

APPROXIMATION, a term used in 
mathematics to signify a continual 
approach to a quantity required, when 
no process is known for arriving at it 
exactly. Although, by such an approxi¬ 
mation, the exact value of a quantity 
cannot be discovered, yet, in practice, 
it may be found sufficiently correct; 
thus the diagonal of a square, whose 
sides are represented by unity, is \/ 2, 
the exact value of which quantity can¬ 
not be obtained; but its approximate 
value may be substituted in the nicest 
calculations. 

A'PRICOT, a fruit of the plum genus 
which was introduced into Europe from 
Asia more than three centuries before 
Christ, and into England in the first 
half of the 16th century. It is a na¬ 
tive of Armenia and other parts of 
Asia and also of Africa. The apricot is 
a low tree, of rather crooked growth, 
with somewhat heart-shaped leaves and 
sessile flowers. The fruit is sweet, more 


or less juicy, of a yellowish color, about 
the size of the peach, and resembling 
it in delicacy of flavor. The wood is 
coarsely grained and soft. Apricot- 
trees are chiefly raised aganist walls, 
and are propagated by budding and 
grafting. 

APRIES (a'pri-ez), Pharaoh-Hophra 
of Scripture, the eighth king of the 
twenty-sixth Egyptian dynasty. He 
succeeded his father Psamuthius in 590 
or 588 b.c. The Jews under Zedekiah 
revolted against their Babylonian op¬ 
pressors and allied themselves with 
Apries, who was, however, unable to 
raise the siege of Jerusalem, which was 
taken by Nebuchadnezzar. A still more 
unfortunate expedition against Cyrene 
brought about revolt in his army, in 
endeavoring to suppress which Apries 
was defeated and slain about b.c. 569. 

A'PRIL, the fourth month of the year. 
The strange custom of making fools on 
the 1st of April by sending people upon 
errands and expeditions which end in 
disappointment, and raise a laugh at 
the expense of the person sent, has been 
connected with the miracle plays of the 
middle ages, in which the Savior was 
represented as having been sent, at this 
period of the year, from Annas to 
Caiaphas and from Pilate to Herod. 

A PRIO'RI (“from what goes be¬ 
fore”), a phrase applied to a mode of 
reasoning by which we proceed from 
general principles or notions to partic¬ 
ular cases, as opposed to a posteriori 



Apteryx. 


(“from what comes after”) reasoning, 
by which we proceed from knowledge pre¬ 
viously acquired. Mathematical proofs 
are of the a priori kind; the conclusions 
of experimental science are a posteriori. 
It is also a term applied to knowledge 
independent of all experience. 

AP'SIS, pi. AP'SIDES or APSI'DES, 
in astron. one of the two points of the 
orbit of a heavenly body situated at the 
extremities of the major axis of the 
ellipse formed by the orbit, one of the 
points being that at which the body is 
at its greatest and the other that at 
which it is at its least distance from its 
primary. In regard to the earth and 
the other planets, these two points 
correspond to the aphelion and peri¬ 
helion; and in regard to the moon they 
correspond to the apogee and perigee. 
The line of the apsides has a slow for¬ 
ward angular motion in the plane of the 
planet’s orbit, being retrograde only in 
Venus. This in the earth’s orbit pro¬ 
duces the anomalistic year. See Anom¬ 
aly. 

APTERYX, a nearly extinct genus of 
cursorial birds, distinguished from the 











The Sultan's Pew at 
Constantinople 


Pilgrims on the Derb-el-rtaj, or Pilgrim s Way to Mecca 


DAMASCUS 


In an Ottoman Mosque 


EGYPT 


MAA, 


Railway Station on Mecca 


Old Fort at Kalaat Muadhdham 


V" Smut. 


SHAFAH \ 
&GOO 

& T ° 

WL iOOGG 


The bird s-eye view 
of the new Mecca Rail 
way has been drawn 
with the aid of some 
of the most recent 
maps of the district 
An excellent geo 
graphical chart w ill be 
found in Mr D G 
Hogarth s Arabia, 
where the heights ol 
the bills and mountain 
ranges are shown w ith 
much greater accu 
racy than In the ordi 
nary atlases 


New Mosque where Mahomed Knelt in Prayer at Tebuk 


Railway Station at Maan 


Inspection Carriage on Mecca Railway 


AFR/CA/V 


Strange Results of Erosion at Medain Saleh 

ndge 400 ft blgh ol • deep red color worn by wind at* 




Where Mahomed lies buried 


Great Kook T omb at Nahathean City of Medain Saleh 
i*atinir from the lint reolury ol Cbn»tian era 


Old Guardhouse on 


rmm 


wte,. 




The Railway Track Beneath the Shade 


The Crowd of Pilgrims in Mecca 


ourse, mainly strategical and religious. When completed it will rivet the grasp of the Turk on the sacred i* ' * 
mows the track of the old pilgrims’way. The chief northerly port is Damascus from which the railway , x ' 
bends towards the southeast, passing a small oasis named Tebuk at a point 145 miles south of Maan. | |!, I , , S 
city it reaches Mecca, the sacred city of Mahomed, at which point the pilgrims mingle with the human sti 1 1 




































































































































APULEIUS 


ARABIA 


ostriches by having three toes with a 
rudimentary hallux, which forms a 
spur. They are natives of the South 
Island of New Zealand; are totally wing¬ 
less and tailless, with feathers resem¬ 
bling hairs; about the size of a small 
goose; with long beak some- thing like 
that of a curlew. They are entirely 
nocturnal, feeding on insects, worms, 
£Lod seeds 

APULEIUS, or APPULEIUS (ap-u- 
le'us), author of the celebrated satirical 
romance in Latin called the Golden Ass, 
born at Madaura, in Numidia, in the 
early part of the 2d century a.d.; the 
time of his death unknown. 

APU'LIA, a department or division 
in the southeast of Italy, on the Adri¬ 
atic, composed of the provinces of 
Foggia, Bari, and Lecce; area, 8539 sq. 
miles; pop. 1,949,423. 

A'QUA, a word much used in phar¬ 
macy and old chemistry.—Aqua fortis 
( = strong water), a weak and impure 
nitric acid. It has the power of eating 
into steel and copper, and hence is used 
by engravers, etchers, etc.—Aqua ma¬ 
rina, a fine variety of beryl. See Aqua¬ 
marine.—Aqua regia, or aqua regalis 
( = royal water), a mixture of nitric 
and hydrochloric acids, with the power 
of dissolving gold and other noble 
metals.—Aqua Tofana, a poisonous 
fluid made about the middle of the 
17th century by an Italian woman 
Tofana or Toffania, who is said to have 
procured the death of no fewer than 600 
individuals by means of it. It con¬ 
sisted chiefly, it is supposed, of a solu¬ 
tion of crystallized arsenic. — Aqua 
vitae ( = water of life), or simply aqua, 
a name familiarly applied to the whisky 
of Scotland, corresponding in meaning 
with the usquebaugh of Ireland, the 
eau de vie (brandy) of the French. 

AQUA FORTIS. See above article. 

A'QUAM ARINE', a name given to 
some of the finest varieties of beryl of a 
sea-green or blue color. Varieties of 
topaz are also so called. 

AQUA'RIUM, a vessel or series of 
vessels constructed wholly or partly of 
glass and containing salt or fresh water 
in which are kept living specimens of 
marine or fresh-water animals along 
with aquatic plants. 

AQUARIUS, the Water-bearer; a sign 
in the zodiac which the sun enters about 
the 21st of January: so called from the 
rains which prevail at that season in 
Italy and the East. 

AQUATINT, a method of etching on 
copper by which a beautiful effect is 
produced, resembling a fine drawing in 
sepia or Indian ink. The special char¬ 
acter of the effect is the result of sprink¬ 
ling finely powdered resin or mastic 
over the plate, and causing this to ad¬ 
here by heat, the design being previously 
etched, or being now traced out. The 
nitric acid (aqua fortis) acts only in the 
interstices between the particles of resin 
or mastic, thus giving a slightly gran¬ 
ular appearance. 

A'QUEDUCT, an artificial channel or 
conduit for the conveyance of water from 
one place to another: more particularly 
applied to structures for conveying 
water from distant sources for the sup¬ 
ply of large cities. Aqueducts were 
extensively used by the Romans and, 


many of them still remain in different 
places on the Continent of Europe, 
some being still in use. The Pont du 
Gard in the south of France, 14 miles 
from Nismes, is still nearly perfect, and 
is a grand monument of the Roman oc¬ 
cupation of this country. The ancient 
aqueducts were constructed of stone or 
brick, sometimes tunneled through hills, 
and carried over valleys and rivers on 
arches. The Pont du Gard is built of great 
blocks of stone; its height is 160 feet; 
length of the highest arcade, 882 feet. 
The aqueduct at Segovia, originally 
built by the Romans, has in some parts 
two tiers of arcades 100 feet high, is 
2921 feet in length, and is one of the 
most admired works of antiquity. One 
of the most remarkable aqueducts of 
modern times is that constructed by 
Louis XIV. for conveying the waters of 
the Eure to Versailles. The extensive 
application of metal pipes has rendered 
the construction of aqueducts of the 
old type unnecessary; but what may be 
called aqueduct bridges are still fre¬ 
quently constructed in connection with 
water-works for the supply of towns, 
and where canals exist canal aqueducts 
are common, since the water in a canal 
must be kept on a perfect level. In the 
United States there are some important 
aqueducts, as the Croton, about 40£ 
miles long, bringing water to New York. 

A'QUEOUS HUMOR, the limpid 
watery fluid which fills the space be¬ 
tween the cornea and the crystalline 
lens in the eye. 

AQUEOUS ROCKS, mechanically 
formed rocks, composed of matter 
deposited by water. Called also sedi¬ 
mentary or stratified rocks. See Geol¬ 
ogy. 

AQUIFOLIA'CEiE, a nat. order of 
plants; the holly tribe. The species con¬ 
sist of trees and shrubs, and the order 
includes the common holly and the 
Paraguayan tea tree. 

AQUILA (ak'we-la), a town in Italy, 
capital of the province of Aquila, 55 
miles northeast of Rome. Pop. 14,720. 
—The province has an area of 2509 sq. 
miles, a population of 371,332. 

AQUINAS (a-kwi'nas), St. Thomas, a 
celebrated scholastic divine, born about 
1227, died in 1274; descended from the 
counts of Aquino, in the Kingdom of the 
Two Sicilies. He was educated at the 
Benedictine monastery of Monte Casino, 
and at the University of Naples, where 
he studied for six years. In 1257 he 
received the degree of doctor from the 
Sorbonne, and began to lecture on 
theology, rapidly acquiring the highest 
reputation. In 1263 he had been 
offered the archbishopric of Naples by 
Clement IV., but refused the offer. He 
died on his way to Lyons to attend a 
general council for the purpose of unit¬ 
ing the Greek and Latin Churches. 

ARABESQUE (ar'a-besk), a species 
of ornamentation for enriching flat sur¬ 
faces, often consisting of fanciful figures, 
human or animal, combined with floral 
forms. There may be said to be three 
periods and distinctive varieties of 
arabesque: (a) the Roman or Graeco- 
Roman, introduced into Rome from the 
East when pure art was declining; (b) 
the Arabesque of the Moors as seen in 
the Alhambra, introduced by them into 


Europe in the middle ages; (c) Modern 
Arabesque, which took its rise in Italy 
in the Renaissance period of art. The 
arabesques of the Moors, who are pro¬ 
hibited by their religion from repre- 



Renaissance Arabesque. 


senting animal forms, consist essentially 
of complicated ornamental designs based 
on the suggestion of plant-growth, com¬ 
bined with extremely complex geomet¬ 
rical forms. 

ARA'BI PASHA, Egyptian soldier and 
revolutionary leader, born 1837. In 
Sept., 1881, he headed a military revolt, 
and was for a time virtually dictator of 
Egypt. Britain interfered, and after 
a short campaign, beginning with the 
bombardment of Alexandria and end¬ 
ing with the defeat of Arabi and his 
army at Tel-el-Kebir, he surrendered, 
and was banished to Ceylon. 

ARA'BIA, a vast peninsula in the s.w. 
of Asia, bounded on the n. by the great 
Syro-Babylonian plain, n.e. by the 
Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman, s. 
or s.e. by the Indian Ocean, and s.w. 
by the Red Sea and Gulf of Suez. Its 
length from n.w. to s.e. is about 1800 
miles, its mean breadth about 600 
miles, it area rather over 1,000,000 sq. 
miles, its pop. probably not more than 
6,000,000. Roughly described, it ex¬ 
hibits a central tableland surrounded 
by a series of deserts, with numerous 
scattered oases, while around this is a 
line of mountains parallel to and ap¬ 
proaching the coasts, and with a narrow 
rim of low grounds between them and 
the sea. In its general features Arabia 
resembles the Sahara, of which it may 
be considered a continuation. Like the 
Sahara it has its wastes of loose sand, 
its stretches of bare rocks and stones, 
its mountains devoid of vegetation, its 
oases with their wells and streams, their 
palm-groves and cultivated fields— 
islands of green amid the surround¬ 
ing desolation. Rivers proper there 
are none". The chief towns are Mecca, 
the birthplace of Mohammed; Medina, 
the place to which he fled from Mecca 
(a.d. 622), and where he is buried; 
Hodeida, a seaport exporting Mocha 
coffee; Aden, on the s.w. coast, a 
strongly fortified garrison belonging 
to Britain; Sana, the capital of Yemen; 
and Muscat, the capital of Oman, a 
busy port with a safe anchorage. The 
chief towns of the interior are Hail, the 
residence of the emir of northern Nejd; 
Oneizah, under the same ruler; and 
Riad, capital of southern Nejd. The 
most flourishing portions of Arabia are 
in Oman, Hadramaut, and Nejd. In the 
two former are localities with numerous 
towns and villages and settled indus¬ 
trious populations like that of Hin¬ 
dustan or Europe. 

The climate of Arabia in general is 
marked by extreme heat and dryness. 
The date-palm furnishes the staple 
article of food; the cereals are wheat, 






ARABIAN NIGHTS 


ARARAT 


barley, maize, and millet; various sorts 
of fruit flourish; coffee and many aro¬ 
matic plants and substances, such as 
gum-arabic, benzoin, mastic, balsam, 
aloes, myrrh, frankincense, etc., are 
produced. There are also cultivated in 
different parts of the peninsula, accord¬ 
ing to the soil and climate, beans, rice, 
lentils, tobacco, melons, saffron, colo- 
cynth, poppies, olives, etc. Sheep, 
goats, oxen, the horse, the camel, ass, 
and mule supply man’s domestic and 
personal wants. Among wild animals 
are gazelles, ostriches, the lion, panther, 
hyena, jackal, etc. Among mineral 
products are saltpeter, mineral pitch, 
petroleum, salt, sulphur, and several 
precious stones, as the carnelian, agate, 
and onyx. 

The Arabs, as a race, are of middle 
stature, of a powerful though slender 
build, and have a skin of a more or less 
brownish color; in towns and the up¬ 
lands often almost white. Their fea¬ 


Bedouin Arabs.—1. 2, Of the Jordan. 

tures are well cut, the nose straight, the 
forehead high. They are naturally 
active, intelligent, and courteous; and 
their character is marked by temper¬ 
ance, bravery, and hospitality. The 
first religion of the Arabs, the worship 
of the stars, was supplanted by the 
doctrines of Mohammedanism, which 
succeeded rapidly in establishing itself 
throughout Arabia. 

The history of the Arabs previous to 
Mohammed is obscure. The earliest 
inhabitants are belived to have been of 
the Semitic race. Jews in great num¬ 
bers migrated into Arabia after the 
destruction of Jerusalem, and, making 
numerous proselytes, indirectly favored 
the introduction of the doctrines of 
Mohammed. With his advent the 
Arabians uprose and united for the pur¬ 
pose of extending the new creed; and 
under the caliphs—the successors of 
Mohammed—they attained great power, 
and founded large and powerful king¬ 
doms in three continents. (See Caliphs.) 
On the fall of the caliphate of Bagdad 
in 1258 the decline set in, and on the 
expulsion of the Moors from Spain the 
foreign rule of the Arabs came to an 
end. In the 16th century Turkey sub¬ 
jected Hejaz and \ emen, and received 


the nominal submission of the tribes 
inhabiting the rest of Arabia. The sub¬ 
jection of Hejaz has continued down-to 
the present day; but Yemen achieved 
its independence in the 17th century, 
and maintained it till 1871, when the 
territory again fell into the hands of 
the Turks. In 1839 Aden was occupied 
by the British. Oman early became 
virtually independent of the caliphs, 
and grew into a well-organized king¬ 
dom. In 1507 its capital, Maskat or 
Muscat, was occupied by the Portu¬ 
guese, who were not driven out till 1659. 
The Wahabis appeared toward the end 
of the 18th century, and took an im¬ 
portant part in the political affairs of 
Arabia, but their progress was inter¬ 
rupted by Mohammed Ali, pasha of 
Egypt, and they suffered a complete 
defeat by Ibrahim Pasha. He ex¬ 
tended his power over most of the 
country, but the events of 1840 in Syria 
compelled him to renounce all claims to 


3, Of the Hauran, 4, 5, Of the Desert. 

Arabia. The Hejaz thus again became 
subject to Turkish sway. Turkey has 
since extended its rule not only over 
Yemen, but also over the district of 
El-Hasa on the Persian Gulf. 

ARABIAN NIGHTS; or, THE THOU¬ 
SAND AND ONE NIGHTS, a celebrated 
collection of Eastern tales, long current 
in the East, and supposed to have been 
derived by the Arabians from India, 
through the medium of Persia. They 
were first introduced into Europe in the 
beginning of the 18th century by means 
of the French translation of Antoine 
Galland. Of some of them no original 
MS. is known to exist; they were taken 
down by Galland from the oral com¬ 
munication of a Syrian friend. The 
story which connects the tales of the 
Thousand and One Nights is as follows: 
The Sultan Shahriyar, exasperated by 
the faithlessness of his bride, made 
a law that every one of his future wives 
should be put to death the morning 
after marriage. At length one of them, 
Shahrazad, the generous daughter of 
the grand-vizier, succeeded in abolish¬ 
ing the cruel custom. By the charm of 
her stories the fair narrator induced the 
sultan to defer her excution every day 
till the dawn of another, by breaking 


off in the middle of an interesting tale 
which she had begun to relate. In the 
form we possess them these tales belong 
to a comparatively late period, though 
the exact date of their composition is 
not known. Lane, who published a 
translation of a number of the tales, 
with valuable notes, is of opinion that 
they took their present form some time 
between 1475 and 1525. Two complete 
English translations have recently been 
printed, giving many passages that 
previous translators had omitted on the 
score of morality or decency. 

ARABIC FIGURES, the characters 
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0; of Indian origin, 
introduced into Europe by the Moore. 
They did not come into general use till 
after the invention of printing. 

AR'ACK, a spirituous liquor manu¬ 
factured in the East Indies from a great 
variety of substances. It is often dis¬ 
tilled from fermented rice, or it may be 
distilled from the juice of the cocoanut 
and other palms. . Pure arack is clear 
and transparent, with a yellowish or 
straw color, and a peculiar but agree¬ 
able taste and smell; it contains at least 
52 to 54 per cent of alcohol. 

AR'AGO, Dominique Frangois, a 
French physicist, born in 1786; died at 
Paris in 1853. After studying in the 
Polytechnic School at Paris, he was 
appointed a secretary of the Bureau des 
Longitudes. In 1809 he was elected to 
the Academy of Sciences, and appointed 
a professor of the Polytechnic School. 
He distinguished himself by his re¬ 
searches in the polarization of light, 
galvanism, magnetism, astronomy, etc. 
His discovery of the magnetic proper- 
erties of substances devoid of iron, 
made known to the Academy of Sciences 
in 1824, procured him the Copley medal 
of the Royal Society of London in 1825. 
A further consideration of the same sub¬ 
ject led to the equally remarkable dis¬ 
covery of the production ofjnagnetism 
by electricity. 

ARAGON', Kingdom of, a former 
province or kingdom of Spain, now 
divided into the three provinces of 
Teruel, Iluesca, and Saragossa; bounded 
on the n. by the Pyrenees, n.w. by Na¬ 
varre, w. by Castile, s. by Valencia, and 
e. by Catalonia; length about 190 miles, 
average breadth 90 miles; area, 14,726 
sq. miles. It was governed by its own 
monarchs until the union with Castile 
on the marriage of Ferdinand and Isa¬ 
bella (1469). Pop. 909,261. 

A'RAM, Eugene, a self-taught scholar 
whose unhappy fate has been made the 
subject of a ballad by Hood and a 
romance by Lord Lytton, was born in 
Yorkshire, 1704, executed for murder, 
1759. 

ARAP'AHOES, a tribe of American 
Indians located near the head-waters of 
the Arkansas and Platte rivers, not now 
of any importance. 

AR'ARAT, a celebrated mountain in 
Armenia, forming the point of contact 
of Russia with Turkey and Persia; an 
isolated volcanic mass showing two 
separate cones known as the Great and 
Little Ararat, resting on a common base 
and separated by a deep intervening 
depression. The elevations are: Great 
Ararat, 16,916 feet; Little Ararat, 12,- 
840 feet; the connecting ridge, 8780 feet. 















ARBITRATION 


ARCHBISHOP 


Vegetation extends to 14,200 feet, which 
marks the snow-line. According to tra¬ 
dition Mount Ararat was the resting- 
place of the ark when the waters of the 
flood abated. 

ARBITRATION, the process by which 
a dispute over property, or other dispute, 
is settled without recourse to law, by 
judges selected and agreed upon by the 
disputants. The history of arbitration 
is quite old, and this method of settling 
disputes is really older than legal forms 
which are an outgrowth of it. In medie¬ 
val times international disputes were 
arbitrated by the pope of Rome, and the 
Vatican still is regarded, by Roman 
Catholic powers, as a permanent court 
of arbitration. Among the numerous 
cases more recently decided by arbitra¬ 
tion are those of the Alabama claims 
(1871), of the Samoan dispute between 
Great Britain, Germany, and the United 
States in 1889, of the Delagoa Bay 
dispute and the Bering Sea dispute in 
in 1892, and of the Alaskan boundary 
dispute in 1897. 

ARBOR DAY, a holiday, general in 
the United States, used for the planting 
of trees by school children. The day 
usually falls in early May. Its purpose 
is the encouragement of the idea of 
reforesting the country. 

AR'BORICULTURE includes the cul¬ 
ture of trees and shrubs, as well as all 
that pertains to the preparation of the 
soil, the sowing of the seeds, and the 
treatment of the plants in their young 
state, the preparation of the land previ¬ 
ous to their final transplantation, their 
just adaptation to soil and situation, 
their relative growth and progress to 
maturity, their management during 
growth, and the proper season and 
period for felling them. 

ARBOR VITAS, the name of several 
coniferous trees allied to the cypress, 
with flattened branchlets, and small 
imbricated or scale-like leaves. The 
common Arbor Vitae is a native of North 
America, where it grows to the height 
of 40 or 50 feet. The young twigs have 
an agreeable balsamic smell. The Chi¬ 
nese Arbor Vitae, common in Britain, 
yields a resin which was formerly 
thought to have medicinal virtues. 

AR'BUTUS, a genus of plants belong¬ 
ing to the Ericaceae, or heath order, and 
comprising a number of small trees and 
shrubs, natives chiefly of Europe and 
N. America. 

ARC, a portion of a curve line, espe¬ 
cially of a circle. It is by means of 
circular arcs that all angles are measured. 
—Electric or Voltaic arc, the luminous 
arch of intense brightness and exces¬ 
sively high temperature which is formed 
by an electric current in crossing over 
the interval of space between the carbon 

S oints of an electric lamp. See Arc- 
ght. 

ARC, Jeanne d\ See Joan of Arc. 
ARCADE, a series of arches supported 
on piers or pillars, used generally as a 
screen and support of a roof, or of the 
wall of a building, and having beneath 
the covered part an ambulatory as 
round a cloister, or a foot-path with 
shops or dwellings, as frequently seen 
in old Italian towns. Sometimes a 
porch or other prominent part of an 


important building is treated with 
arcades, as in the illustration. 

ARCA'DIA, the central and most 
mountainous partion of the Pelopon¬ 
nesus, the inhabitants of which in ancient 



Arcade. 


times were celebrated for simplicity of 
character and manners. Their occupa¬ 
tion was almost entirely pastoral, and 
thus the country came to be regarded 
as typical of rural simplicity and happi¬ 
ness. At the present day Arcadia forms 
a nomarchy of the Kingdom of Greece. 
Area, 2028 sq. miles; pop. 148,600. 

ARCH, a structure composed of sepa¬ 
rate pieces, such as stones or bricks, 



a, Abutments. t, Impost. p, Piers. 
v, Voussoirs or arch-stones. k, Keystone. 

S, Springers. In. Intrados. Ex. Extrados. 

having the shape of truncated wedges, 
arranged on a curved line, so as to retain 
their position by mutual pressure. 

ARCHAEAN (ar-ke'an) ROCKS, the 
oldest rocks of the earth’s crust, crystal¬ 
line in character, and embracing gran¬ 
ite, syenite, gneiss, mica-schist, etc., all 
devoid of fossil remains. These rocks 
underlie and are distinctly separate from 
the stratified and fossiliferous forma¬ 
tions, which indeed have chiefly taken 
origin from them. 

ARCILEOI/OGY, the science which 
takes cognizance of the history of nations 
and peoples as evinced by the remains, 
architectural, implemental, or otherwise, 
which belong to the earlier epoch of 
their existence. In a more extended 


sense the term embraces every branch 
of knowledge which bears on the origin, 
religion, laws, language, science, arts, 
and literature of ancient peoples. It is 
to a great extent synonymous with pre¬ 
historic annals, as a large if not the prin¬ 
cipal part of its field of study extends 
over those periods in the history of the 
human race in regard to which we pos¬ 
sess almost no information derivable 
from written records. Archaeology 
divides the primeval period of the 
human race, more especially as ex¬ 
hibited by remains found in Europe, 
into the stone, the bronze, and the iron 
age, these names being given in accord¬ 
ance with the materials employed for 
weapons, implements, etc., during the 
articular period. The stone age has 
een subdivided into the palaeolithic 
and neolithic, the former being that 
older period, in which the stone imple¬ 
ments were not polished as they are in 
the latter and more recent period. The 
bronze age, which admits of a similar 
subdivision, is that in which implements 
were of copper or bronze. In this age 
the dead were burned and their ashes 
deposited in urns or stone chests, 
covered with conical mounds of earth 
or cairns of stones. Gold and amber 
ornaments appear in this age. The iron 
age is that in which implements, etc., of 
iron begin to appear, although stone 
and bronze implements are found along 
with them. The word age in this sense 
(as explained under Age) simply denotes 
the stage at which a people has arrived. 
The phrase stone age, therefore, merely 
marks the period before the use of 
bronze, the bronze age that before the 
employment of iron, among any specific 
people. 

ARCHANGEL (ark-an'jel), an angel 
of superior or of the highest rank. The 
only archangel mentioned by name in 
Scripture is Michael in the Epistle of 
Jude. 

ARCHANGEL (ark-an'jel), a seaport, 
capital of the Russian government of 
same name, on the right bank of the 
northern Dwina, about 20 miles above 
its mouth in the White Sea. The port 
is closed for six months by ice. Arch¬ 
angel, founded in 1584, was long the 
only port which Russia possessed. Pop. 
19,540.—The province has an area of 
331,490 sq. miles; pop. 311,673. 

ARCHBISHOP (arch-), a chief bishop, 
or bishop over other bishops; a metropoli¬ 
tan prelate. The establishment of this 
dignity is to be traced up to an early 
period of Christianity, when the bishops 
and inferior clergy met in the capitals 
to deliberate on spiritual affairs, and the 
bishop of the city where the meeting 
was held presided. In England there 
are two (Protestant) archbishops—those 
of Canterbury and York; the former 
styled Primate of all England, the latter 
Primate of England. The Archbishop 
of Canterbury is the first peer of the 
realm, having precedence before all 
great officers of the crown and all dukes 
not of royal birth. He crowns the 
sovereign, and when he is invested with 
his archbishopric he is said to be en¬ 
throned. He can grant special licenses 
to marry at any time or place, and can 
confer degrees otherwise to be obtained 
only from the universities. 





















































ARCHDEACON 


ARCHITECTURE 


ARCHDEACON (arch-), an ecclesiasti¬ 
cal dignitary next in rank below a bishop, 
having a certain jurisdiction over a part 
of the diocese. From two to four arch¬ 
deacons are appointed by the bishops, 
under whom they perform their duties, 
and they hold courts which decide cases 
subject to an appeal to the bishop. 

ARCHER-FISH, a name given to a 
scaly-finned fish, about 6 inches long, 
inhabiting the seas around Java, which 



Archer-fish. 


has the faculty of shooting drops of 
water to the distance of 3 or 4 feet at 
insects, thereby causing them to fall 
into the water, when it seizes and de¬ 
vours them. The soft, and even the 
spiny portion of their dorsal fins are so 
covered with scales as to be scarcely dis¬ 
tinguishable from the rest of the body. 

ARCH'ERY, the art of shooting with 
a bow and arrow. The use of these 
weapons in war and the chase dates from 
thejearliest antiquity. Ishmael, we learn 
from Gen. xxi., “became an archer.” 


Cressy, Poitiers, and Agincourt, gained 
against apparently overwhelming odds, 
may be ascribed to the bowmen. Arch¬ 
ery disappeared gradually as firearms 
came into use, and as an instrument of 
war or the chase the bow is now con¬ 
fined to the most savage tribes of both 
hemispheres. But, though the bow has 
been long abandoned among civilized 
nations as a military weapon, it is still 
cherished as an instrument of healthful 
recreation, encouraged by archery clubs 
or societies. 

ARCHIMEDES (ar-ki-me'dez), a cele¬ 
brated ancient Greek physicist and 
eometrician, born at Syracuse, in 
icily, about 287 b.c. He devoted him¬ 
self entirely to science, and enriched 
mathematics with discoveries of the 
highest importance, upon which the 
moderns have founded their admeasure¬ 
ments of curvilinear surface and solids. 
Archimedes is the only one among the 
ancients who has left us anything satis¬ 
factory on the theory of mechanics and 
on hydrostatics. He first taught the 
hydrostatic principle to which his name 
is attached, “that a body immersed 
in a fluid loses as much in weight as the 
weight of an equal volume of the fluid,” 
and determined by means of it that an 
artist had fraudulently added too much 
alloy to a crown which King Hiero had 
ordered to be made of pure gold. He 
discovered the solution of this problem 
while bathing; and it is said to have 
caused him so much joy that he hastened 
home from the bath undressed, and 
crying out, Eureka! Eureka 1 “I have 
found it, I have found it!” Practical 
mechanics also received a great deal of 
attention from Archimedes, who boasted 
that if he had a fulcrum or standpoint he 
could move the world. He is the in¬ 
ventor of the compound pulley, prob¬ 
ably of the endless screw, the archi- 
medean screw, etc. During the siege of 
Syracuse by the Romans he is said to 
have constructed many wonderful ma¬ 
chines with which he repelled their 



The Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, Par- 
thians, excelled in the use of the bow; 
and, while the Greeks and Romans 
themselves made little use of it, they 
employed foreign archers as mercenaries. 
Coming to much more recent times, we 
find the Swiss famous as archers, but 
they generally used the arbalist or cross¬ 
bow, and were no match for their Eng¬ 
lish rivals, who preferred the long-bow. 
(See Bow.) The English victories of 


attacks, and he is stated to have set 
on fire their fleet by burning-glasses! 
At the moment when the Romans 
gained possession of the city by assault 
(212 b.c.) tradition relates that Archi¬ 
medes was slain while sitting in the 
market-place contemplating some math¬ 
ematical figures which he had drawn in 
the sand. 

ARCHIPEL'AGO, a term originally ap¬ 
plied to the jEgean, the sea lying be¬ 


tween Greece and Asia Minor, then to 
the numerous islands situated therein, 
and latterly to any cluster of islands. 

ARCHITEC'TURE, in a general sense, 
is the art of designing and constructing 
houses, bridges, and other buildings for 
the purposes of civil life; or, in a more 
limited but very common sense, that 
branch of the fine arts which has for 
its object the production of edifices not 
only convenient for their special pur¬ 
pose, but characterized by unity, 
beauty, and often grandeur.—The first 
habitations of man were such as nature 
afforded, or cost little labor to the 
occupant—caves, huts, and tents. But 
as soon as men rose in civilization and 
formed settled societies they began to 
build more commodious and comfortable 
habitations. The Egyptians are the 
most ancient nation known to us among 
whom architecture had attained the 
character of a fine art. Other ancient 
peoples among whom it had made 
great progress were the Babylonians, 
whose most celebrated buildings were 
temples, palaces, and hanging-gardens; 
the Assyrians, whose capital, Nineveh, 
was rich in splendid buildings; the 
Phoenicians, whose cities, Sidon, Tyre, 
etc., were adorned with equal mag¬ 
nificence; and the Israelites, whose 
temple was a wonder of architecture. 
But comparatively few acrhitectural 
monuments of these latter nations 
have remained till our day. 

This is not the case with the archi¬ 
tecture of Egypt, however, of which we 
possess ample remains in the shape of 
pyramids, temples, sepulchers, obelisks, 
etc. Egyptian chronology is far from 
certain, but the greatest of the archi¬ 
tectural monuments of the country, 
the pyramids of Ghizeh, are at least as 
old as 2800 or 2700 b.c. 

The earliest architectural remains of 
Greece are of unknown antiquity, and 
consist of massive walls built of huge 
blocks of stone. In historic times the 
Greeks developed an architecture of 
noble simplicity and dignity. This style 
is of modern origin compared with that 
of Egypt, and the earliest remains give 
indications that it was in part derived 
from the Egyptian. It is considered to 
have attained its greatest perfection 
in the age of Pericles, or about 460-430 
b.c. The great masters of this period 
were Phidias, Ictinus, Callicrates, etc. 
All the extant buildings are more or less 
in ruins. The most remarkable public 
edifices of the Greeks were temples, of 
which the most famous is the Parthenon 
at Athens. Their theaters were semi¬ 
circular on one side and square on the 
other, the semicircular part being 
usually excavated in the side of some 
convenient hill. This part, the audi¬ 
torium, was filled with concentric seats, 
and might be capable of containing 
20,000 spectators. A number exist in 
Greece, Sicily, and Asia Minor, and 
elsewhere. The Romans became ac¬ 
quainted with the architecture of the 
Greeks soon after 200 b.c., but it was 
not till about two centuries later that 
the architecture of Rome attained 
(under Augustus) its greatest perfection. 
Among the great works now erected 
were temples, aqueducts, amphitheaters, 
magnificent villas, triumphal arches. 

























ARC-LIGHT 


ARCTIC 


monumental pillars, etc. The amphi¬ 
theater differed from the theater in 
being a completely circular or rather 
elliptical building, filled on all sides 
with ascending seats for spectators and 
leaving only the central space, called 
the arena, for the combatants and 



public shows. The Colosseum is a stu- 
penduos structure of this kind. The 
thermae, or baths, were vast structures 
in which multitudes of people could 
bathe at once. Magnificent tombs were 
often built by the wealthy. Remains 
of private residences are numerous, and 
the excavations at Pompeii in particular 
have thrown great light on the internal 
arrangements of the Roman dwelling- 
house. 

In Constantinople, after its virtual 
separation from the Western Empire, 
arose a style of art and architecture 
which was practiced by the Greek 
Church during the whole of the middle 
ages. This is called the Byzantine 
style. The church of St. Sophia at Con¬ 
stantinople, built by Justinian (reigned 
527-565), offers the most typical speci¬ 
men of the style, of which the funda¬ 
mental principle was an application of 
the Roman arch, the dome being the 
most striking feature of the building. 
In the most typical examples the dome 
or cupola rests on four pendentives. 

After the dismemberment of the 
Roman Empire the beautiful works of 
ancient architecture were almost entire¬ 
ly destroyed by the Goths, Vandals, and 
other barbarians in Italy, Greece, Asia, 
Spain, and Africa; or what was spared 
by them was ruined by the fanaticism of 
the Christians. A new style of archi¬ 
tecture now arose, two forms of which 


man Romanesque flourished, especially 
in Normandy and England, from the 
11th to the middle of the 13th century. 
The semicircular arch is the most char¬ 
acteristic feature of this style. With 
the Lombard Romanesque were com¬ 
bined Byzantine features, and buildings 
in the pure Byzantine style were also 
erected in Italy, as the Church of St. 
Mark at Venice. 

The Germans were unacquainted with 
architecture until the time of Charle¬ 
magne (or Charles the Great, 742-814). 
He introduced into Germany the Byzan¬ 
tine and Romanesque styles. After¬ 
ward the Moorish or Arabian style 
had some influence upon that of the 
western nations, and thus originated the 
mixed style which maintained itself 
till the middle of the 13th century. 

The rise of the Renaissance style in 
Italy is the greatest event in the history 
of architecture after the introduction 
of the Gothic style. The Gothic style 
had been introduced into the country 



and extensively employed, but had 
never been thoroughly naturalized. The 
Renaissance is a revival of the classic 
style based on the study of the ancient 
models; and, having practically com¬ 
menced in Florence about the beginning 
of the 15th century, it soon spread 
with great rapidity over Italy and the 
greater part of Europe. The most 
illustrious architects of this early period 
of the style were Brunelleschi, who 
built at Florence the dome of the cathe¬ 
dral, the Pitti Palace, etc., besides 
many edifices at Milan, Pisa, Pesaro, 
and Mantua; Alberti, who wrote an 
important work on architecture, and 



Egyptian—Front of Temple of Isis at Phil®. 


the Lombard and the Norman Roman¬ 
esque, form important phases of art. 
The Lombard prevailed in north Italy 
and south Germany from the 8th or 9th 
to the 13th century (though the Lombard 
rule came to an end in 774); the Nor- 


erected many admired churches; Bra- 
mante, who began the building of St. 
Peter’s, Rome, and Michael Angelo, who 
erected its magnificent dome. On St. 
Peter’s were also employed Raphael, 
Peruzzi and San Gallo. The noblest 


building in this style of architecture in 
Britain is St. Paul’s, London, the work 
of Sir Christopher Wren. 

Within the past 17 years American 
architects (notably W. L. B. Jenney, of 
Chicago) invented a new method of 



Romanesque—Cathedral of Worms. 

construction for large private and public 
buildings, called “steel construction.” 
This consists of erecting a skeleton of 
steel beams and joists, all securely 
riveted together, forming a great united 
steel cage, around which are placed solid 
casings of fire-proof tiles. This fire¬ 
proof skeleton is then enclosed within 
walls and the interior finish added. 
Steel buildings of this kind are fire-proof, 
tornado-proof, and earthquake-proof. 

ARC-LIGHT, that species of the 
electric light in which the illuminating 
source is the current of electricity pass¬ 
ing between two sticks of carbon kept 



Arc-light: carbons magnified. 

a short distance apart, one of them 
being in connection with the positive, 
the other with the negative terminal of 
a battery or dynamo. 

AR'COT, two districts and a town of 
India, within the Presidency of Madras. 
North Arcot is an inland district with 
an area of 7256 sq. miles. The country 
is partly flat and partly mountainous, 
where intersected by the Eastern Gh&ts. 
Pop. 1,817,814.—South Arcot lies on the 
Bay of Bengal, and has two seaports, 
Cuddalor and Porto Novo. Pop. 1,814,- 
738.—The town Arcot is in North Arcot, 
on the Palar, about 70 miles w. by s. 
of Madras. Pop. 12,000. 

ARCTIC (ark'tik), an epithet given 
to the north pole from the proximity of 
the constellation of the Bear, in Greek 
called arktos. The Arctic Circle is an 
I imaginary circle on the globe, parallel 







































































































































ARCTIC OCEAN 


ARGENTINE REPUBLIC 


to the equator, and 23° 28' distant from 
the north pole. This and its opposite, 
the Antartic, are called the two polar 
circles. 

ARCTIC OCEAN, that part of the 
water surface of the earth which sur¬ 
rounds the north pole, and washes the 
northern shores of Europe, Asia, and 
America; its southern boundary roughly 
coinciding with the Arctic Circle (lat. 
66° 32' n.). It incloses many large 
islands, and contains large bays and 
gulfs which deeply indent the northern 
shores of the three continents. Its 
great characteristic is ice, which is 
nearly constant everywhere. 

ARCTIC REGIONS, the regions round 
the north pole, and extending from the 
pole on all sides to the Arctic Circle in 
lat. 66° 32' n. The Arctic or North Polar 
Circle just touches the northern head¬ 
lands of Iceland, cuts off the southern 
and narrowest portion of Greenland, 
crosses Fox’s Strait north of Hudson’s 
Bay, whence it goes over the American 
continent to Bering’s Strait. Thence 
it runs to Obdorsk at the mouth of the 
Obi, then crossing northern Russia, the 
White Sea, and the Scandinavian Penin¬ 
sula, returns to Iceland. Though much 
skill and heroism have been developed 
in the exploration of this portion of the 
earth, there is still an area round the 
pole estimated at 2,500,000 sq. miles, 
which is a blank to geographers. Many 
have adopted the belief in the existence 
of an open polar sea about the north 
ole. But this belief is not supported 
y any positive evidence. Valuable 
minerals, fossils, etc., have been dis¬ 
covered within the Arctic regions. In 
the archipelago north of the American 
continent excellent coal frequently 
occurs. The mineral cryolite is mined 
in Greenland. Fossil ivory is obtained 
in islands at the mouth of the Lena. In 
Scandinavia, parts of Siberia, and north¬ 
west America, the forest region extends 
within the Arctic Circle. The most 
characteristic of the natives of the Arctic 
regions are the Eskimos. The most 
notable animals are the white-bear, the 
musk-ox, the reindeer, and the whale¬ 
bone whale. Fur-bearing animals are 
numerous. The most intense cold ever 
registered in those regions was 74° below 
zero Fahr. The aurora borealis is a 
brilliant phenomenon of Arctic nights. 
See Polar Exploration. 

ARCTU'RUS, a fixed star of the first 
magnitude in the constellation of Bootes, 
and thought by some to be the nearest 
to our system of any of the fixed stars. 
It is one of the stars observed to have a 
motion of its own, and is a noticeable 
object in the northern heavens. 

ARDECHE(ar-dash'),a department in 
the south of France (Languedoc), on the 
west side of the Rhone, taking its name 
from the river ArdSche, which rises 
within it, and falls into the Rhone after 
a course of 46 miles; area, 2134 sq. 
miles. It is generally of a mountainous 
character, and contains the culminating 
point of the Cevennes. Silk and wine 
are produced. Annonay is the principal 
town, but Privas is the capital. Pop. 
353 564. 

ARDENNES (ar-den'), a frontier de¬ 
partment in the northeast of France; 
area, 2020 sq. miles, partly consisting 


of the Forest of Ardennes. Chief towns, 
M6zi6res (the capital), Rocroi, and 
Sedan. Pop. 315,589. 

A'REA, the superficial content of any 
figure or space, the quantity of surface 
it contains in terms of any unit. See 
Mensuration. 

ARE'NA, the inclosed space in the 
central part of the Roman amphi¬ 
theaters, in which took place the com¬ 
bats of gladiators or wild beasts. It 
was usually covered with sand or saw¬ 
dust to prevent the gladiators from 
slipping, and to absorb the blood. 

ARE'OLAR TISSUE, an assemblage 
of fibers and laminae pervading every 
part of the animal structure, and con¬ 
nected with each other so as to form 
innumerable small cavities, by means 
of which the various organs and parts 
of organs are connected together; called 
also Cellular Tissue and Connective 
Tissue.—In botany the term is some¬ 
times applied to the non-vascular sub¬ 
stance, composed entirely of untrans¬ 
formed cells, which forms the soft sub¬ 
stance of plants. 

AREOM'ETER, an instrument for 
measuring the specific gravity of liquids; 
a hydrometer (which see). 

AREQUIPA (a-ra-ke'pa), a city of 
Peru, 200 miles south of Cuzco, situated 
in a fertile valley, 7850 feet above sea- 
level. Pop. 30,000. 

ARES (a'rez). See Mars. 

AREZZO (a-ret'so), a city of central 
Italy, capital of a province of the same 
name in Tuscany, near the confluence 
of the Chiana with the Arno. It is the 
birthplace of Miecenas, Petrarch. Pietro 
Aretino, Redi, and Vasari. Pop. 44,350. 
—The province of Arezzo contains 1276 
sq. miles and 272,359 inhabitants. 

AR'GAND LAMP, a lamp named after 
its inventor, Aim6 Argand, a Swiss 
chemist and physician (born 1755, died 
1803), the distinctive feature of which 
is a burner forming a ring or hollow 
cylinder covered by a chimney, so that 
the flame receives a current of air both 
on the inside and on the outside. 

ARGEMONE (ar-jem'o-ne), a small 
genus of ornamental American plants 
of the poppy order. From the seeds is 
obtained an oil very useful to painters. 

AR'GENTINE REPUBLIC, formerly 
called the United Provinces of La Plata, 
a vast country of South America, the 
extreme length of which is 2300 miles, 
and the average breadth a little over 
500 miles, the total area exceeding 
1,200,000 sq. miles. It is bounded on 
the n. by Bolivia; on the e. by Paraguay, 
Brazil, Uruguay, and the Atlantic; on 
the s. by the Antartic Ocean; and on the 
w. by the Andes. It comprises four 
great natural divisions: (1) the Andine 
region, containing the provinces of 
Mendoza, San Jaun, Rioja, Catamarca, 
Tucuman, Salta, and Jujuy; (2) the 
Pampas, containing the provinces of 
Santiago, Santa Fe, Cordova, San Luis, 
and Buenos Ayres; with the territories 
Formosa, Pampa, and Chaco; (3) the 
Argentine Mesopotamia, between the 
rivers Parana and Uruguay, containing 
the provinces of Entre Rios and Corri- 
entes, and the territory Misiones; (4) 
Patagonia, including the eastern half of 
Tierra del Fuego. With the exception 
; of the n.w., where lateral branches of 


the Andes run into the plain for 150 or 
200 miles, and the province of Entre 
Rios, which is hilly, the characteristic 
feature of the country is the great 
monotonous and level plains called 
“pampas.” In the north these plains 
are partly forest-covered, but all the 
central and southern parts present vast 
treeless tracts, which afford pasture to 
immense herds of horses, oxen, and 
sheep, and are varied in some places by 
brackish swamps, in others by salt 
steppes. The great water-course of the 
country is the Parana, having a length 
of fully 2000 miles from its source in 
the mountains of Goyaz, Brazil, to its 
junction with the Uruguay, where 
begins the estuary of La Plata. The 
Parana is formed by the union of the 
Upper Paranu and Paraguay rivers, 
near the n.e. corner of the state. Im¬ 
portant tributaries are the Pilcomayo, 
the Vermejo, and the Salado. The 
Parana, Paraguay, and Uruguay are 
valuable for internal navigation. Many 
of the streams which tend eastward 
terminate in marshes and salt lakes, 
some of which are rather extensive. 
Not connected with the La Plata system 
are the Colorado and the Rio Negro, 
the latter formerly the southern bound¬ 
ary of the state, separating it from 
Patagonia. The source of the Negro is 
Lake Nahuel Huapi, in Patagonia (area, 
1200 sq. miles), in the midst of mag¬ 
nificent scenery. The level portions of 
the country are mostly of tertiary 
formation, and the river and coast 
regions consist mainly of alluvial soil 
of great fertility. In the pampas clay 
have been found the fossil remains of 
extinct Mammalia, some of them of 
colossal size. 

European grains and fruits, including 
the vine, have been successfully intro¬ 
duced, and are cultivated to some 
extent in most parts of the republic, 
but the great wealth of the state lies 
in its countless herds of cattle and horses 
and flocks of sheep, which are pastured 
on the pampas, and which multiply 
there very rapidly. Gold, silver, nickel, 
copper, tin, lead, and iron, besides 
marble, jasper, precious stones, and 
bitumen, are found in the mountainous 
districts of the n.w., while petroleum 
wells have been discovered on the Rio 
Vermejo; but the development of this 
mineral wealth has hitherto been greatly 
retarded by the want of proper means of 
transport. As a whole there are not 
extensive forests in the state except in 
the region of the Gran Chaco (which 
extends also into Bolivia), where there 
is known to be 60,000 square miles of 
timber. Thousands of square miles are 
covered with thistles, which grow to a 
great height in their season. Cacti also 
form great thickets. Peach and apple 
trees are abundant in some districts. 
The native fauna includes the puma, 
the jaguar, the tapir, the llama, the 
alpaca, the vicuna, armadillos, the rhea 
or nandu, a species of ostrich, etc. The 
climate is agreeable and healthful, 97° 
being about the highest temperature 
experienced. The rainfall is very scanty 
in some districts, and is nowhere very 
large. 

The river La Plata was discovered in 
1512 by the Spanish navigator Juan 









ARGONAUT 


ARIL 


Diaz de Solis, and the La Plata territory 
had been brought into the possession of 
Spain by the end of the 16th century. 
In 1810 the territory cast off the Span¬ 
ish rule, and in 1816 the independence 
of the United States of the Rio de la 
Plata was formally declared, but it was 
long before a settled government was 
established. The present constitution 
dates from 1853, being subsequently 
modified. The executive power is 
vested in a president—elected by the 
representatives of the fourteen provinces 
for a term of six years. A national con¬ 
gress of two chambers—a senate and a 
house of deputies—wields the legisla¬ 
tive authority, and the republic is mak¬ 
ing rapid advances in social and politi¬ 
cal life. The national revenue for 1901 
amounted to about $65,000,000, while 
the expenditure amounted to fully $70,- 
000,000; the public debt is about $390,- 
000,000. There are about 11,000 miles 
of railway opened. The external com¬ 
merce is important, the chief exports 
being wool, skins and hides, live animals, 
mutton, tallow, bones, corn, and flax. 
The imports are chiefly manufactured 
goods. The trade is largely with Brit¬ 
ain and France, and is increasing 
rapidly, the exports having advanced 
from $45,000,000 in 1876 to $150,000,- 
000 in 1901. The imports are over 
$100,000,000 annually. Buenos Ayres 
is the capital. Other towns are Cor¬ 
dova, Rosario, La Plata, Tucuman, Men¬ 
doza, and Corrientes. The population 
of the republic, which is rapidly in¬ 
creasing by immigration, was, in 1895, 
4,092,990; of the capital, 690,000. 

AR'GONAUT, a molluscous animal 
belonging to the dibranchiate or two- 
gilled cuttlefishes, distinguished by the 
females possessing a single-chambered 
external shell, not organically connected 



Argonaut. 


with the body of the animal. The males 
have no shell and are of much smaller 
size than the females. The shell is 
fragile, translucent, and boat-like in 
shape; it serves as the receptacle of the 
ova or eggs of the female, which sits 
in it with the respiratory tube or “fun¬ 
nel” turned toward the carina or “keel.” 
This famed mollusc swims only by eject¬ 
ing water from its funnel, and it can 
crawl in a reversed position, carrying 
its shell over its back like a snail. The 
argonaut, or paper-nautilus, must be 
carefully distinguished from the pearly- 
nautilus or nautilus proper. 

ARGONAUTS, in the legendary his¬ 
tory of Greece, those heroes who per¬ 
formed a hazardous voyage to Colchis, 
a far-distant country at the eastern 


extremity of the Euxine (Black Sea), 
with Jason in the ship Argo, for the pur¬ 
pose of securing a golden fleece, which 
was preserved suspended upon a tree, 
and under the guardianship of a sleep¬ 
less dragon. By the aid of Medea, 
daughter of the king of Colchis, Jason 
was enabled to seize the fleece, and, 
after many strange adventures, to reach 
his home at Iolcos in Thessaly. Among 
the Argonauts were Hercules, Castor 
and Pollux, Orpheus and Theseus. 

ARGO-NAVIS, the southern constel¬ 
lation of the Ship, containing 9 clusters, 
3 nebulae, 13 double and 540 single stars, 
of which about 64 are visible. 

AR'GOS, a town of Greece, in the 
northeast of the Peloponnesus, between 
the gulfs of Ailgina and Nauplia or 
Argos. This town and the surrounding 
territory of Argolis were famous from 
the legendary period of Greek history 
onward, the territory containing, be¬ 
sides Argos, Mycenae, where Agamem¬ 
non ruled, with a kind of sovereignty, 
over all the Peloponnesus. Argolis 
forms a nomarchy of the Kingdom of 
Greece; pop. 80,695. The capital is 
Nauplia. 

AR'GUMENT, a term sometimes used 
as synonymous with the subject of a 
discourse, but more frequently appro¬ 
priated to any kind of method employed 
for the purpose of confuting or at least 
silencing an opponent. 

AR'GUS, in Greek mythology, a 
fabulous being, said to have had a hun¬ 
dred eyes, placed by Juno to guard Io. 
Hence “argus-eyed,” applied to one who 
is exceedingly watchful. 

ARGUS-PHEASANT, a large, beauti¬ 
ful, and very singular species of pheas¬ 
ant, found native in the southeast of 
Asia, more especially in Sumatra and 
some of the other islands. The males 
measure from 5 to 6 feet from the tip 
of the beak to the extremity of the tail, 
which has two greatly elongated central 
feathers. The plumage is exceedingly 
beautiful, the secondary quills of the 
wings, which are longer than the pri¬ 
mary feathers, being each adorned with a 
series of ocellated or eye-like spots 
(whence the name—see Argus) of bril¬ 
liant metallic hues. The general body 
plumage is brown. 

ARGYLE, or ARGYLL (ar-gil'), an 
extensive county in the southwest of 
the Highlands of Scotland, consisting 
artly of mainland and partly of islands 
elonging to the Hebrides group. On 
the land side the mainland is bounded 
north by Inverness; east by Perth and 
Dumbarton; eslewhere surrounded by 
the Firth of Clyde and its connections 
and the sea; area, 3255 square miles (or 
over 2,000,000 acres), of which the 
islands comprise about 1000 square miles. 
The county is exceedingly mountainous, 
the chief summits being Bidean-nam- 
Bian (3766 ft.), Ben Laoigh (3708 ft.), 
Ben Cruachan (3611 ft.),Benmore, in Mull 
(3185 ft.), the Paps of Jura (2565 ft.), 
and Ben Arthur or the Cobbler (2891 ft.). 
There are several lakes, the principal of 
which is Loch Awe. The chief minerals 
are slate, marble, limestone, and granite. 
County town, Inveraray; others, Camp¬ 
beltown, Oban, and Dunoon. Pop. 
(1901), 73,665. 


ARGYLL, CAMPBELLS OF, a historic 
Scottish family, raised to the peerage in 
the person of Sir Duncan Campbell of 
Lochow, in 1445. The more eminent 
members are: (1) Archibald, 2d Earl, 
killed at the battle of Flodden, 1513.— 
Archibald, 5th Earl, who was the means 
of averting a collision between the Re¬ 
formers and the French troops in 1559; 
died 1575.—Archibald, 8th Earl and 
Marquis, born 1598; created a marquis 
by Charles I. At the Restoration he 
was committed to the Tower, and after¬ 
ward sent to Scotland, where he was 
tried for high treason, and beheaded in 
1661.—Archibald, 9th Earl, son of the 
preceding, was excluded from the gen¬ 
eral pardon by Cromwell in 1654 ; be¬ 
headed in 1685.—Archibald, 10th Earl 
and 1st Duke, died 1703; took an active 
part in the Revolution of 1688-89, which 
placed William and Mary on the throne. 
—-John, 2d Duke and Duke of Green¬ 
wich, born 1678, died 1743; served under 
Marlborough, and assisted at the sieges 
of Lisle and Ghent. He was long a sup¬ 
porter of Walpole, but his political ca¬ 
reer was full of intrigue. He is the 
Duke of Argyll in Scott’s Heart of Mid¬ 
lothian.—George Douglas Campbell, 
K.T., K.G., etc., 8th Duke (of U. King¬ 
dom, 1892), was born in 1823. In 1852 
he became lord privy seal under Lord 
Aberdeen, and again under Lord Palm¬ 
erston in 1859; postmaster-general in 
I860; secretary for India from 1868 to 
1874; again lord privy seal in 1880, but 
retired, being unable to agree with his 
colleagues on their Irish policy. He 
died in 1900. His. eldest son, the Mar¬ 
quis of Lome, married the Princess 
Louise, daughter of Queen Victoria, in 
1871. See Lome, Marquis of. 

ARIA, in music. See Air. 

ARIADNE (a-ri-ad'ne), in Greek myth- 
ology, a daughter of Minos, King of 
Crete. She gave Theseus a clue of 
thread to conduct him out of the laby¬ 
rinth after his defeat of the Minotaur. 
Theseus abandoned her on the Isle of 
Naxos, where she was found by Bacchus, 
who married her. 

ARIEGE (a-re-azh), a mountainous 
department of France, on the northern 
slopes of the Pyrenees, comprising the 
ancient countship of Foix and parts of 
Languedoc and Gascony. Area, 1890 
sq. miles; pop. 219,641. 

A'RIEL, the name of several person¬ 
ages mentioned in the Old Testament; 
in the demonology of the later Jews a 
spirit [of the waters. In Shakespeare’s 
Tempest, Ariel was the “tricksy spirit” 
whom Prospero had in his service. 

ARIES (a'ri-ez), the Ram, a northern 
constellation of 156 stars, of which fifty 
are visible. It is the first of the twelve 
signs in the zodiac, which the sun enters 
at the vernal equinox, about the 21st of 
March. The first point in Aries is that 
where the equator cuts the ecliptic in 
the ascending node, and from which the 
right ascensions of heavenly bodies are 
reckoned on the equator, and their 
longitudes upon the ecliptic. Owing to 
the precession of the equinoxes the sign 
Aries no longer corresponds with the 
constellation Aries, which it did 2000 
years ago. 

AR'IL, ARIL'LUS, in some plants, 
as in the nutmeg, an extra covering of 





ARISTARCHUS 


ARIZONA 


the seed, outside of the true seed-coats, 
proceeding from the placenta, partially 
investing the seed, and falling off 
spontaneously. It is either succulent 
or cartilaginous, colored, elastic, rough, 
or knotted. In the nutmeg it is known 
as mace. 

ARISTARCHUS (ar-is-tar'kus) an 
ancient Greek astronomer belonging to 
Samos, flourished between 280 and 264 
b.c., and first asserted the revolution of 
the earth about the sun; also regarded 
as the inventor of the sun-dial. 

ARISTIDES (ar-is-ti'dez), a states¬ 
man of ancient Greece, for his strict 
integrity surnamed the Just. He was 
one of the ten generals of the Athenians 
when they fought with the Persians at 
Marathon, b.c. 490. Next year he was 
eponymous archon, and in this office 
enjoyed such popularity that he excited 
the jealousy of Themistocles, who suc¬ 
ceeded in procuring his banishment by 
the ostracism (about 483). Three years 
after, when Xerxes invaded Greece with 
a large army, the Athenians hastened to 
recall him, and Themistocles now ad¬ 
mitted him to his confidence and coun¬ 
cils. In the battle of Platsea (479) he 
commanded the Athenians, and had a 
great share in gaining the victory. To 
defray the expenses of the Persian war 
he persuaded the Greeks to impose a 
tax, which should be paid into the hands 
of an officer appointed by the states 
collectively, and deposited at Delos. 
The confidence which was felt in his 
integrity appeared in their intrusting 
him with the office of apportioning the 
contribution. He died at an advanced 
age about b.c. 468, so poor that he was 
buried at the public expense. 

ARISTOC'RACY, a form of govern¬ 
ment by which the wealthy and noble, 
or any small privileged class, rules over 
the rest of the citizens; now mostly 
applied to the nobility or chief persons 

in si ctotp 

ARISTOPHANES (-tof'a-nez), the 
greatest comic poet of ancient Greece, 
born at Athens probably about the year 
444 b.c. ; died not later than b.c. 380. 
Little is known of his life. 

AR'ISTOTLE, a distinguished philos¬ 
opher and naturalist of ancient Greece, 
the founder of the Peripatetic school of 
philosophy, was born in 384 b.c. at 
Stagira, in Macedonia, died at Chalcis, 
b.c. 322. His father, Nicomachus, was 
physician to Amyntas II., king of Mace¬ 
donia, and claimed to be descended 
from ^Esculapius. Aristotle had lost 
his parents before he came, at about 
the age of seventeen, to Athens to study 
in the school of Plato. With that philoso¬ 
pher he remained for twenty years, be¬ 
came preeminent among his pupils, 
and was known as the “Intellect of the 
School.” Upon the death of Plato, 
348 b.c., he took up his residence at 
Atarneus, in Mysia, on the invitation 
of his former pupil Hermeias, the ruler 
of that city, on whose assassination by 
the Persians, 343 b.c., he fled to Mity- 
lene with his wife Pythia, the niece of 
Hermeias. During his residence at 
Mitylene he received an invitation from 
Philip of Macedon to superintend the 
education of his son Alexander, then in 
his fourteenth year. This relationship 
between the great, philosopher and the 


future conqueror continued for five or 
six years, during which the prince was 
instructed in grammar, rhetoric, poetry, 
logic, ethics, and politics, and in those 
branches of physics which had even 
then made some considerable progress. 
On Alexander succeeding to the throne 
Aristotle continued to live with him as 
his friend and councilor till he set out 
on his Asiatic campaign (334 b.c.). He 
returned to Athens and established his 
school in the Lyceum, a gymnasium at¬ 
tached to the temple of Apollo Lyceius, 
which was assigned to him by the state. 
He delivered his lectures in the wooded 
walks of the Lyceum while walking up 
and down with his pupils. From the 
action itself, or more probably from the 
name of the walks (peripatoi), his school 
was called Peripatetic. Pupils gathered 
to him from all parts of Greece, and his 
school became by far the most popular 
in Athens. It was during the time of 
his teaching at Athens that Aristotle 
is believed to have composed the great 
bulk of his works. On the death of 
Alexander a revolution occurred in 
Athens hostile to the Macedonian in¬ 
terests with which Aristotle was identi¬ 
fied. He therefore retired to Chalcis, 
where he soon after died. According 
to Strabo he bequeathed all his works 
to Theophrastus, who, with other dis¬ 
ciples of Aristotle, amended and con¬ 
tinued them. They afterward passed 
through various hands, till, about 50 
b.c., Andronicus of Rhodes put the 
various fragments together and classi¬ 
fied them according to a systematic 
arrangement. Many of the books bear¬ 
ing his name are spurious, others are of 
doubtful genuineness. 

ARITH'METIC is primarily the 
science of numbers. As opposed to 
algebra it is the practical part of the 
science. Although the processes of 
arithmetical operations are often highly 
complicated, they all resolve themselves 
into the repetition of four primary oper¬ 
ations: addition, subtraction, multipli¬ 
cation, and division. Of these the two 
latter are only complex forms of the two 
former, and subtraction again is merely 
a reversal of the process of addition. 
Little or nothing is known as to the 
origin and invention of arithmetic. 
Some elementary conception of it is in 
all probability coeval with the first 
dawn of human intelligence. In conse¬ 
quence of their rude methods of numera¬ 
tion, the science made but small advance 
among the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, 
and Romans, and it was not until the 
introduction of the decimal scale of 
notation and the Arabic, or rather 
Indian, numerals into Europe that any 
great progress can be traced. In this 
scale of notation every number is ex¬ 
pressed by means of the ten digits, 1, 2, 
3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0, by giving each digit 
a local as well as its proper or natural 
value. The value of every digit increases 
in a tenfold proportion from the right 
toward the left; *the distance of any 
figure from the right indicating the 
power of 10, and the digit itself the 
number of those powers intended to be 
expressed: thus 3464 = 3000 + 400 + 
60 + 4 = 3 X 10 s + 4 X 10 2 + 6 X 10 
+ 4. The earliest arithmetical signs 
appear to have been hieroglyphical, but 


the Eygptian hieroglyphics were too 
diffuse to be of any arithmetical value. 
The units were successive strokes to the 
number required, the ten an open circle, 
the hundred a curled palm-leaf, tho 
thousand a lotus flower, ten thousand c, 
bent finger. The letters of the alphabet 
afforded a convenient mode of repre¬ 
senting figures, and were used accord¬ 
ingly by the Chaldeans, Hebrews, and 
Greeks. The first nine letters of the 
Hebrew alphabet represented the units, 
the second nine tens, the remaining 
four together with five repeated with 
additional marks, hundreds; the same 
succession of letters with added points 
was repeated for thousands, tens of 
thousands, and hundreds of thousands. 
The Greeks followed the same system 
up to tens of thousands. They wrote 
the different classes of numbers in 
succession as we do, and they transferred 
operations performed on units to num¬ 
bers in higher places; but the use of 
different signs for the different ranks 
clearly shows a want of full perception 
of the value of place as such. They 
adopted the letter M as a sign for 10,000 
and by combining this marx with their 
other numerals they could note numbers 
as high as 100,000,000. The Roman 
numerals which are still used in marking 
dates or numbering chapters were almost 
useless for purposes of computation. 
From one to four were represented by 
vertical strokes I, ||, HI, HU, five by 
V, ten by X, fifty by L, one hundred 
by C, afterward O, fi ve nundred by D s 
a thousand by IVI. These signs v/ere 
derived from each other according to 
particular rules, thus V was the half of 
X, A being also used; L was likewise 
the half of C. IVI was artistically written 
M and cIo, and Id, afterward D, be¬ 
came five hundred, ccl represented 
5000, ccIdd 10,000, Iddd 50,000, cccIddd 
100,000. They were also compounded 
by addition and subtraction, thus IV 
stood for four, VI for six, XXX for 
thirty, XL for forty, LX for sixty. 
Arithmetic is divided into abstract and 
practical; the former comprehends nota¬ 
tion, numeration, addition, subtraction, 
multiplication, division, measures and 
multiples, fractions, powers and roots: 
the latter treats of the combinations 
and practical applications of these and 
the so-called rules, such as reduction, 
compound addition, subtraction, multi¬ 
plication, and division, proportion, 
interest, profit and loss, etc. Another 
division is integral and fractional arith¬ 
metic, the former treating of integers, 
or whole numbers, and the latter of 
fractions. Decimal fractions were in¬ 
vented in the 16th century, and loga¬ 
rithms, embodjdng the last great ad¬ 
vance in the science, in the 17th century. 

ARIZO'NA, a territory of the United 
States bounded by Utah, Mexico, New 
Mexico, California, and Nevada, in lati¬ 
tudes 31° 20' and 37° n. and longi¬ 
tudes 109° 3' and 114° 54' w. It has an 
area of 113,020 sq. miles and a popula¬ 
tion (199S) of 200,000. It is believed 
that the country, now called Arizona, 
was formerly inhabited by a powerful 
race who built cities, constructed forts, 
and were civilized in a high degree. 
The first white men to explore this 
region were Marco de Nizan and his 







ARK 


ARKANSAS 


companions, Spanish missionaries. Sub¬ 
sequent expeditions and settlement were 
discouraged by the Apaches, who have, 
until the present time, been a source of 
trouble to the white inhabitants. In 
1848 Arizona, together with New 
Mexico, became part of the United 



States, by the Gadsden purchase. On 
Feb. 24, 1813, it became a territory, 
In 1907 it was admitted with Okla¬ 
homa as the state of Oklahoma. 

The territory is, in its southwestern 
part, of low elevation, and its northeast¬ 
ern portion consists of a high plateau. 
In the south are numerous high mountain 
peaks, many of them (Thomas, Ord, 
Bill Williams, and others) 10,000 feet 
high and higher. The northern table- 



Marble canon, Colorado river. 


land at places is 8000 feet in altitude. 
The Colorado is the principal river, and 
its canon reaches its most picturesque 
state in Arizona. The climate is mild, 
very dry, and very healthful, varying 
in temperature from excessive heat to a 
mean of 45°. The rainfall is from live 
to twenty inches yearly in various parts 
of the territory. 


Owing to the lack of irrigation Arizona 
has been very backward in agriculture. 
The principal industries are stock-rais¬ 
ing, alfalfa, wheat, and barley. Figs, 
raisin-grapes and nuts of excellent 
quality are grown, and cotton could be 
raised with adequate irrigation. The 
mineral resources of Arizona are prob¬ 
ably richer than those of any other 
state or territory in the Union, but their 
development has been held back by 
poor and scanty transportation facilities. 
Copper (263,200,000 pounds in 1906), 
gold ($2,747,100 in 1906), and silver 
($2,099,822 in 1906) are the chief mining 
products. Rich deposits of platinum, 
gypsum, mercury, salt, iron, nickel, 
tin, and precious stones abound. 

Arizona has a total of 1881 miles of 
railway, eight national banks, and a 
good educational system. 

ARK, the name applied in our trans¬ 
lation of the Bible to the boat or floating 
edifice in which Noah resided during the 
flood or deluge; to the floating vessel of 
.bulrushes in which the infant Moses was 
laid; and to the ark of the covenant, 
which was one of the most important 
partsof the furniture of the tabernacle, 
which the Israelites constructed in the 
wilderness, and afterwards of the tem¬ 
ple built by Solomon at Jerusalem. A 
description of it is to be found in Exo¬ 
dus xxv., in the command given to 
Moses for its construction; and also in 
Exodus xxxvii, from which it appears 
it was a chest of shittim-wood, over¬ 
laid with gold within and without, 
two cubits and a half in length, one 
cubit and a half in breadth and in height 
—that is, according to the common 
estimate of the length of the cubit, 
three feet nine inches in length, and 
two feet three inches in breadth and 
height—the lid being formed entirely 
of pure gold, with a crown or raised 
border of pure gold round about. 
Within the ark was deposited the 
“testimony,” consisting of “the two 
tables of the law,” i. e., the stone tab¬ 
lets upon which the ten command¬ 
ments were inscribed. The golden lid 
of the ark was called the mercy-seat or 
propitiatory, and above it were the cheru- 
bims, made of the same piece of gold 
with it, and between them was the 
place of the manifestation of the Divine 
presence. 

ARKANSAS (ar'kan-sa), one of the 
South Central states, bounded on the 
north by Missouri, by Louisiana on the 
south, the Mississippi river on the east, 
and by the Indian Territory and Texas 
on the west. It has an area of 53,850 
sq. miles, a population (1906) of 1,750,- 
000, and ranks twenty-third in size 
among the states. 

The climate is, on the whole, delight¬ 
ful. The annual mean rainfall varies 
from 50 to 63 inches, the winters are 
mil d, with light snowfall, and the sum¬ 
mers are long. Arkansas takes its 
name from the Indians found there by 
the first explorers, who were French. 
In 1685 settlements were made in the 
southern and eastern parts, Arkansas 
then being a part of the general territory 
of Louisiana. In 1812 it became a part 
of Missouri Territory, then Arkansas 
Territory, and in 1836 it was admitted 
into the Union. The state seceded from 


the Union in 1861, but the people were 
fairly divided on the subject of secession, 
and with the taking of Little Rock in 
1863 the confederate power failed. The 
state has generally voted the democratic 
ticket in national elections. 



Although the mineral resources of 
Arkansas are varied they are not highly 
developed. The principal product is 
that of whetstones, the quality of which 
has made them famous. They are 
obtained from the mountains in the 
vicinity of Little Rock. These moun¬ 
tains are part of the Ozark range. The 
principal rivers are the Arkansas, the 
White, the Red, and the Black. 
These streams are fairly navigable, but 
lack of transportation facilities in gen¬ 
eral has cramped the development of 
the mining industry in Arkansas. The 
mineral products include zinc, man¬ 
ganese, iron, lead, and copper; marble, 
whet and hone stones, rock-crystal, 
paints, niter-earths, kaolin, granite, 
freestone, limestone, marls, greensand, 
marly limestones, grindstones, and 
slate. Of coal, anthracite and lignite, 
there are abundant supplies. A great 
number of mineral and thermal springs 
occur in various parts of the state, the 
most remarkable and most frequented 
groups lying to the south of the Ar¬ 
kansas in Hot Springs county. The heat 
of several attains 146° or 148° Fahr. 
There is a great variety of soil in Ar¬ 
kansas. Along the river “bottoms” 
the alluvium is dark, rich, and deep, 
and yields excellent crops. The chief 
crops cultivated are corn, wheat, cotton, 
and tobacco, as well ■ as apples and. 
other fruits. The trees and shrubs most 
frequently occurring are poplars, oaks, 
pines, sweet-gum, sycamore, black lo¬ 
cust, ash, elm, hickory, dogwood, elder, 
palma-christi, black spice, pawpaw, 
mockernut, wild vine, etc. The fauna 
of Arkansas includes the buffalo, eland, 
red-deer, beaver, otter, hare, raccoon, 
wild turkey, goose and quail, as well as 
bears and wolves among the mountains. 
The climate of the lower districts is de¬ 
cidedly unhealthy, largely on account 
of the lack of wholesome water; but in 
the upper regions it is quite salubrious, 
The material interests of the State 
are enj'oying a high degree of prosper¬ 
ity. The products of the lumber and 
mining industries, have annually in¬ 
creased in volume, to meet the con¬ 
stantly growing demand there for 
























ARKANSAS RIVER 


ARMADILLO 


throughout the State and in other por¬ 
tions of the Southwest. 

There is a total of 4,532 miles of rail¬ 
road in the State, owned and maintained 
by the St. Louis, Arkansas and Texas; 
Iron Mountain; Little Rock and Fort 
Smith, and other roads and their 
branches. 

The school system is well managed 
and sustained. It is under the direction 
of a state superintendent and subordi¬ 
nate officials. In addition to the school 
houses distributed throughout the var¬ 
ious school districts in the state, a Nor¬ 
mal school is conducted at Pine Bluff, 
and an industrial university at Fayette¬ 
ville. The curriculum of the latter 
embraces agriculture and mechanical 
courses, besides the regular classical 
and scientific departments. The State 
also maintains schools for the blind, 
and deaf and dumb, and has at present 
a total of about 1,200,000 acres of State 
lands of various descriptions remain¬ 
ing unsold. 

The population by decades is as fol¬ 
lows: 1820, 14,000; 1830, 30,000; 1840, 
97,000 ; 1850, 209,000 ; 1860, 435,000 ; 1870, 
484,000; 1880, 802,000; 1890, 1,128,000; 
1908, 1,440,000. In 1820 Arkansas ranked 
twenty-sixth in order of population, 
and has since varied but little from 
this position, being twenty-fifth in 1900. 
The state ranks tenth in respect to ne¬ 
gro population, the rate of increase for 
this class being greater than it is for 
the whites. In 1880 they numbered 
210,000; in 1900, 366,000. In 1909 Little 
Rock, the capital, had a population of 
60,000 ; Pine Bluff, 11,147 ; Fort Smith, 
10,903; Hot Springs, 9,412. The state 
has invariably been Democratic. 

ARKANSAS CITY, a rapidly grow¬ 
ing city in the southern portion of Cow¬ 
ley county, Kansas, is situated at the 
junction of the Walnut and Arkansas 
rivers. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa 
Fe, Missouri Pacific, and St. Louis and 
San Francisco roads pass through the 
city and afford abundant facilities for 
shippers and travelers. It contains 
commercial and manufacturing enter¬ 
prises in large number, many of the 
latter being operated by water power, 
of which an abundance is available. 
The city is lighted by gas and elec¬ 
tricity, provided with water-works and 
is progressive. Population, 8,354. 

ARKANSAS (ar-kan'sas) RIVER, the 
second largest affluent of the Mississippi, 
the Missouri ranking first. It rises in 
central Colorado, flows through Kansas, 
Oklahoma and Indian Territories, and 
empties into the Mississippi. It is 2000 
miles long and navigable for about 600 
miles from its mouth. 

ARK'WRIGHT, Sir Richard, famous 
for his inventions in cotton-spinning, 
was born at Preston, in Lancashire, in 
1732; died 1792. When about thirty- 
five years of age he gave himself up 
exclusively to the subject of inventions 
for spinning cotton. The thread spun 
by Hargreaves’s jenny could not be used 
except as weft, being destitute of the 
firmness or hardness required in the 
longitudinal threads or warp. But 
Arkwright supplied this deficiency by 
the invention of the spinning-frame, 
which spins a vast number of threads 
of any degree of fineness and hardnegs, 


leaving the operator merely to feed the 
machine with cotton and to join the 
threads when they happen to break. 
His invention introduced the system 
of spinning by rollers, the carding, or 
roving as it is technically termed (that 
is, the soft, loose strip of cotton), passing 
through one pair of rollers, and being 
received by a second pair, which are 
made to revolve with (as the case may 
be) three, four, or five times the velocity 
of the first pair. By this contrivance 
the roving is drawn out into a thread of 
the desired degree of tenuity and hard¬ 
ness. Having made several additional 
discoveries and improvements in the 
processes of carding, roving, and spin¬ 
ning, he took out a fresh patent for the 
whole in 1775, and thus completed a 
series of the most ingenious and com¬ 
plicated machinery. Notwithstanding 
a series of lawsuits in defense of his 



Sir Richard Arkwright, 


patent rights, and the destruction of his 
property by mobs, he amassed a large 
fortune. He was knighted by George 
III. in 1786. 

ARLES, a town of southern France, 
dep. Bouches du Rhone, 17 miles south¬ 
east of Nismes. It was an important 
town at the time of Caesar’s invasion, 
and under the later emperors it became 
one of the most flourishing towns on 
the further side of the Alps. It still 
possesses numerous ancient remains, of 
which the most conspicuous are those 
of a Roman amphitheatre, which ac¬ 
commodated 24,000 spectators. Pop. 
16,247. 

ARM, the upper limb in man, con¬ 
nected with the thorax or chest by 
means of the scapula or shoulder-blade, 
and the clavicle or collar-bone. It con¬ 
sists of three bones, the arm-bone (hu¬ 
merus), and the two bones of the fore¬ 
arm (radius and ulna), and it is con¬ 
nected with the bones of the hand by 
the carpus or wrist. The head or upper 
end of the arm-bone fits into the hollow 
called the glenoid cavity of the scapula, 
so as to form a joint of the ball-and- 
socket kind, allowing great freedom of 
movement to the limb. The lower end 
of the humerus is broadened out by a 
projection on both the outer and inner 
sides (the outer and inner condyles), 
and has a pulley-like surface for articu¬ 
lating with the fore-arm to form the 
elbow-joint. This joint somewhat re¬ 
sembles a hinge, allowing of movement 
only in one direction. The ulna is the 
inner of the two bones of the fore-arm. 
It is largest at the upper end, where 


it has two processes, the coronoid and 
the olecranon, with a deep groove be¬ 
tween to receive the humerus. The 
radius—the outer of the two bones—is 
small at the upper and expanded at the 
lower end, where it forms part of the 



wrist-joint. The muscles of the upper 
arm are either flexors or extensors, the 
former serving to bend the arm, the 
latter to straighten it by means of the 
elbow-joint. The main flexor is the 
biceps, the large muscle which may be 
seen standing out in front of the arm 
when a weight is raised. The chief 
opposing muscle of the biceps is the 
triceps. The muscles of the fore-arm 
are, besides flexors and extensors, pro¬ 
nators and supinators, the former turn¬ 
ing the hand palm downward, the latter 
turning it upward. The same funda¬ 
mental plan of structure exists in the 
limbs of all vertebrate animals. 

ARMA'DA, the Spanish name for any 
large naval force; usually applied to the 
Spanish fleet the Invincible Armada, 
intended to act against England a.d. 
1588. It consisted of 130 great war 
vessels, and carried 19,295 marines, 
8460 sailors, 2088 slaves, and 2630 
cannons. 

ARMADIL'LO, an edentate mammal 

peculiar to South America, consisting of 
various species, belonging to a family 
intermediate between the sloths and 
ant-eaters. They are covered with a 
hard bony shell, divided into belts, com¬ 
posed of small separate plates like a 
coat of mail, flexible everywhere except 
on the forehead, shoulders, and haunches, 
where it is not movable. The belts 
are connected by a membrane, which 



Yellow-footed armadillo. 


enables the animal to roll itself up 
like a hedgehog. These animals bur¬ 
row in the earth, where they lie 
during the daytime, seldom going 
abroad except at night. They are of 
different sizes; the largest being 3 feet 








ARMAGEDDON 


ARMOR PLATE 


in length without the tail, and the 
smallest only 10 inches. They subsist 
chiefly on fruits and roots, sometimes 
on insects and flesh. They are inoffen¬ 
sive, and their flesh is esteemed good 
food.—There is a genus of isopodous 
Crustacea called Armadillo, consisting 
of animals allied to the wood-lice, capa¬ 
ble of rolling themselves into a ball. 

ARMAGEDDON (-ged'don), the great 
battlefield of the Old Testament, where 
the chief conflicts took place between 
the Israelites and their enemies—the 
tableland of Esdraelon in Galilee and 
Samaria, in the center of which stood 
the town Megiddo, on the site of the 
modern Lejjun: used figuratively in the 
Apocalypse to signify the place of "the 
battle of the great day of God.” 

ARMAGH (ar-ma'), a county of Ire¬ 
land, in the province of Ulster; sur¬ 
rounded by Monaghan, Tyrone, Lough 
Neagh, Down, and Lowth; area, 328,- 
086 acres, of which about a half is under 
tillage. Pop. 125,238.—The county 
town, Armagh, is situated partly on a 
hill, about half a mile from the Callan. 
It is the see of an archbishop of the 
Protestant-Episcopal Church, who is 
primate of all Ireland, and is a place of 
great antiquity. Pop. 8303. 

AR'MATURE, a term applied to the 
piece of soft iron which is placed across 
the poles of permanent or electro¬ 
magnets for the purpose of receiving 
and concentrating the attractive force. 
In the case of permanent magnets it is 
also important for preserving their 
magnetism when not in use, and 
hence it is sometimes termed the 
keeper. It produces this effect in 
virtue of the well-known law of induc¬ 
tion, by which the armature, when 
placed near or across the poles of the 
magnet, is itself converted into a tem¬ 
porary magnet with reversed poles, and 
these, reacting upon the permanent 
magnet, keep its particles in a state of 
constant magnetic tension, or, in other 
words, in that constrained position 
which is supposed to constitute mag¬ 
netism. A horseshoe magnet should 
therefore never be laid aside without 
its armature; and in the case of straight 
bar-magnets two should be placed 
parallel to each other, with their poles 
reversed, and a keeper or armature 
across them at both ends. The term is 
also applied to the core and coil of the 
electromagnet, which revolves before 
the poles of the permanent magnet in 
the magneto-electric machine. 

ARMED NEUTRALITY, the condition 
of affairs when a nation assumes a 
threatening position, and maintains an 
armed force to repel any aggression on 
the part of belligerent nations between 
which it is neutral. The term is applied 
in history to a coalition entered into by 
the northern powers in 1780 and again 
in 1800. 

ARMED SHIP, a ship which is taken 
into the service of a government for a 
particular occasion, and armed like a 
6hip of war. 

ARME'NIA, a mountainous country 
of western Asia, not now politically 
existing, but of great historical interest 
as the original seat of one of the oldest 
civilized peoples in the world. It is now 
shared between Turkey, Persia, and 


Russia. It has an area of about 137,000 
square miles, and is intersected by the 
Euphrates, which divides it into the 
ancient divisions, Armenia Major and 
Armenia Minor. The country is an ele¬ 
vated plateau, inclosed on several sides 
by the ranges of Taurus and Anti- 
Taurus, and partly occupied by other 
mountains, the loftiest of which is 
Ararat. Several important rivers take 
their rise in Armenia, namely, the Kur 
or Cyrus, and its tributary the Aras 
or Araxes, flowing east to the Caspian 
Sea; the Halys or Kizil-Irmak, flowing 
north to the Black Sea; and the Tigris 
and Euphrates, which flow into the Per¬ 
sian Gulf. The chief lakes are Van and 
Urumiyah. The climate is rather severe. 
The soil is on the whole productive, 
though in many places it would be quite 
barren were it not for the great care 
taken to irrigate it. Wheat, barley, to¬ 
bacco, hemp, grapes, and cotton are 
raised; and in some of the valleys apri¬ 
cots, peaches, mulberries, and walnuts 
are grown. The inhabitants are chiefly 
of the genuine Armenian stock, a branch 
of the Aryan or Indo-European race; 
but besides them, in consequence of the 
repeated subjugation of the country, 
various other races have obtained a 
footing. The total number of Arme¬ 
nians is estimated at 2,000,000, of whom 
probably one-half are in Armenia. The 
remainder, like the Jews, are scattered 
over various countries, and are generally 
engaged in commercial pursuits. They 
everywhere retain, however, their dis¬ 
tinct nationality. Many thousands of 
them in Armenia have recently been 
massacred by the Turks. 

Little is known of the early history of 
Armenia, but it was a separate state as 
early as'the 8th century b.c., when it 
became subject to Assyria, as it also did 
subsequently to the Medes and the Per¬ 
sians. It was conquered by Alexander 
the Great in 325 b.c., but regained its 
independence about 190 b.c. Its king 
Tigranes, son-in-law of the celebrated 
Mithridates, was defeated by the Ro¬ 
mans under Lucullus and Pompey about 
69-66 B.c., but was left on the throne. 
Since then its fortunes have been 
various under the Romans, Parthians, 
Byzantine emperors, Persians, Sara¬ 
cens, Turks, etc. A considerable por¬ 
tion of it has been acquired by Russia 
in the 19th century, part of this in 1878. 

The Armenians received Christianity 
as early as the 2d century. During the 
Monophysitic disputes they held with 
those who rejected the twofold na¬ 
ture of Christ, and being dissatisfied 
with the decisions of the Council of 
Chalcedon (451) they separated from 
the Greek Church in 536. The popes 
have at different times attempted to 
gain them over to the Roman Catholic 
faith, but have not been, able to unite 
them permanently and generally with 
the Roman Church. There are, how¬ 
ever, small numbers here and there of 
United Armenians, who acknowledge 
the spiritual supremacy of the pope, 
agree in their doctrines with the Cath¬ 
olics, but retain their peculiar cere¬ 
monies and discipline. But the far 
greater part are yet Monophysites, and 
have remained faithful to their old 
religion and worship. Their doctrine 


differs from the orthodox chiefly in their 
admitting only one nature in Christ, 
and believing the Holy Spirit to pro¬ 
ceed from the Father alone. Their 
sacraments are seven in number. They 
adore saints and their images, but do 
not believe in purgatory. Their hier¬ 
archy differs little from that of the 
Greeks. The Catholicus, or head of the 
church, has his seat at Etchmiadzin, a 
monastery near Erivan, the capital of 
Russian Armenia, on MtiUnt Ararat. 

The Armenian language belongs to 
the Indo-European family of languages, 
and is most closely connected with the 
Iranic group. The Old Armenian or 
Haikan language, which is still the 
literary and ecclesiastical language, is 
distinguished from the new Armenian, 
the ordinary spoken language, which 
contains a large intermixture of Persian 
and Turkish elements. The most flour¬ 
ishing period of Armenian literature ex¬ 
tended from the 4th to the 14th cen¬ 
tury. It then declined, but a revival 
began in the 17th century, and at the 
present day wherever any extensive 
community of Armenians have settled 
they have set up a printing-press. The 
Armenian Bible, translated from the 
Septuagint by Isaac or Sahak, the 
patriarch, early in the 5th century, is 
a model of the classic style. 

ARMIN'IANS, a sect or party of Chris¬ 
tians, so called from James Arminius or 
Harmensen, a Protestant divine of Ley¬ 
den, who died in 1609. The Arminian 
doctrines are: (1) Conditional election 
and reprobation, in opposition to abso¬ 
lute predestination. (2) Universal re¬ 
demption, or that the atonement was 
made by Christ for all mankind, though 
none but believers can be partakers of 
the benefit. (3) That man, in order to 
exercise true faith, must be regenerated 
and renewed by the operation of the 
Holy Spirit, which is the gift of God; 
but that this grace is not irresistible and 
may be lost, so that men may relapse 
from a state of grace and die in their 
sins. 

AR'MISTICE, a temporary suspension 
of hostilities between two belligerent 
powers or two armies by mutual agree¬ 
ment, often concluded for only a few 
hours to bury the slain, remove the 
wounded, and exchange prisoners, as 
also sometimes to allow of a parley be¬ 
tween the opposing generals. A general 
armistice is usually the preliminary of 
a peace. 

ARMOR PLATE, steel plate used to 
protect vessels of war against the pro¬ 
jectiles of an enemy. Although the 
idea is comparatively old, it was first 
brought into practical use by the 
engineer John Ericson, in the Monitor, 
which fought the iron-clad Merrimac 
during the war of emancipation. The 
object of having a hard face to armor 
is to break up projectiles by shock, or 
so to strain or deform them as to reduce 
their penetration. It is particularly 
effective on oblique impact (i.e. where 
the projectile strikes at an angle with 
the plate). To combine hardness with 
toughness was the aim of armor makers 
for a quarter of a century, and success 
was not obtained until the advent of 
nickel steel. Had not the improvement 
of projectiles and guns kept pace with 




ARMS, COAT OF 


ARMS AND ARMOR 


the development of armor, ships could 
now be made invulnerable; but both 
have improved so that the relation of 
guns and armor is now less favorable to 
the latter than at almost any time in its 
history. Nevertheless, armor is abso¬ 
lutely indispensable to the protection 
of ships and their crews against all 
classes of gunfire. The power of good 
Harvey nickel-steel armor to resist pene¬ 
tration is about equal to that of double 
the thickness of wrought iron, and the 
resisting power of Krupp armor is 10 to 
15 per cent greater. These figures are 
for attack by ordinary armor-piercing 
projectiles. Projectiles of this type 
which are fitted with soft caps pene¬ 
trate about as deeply in Krupp as in 
Harvey armor, and the gain by the use 
of caps is equal to a reduction in thick¬ 
ness of 8 to 10 per cent in Harvey 
armor and 15 to 20 in Krupp—that is 
to say, a capped projectile will perforate 
a Harvey plate 8 to 10 per cent thicker, 
or a Krupp plate 15 to 20 per cent 
thicker, than will a projectile not pro¬ 
vided with a cap. 

ARMS, COAT OF, or ARMORIAL 
BEARINGS, a collective name for the 
devices borne on shields, on banners, 
etc., as marks of dignity and distinction, 
and, in the case of family and feudal 
arms, descending from father to son. 
They were first employed by the Cru¬ 
saders, and became hereditary in fami¬ 
lies at the close of the 12th century. 
They took their rise from the knights 
painting their banners or shields each 
with a figure or figures proper to him¬ 
self, to enable him to be distinguished 
in battle when clad in armor. See 
Heraldry. 

ARMS and ARMOR. The former 
term is applied to weapons of offense, 
the latter to the various articles of defen¬ 
sive covering used in war and military 
exercises, especially before the intro- 

A, Bascinet. 

b, Jewelled orle round the 
bascinet. 

C, Gorget, or gorglere of 
plate. 

D, Pauldrons. 

e, Breastplate-cuirass. 

f, Rere-braces. 

G, Coudes or elbow-plates. 
h, Gauntlets. 

I, Vambrace. 

J, Skirt of taces. 
k, Military belt or cingu¬ 
lum richly jewelled. 

L, Tuilles or tuillets. 

M, Cuisses. 

N, Genouilleres or knee- 
pieces. 

o, Jambes. 

p, Spur-straps. 

q, Sollerets. 

R, Misericorde or dagger, 
s, Sword, suspended by a 
transverse belt. 

Armor, from the effigy of Sir Richard Peyton, 
in Tong Church, Shropshire. 

duction of gunpowder. Weapons of 
offense are divisible into two distinct 
sections: firearms, and arms used with¬ 
out gunpowder or other explosive sub¬ 
stance. The first arms of offense would 
probably be wooden clubs, then would 
follow wooden weapons made more 


deadly by means of stone or bone, stone 
axes, slings, bows and arrows with 
heads of flint or bone, and afterward 
various weapons of bronze. _ Subse¬ 
quently a variety of arms of iron and 
steel were introduced, which comprised 



Allecret (light-plate) armor, A.D., 1540. 

the sword, javelin, pike, spear or lance, 
dagger, ax, mace, chariot scythe, etc.; 
with a rude artillery consisting of cata¬ 
pults, ballistse, and battering-rams. 
From the descriptions of Homer we 
know that almost all the Grecian armor, 
defensive and offensive, in his time was 
of bronze; though iron was sometimes 


as a stabbing weapon. It was originally 
of bronze. The most characteristic 
weapon of the Roman legionary soldier, 
however, was the pilum, which was a 
kind of pike or javelin, some 6 feet or 
more in length. The pilum was some¬ 
times used at close-quarters, but more 
commonly it was thrown. The favorite 
weapons of the ancient Germanic races 
were the battle-ax, the lance or dart, 
and the sword. The weapons of the 
Anglo-Saxons were spears, axes, swords, 
knives, and maces or clubs. The Nor¬ 
mans had similar weapons, and were 
well furnished with archers and cavalry. 
The cross-bow was a comparatively 
late invention introduced by the Nor¬ 
mans. Gunpowder was not used in 
Europe to discharge projectiles till the 
beginning of the 14th century. Cannon 
are first mentioned in England in 1338, 
and there seems to be no doubt that they 
were used by the English at the siege 
of Cambrai in 1339. The projectiles 
first used for cannon were of stone. 
Hand firearms date from the 15th cen¬ 
tury. At first they required two men 
to serve them, and it was necessary to 
rest the muzzle on a stand in aiming and 
firing. The first improvement was the 
invention of the match-lock, about 
1476; this was followed by the wheel- 
lock; and about the middle of the 17th 
century by the flint-lock, which was 
in universal use until it was super¬ 



Roman cuirass. 


Greek armor. 


used. The lance, spear, and javelin 
were the principal weapons of this age 
among the Greeks. The bow is not often 
mentioned. Among ancient nations the 
Egyptians seem to have been most ac¬ 
customed to the use of the bow, which 
was the principal weapon of the Egyp¬ 
tian infantry. Peculiar to the Egyptians 
was a defensive weapon intended to 
catch and break the sword of the enemy. 
With the Assyrians the bow was a 
favorite weapon; but with them lances, 
spears, and javelins were in more com¬ 
mon use than with the Egyptians. 
Most of the large engines of war, chariots 
with scythes projecting at each side 
from the axle, catapults, and ballistse, 
seem to have been of Assyrian origin. 
During the historical age of Greece the 
characteristic weapon was a heavy spear 
from 21 to 24 feet in length. The sword 
used by the Greeks was short, and was 
worn on the right side. The Roman 
sword was from 22 to 24 inches in length, 
straight, two-edged, and obtusely point¬ 
ed, and as by the Greeks was worn on 
the right side. It was used principally 


Roman cuirass— Chain armor. 

Scale armor. 

seded by the percussion-lock, the in¬ 
vention of a Scotch clergyman early 
in the 19th century. The needle-gun 
dates from 1827. The only important 
weapon not a firearm that has been 
invented since the introduction of gun¬ 
powder is the bayonet, which is be¬ 
lieved to have been invented about 
1650. See Cannon, Musket, Rifle, etc. 

Some kind of defensive covering was 
probably of almost as early invention 
as weapons of offense. The principal 
pieces of defensive armor used by the 
ancients were shields, helmets, cuirasses, 
and greaves. In the earliest ages of 
Greece the shield is described as of im¬ 
mense size, but in the time of the Pelop¬ 
onnesian war (about b.c. 420) it was 
much smaller. The Romans had two 
sorts of shields: the scutum, a large 
oblong rectangular highly convex shield, 
carried by the legionaries: and the 
parma, a small round or oval flat shield, 
carried by the light-armed troops and 
the cavalry. In the declining days of 
Rome the shields became larger and 
more varied in form. The helmet was 


































Germany. 


Russia. 


Italy. 


Spain. 


Belgium. 


United States of America. 


Portugal. 


Denmark. 


Austria-Hungary. 


Republic of Prance. 


Brasil. 


Argentine Republic. 


NATIONAL COAT OF ARMS. 
























































































































































MILITARY STRENGTH 

COMPARATIVE SIZES 

ARMIES OF THE WORLD ON WAR FOOTING 
EACH SQUARE REPRESENTS I % OF THE WORLD’S MILITARY STRENGTH 




RUSSIA 

20 . 8 % 


UNITED KINGDOM 

5 .Ofi 


TURKEY 

7.8- 1 _ 

JAPAN 

5.2- 


GERMANY 

15.6 •• 


SPAIN 

1 . 1 - 


FRANCE 

13.0 ” 1 _ 

AUSTRIA 

13.4” 


ITALY 

17.2” 1 _ 

UNITED STATES 

.9” 

























































MILITARY STRENGTH 

COMPARATIVE SIZES 

ARMIES OF THE WORLD ON PEACE FOOTING 
EACH SQUARE REPRESENTS 1% OF THE WORLDS MILITARY STRENGTH 







— 




















































/ 

















































1 1 RUSSIA 

23.6 <j 0 

1 1 ITALY 

6.2 f t 

L . _ J TURKEY 

16.6 < 

1 1 UNITED KINGDOM 

5.3,. 

l 1 GERMANY 

14.3 » 

1 1 JAPAN 

3.9 •» 

1-1 FRANCE 

14. 1 » 

l .^Hi SPAIN 

2.8« 

1-1 AUSTRIA 

11. 7» 

1— 1 UNITED STATES 

1.5" 
































































ARMOUR 


ARNHEM 


a characteristic piece of armor among 
the Assyrians, Greeks, Etruscans, and 
Romans. Like all other body armor 
it was usually made of bronze. The 
helmet of the historical age of Greece 
was distinguished by its lofty crest. The 
Roman helmet in the time of the early 
emperors fitted close to the head, and 
had a neckguard and hinged cheek- 
pieces fastened under the chin, and a 
small bar across the face for a visor. 



Horse-armor of Maximilian I, of Germany. 
a, Cbamfron. b, Manefaire. c, Poitrinal, poitrel 
or breastplate, d, Croupiere or 
buttock-piece. 

Both Greeks and Romans wore cuirasses, 
at one time of bronze, but latterly of 
flexible materials. Greaves for the legs 
were worn by both, but among the Ro¬ 
mans usually on one leg. The ancient 
Germans had large shields of plaited 
osier covered with leather, afterward 
their shields were small, bound with iron, 
and studded with bosses. The Anglo- 
Saxons had round or oval shields of 
wood, covered with leather, and having 
a boss in the center; and they had also 
corselets, or coats of mail, strengthened 
with iron rings. The Normans were 
well protected by mail; their shields 
were somewhat triangular in shape, 
their helmets conical. In Europe 
generally metal armor was used from 
the 10th to the 18th century, and at 
first consisted of a tunic made of iron 
rings firmly sewed flat upon strong cloth 
or leather. The rings were afterward 
interlinked one with another so as to 
form a garment of themselves, called 
chain-mail. Great variety is found in 
the pattern of the armor, and in some 
cases small pieces of metal were used 
instead of rings, forming what is called 
scale-armor. A suit of armor consisting 
of larger pieces of metal, called plate- 
armor, was now introduced, and the 
whole body came to be incased in a 
heavy metal covering. The various 
forms of ring or scale armor were gradu¬ 
ally superseded by the plate-armor, 
which continued to be worn until long 
after the introduction of firearms and 
field-artillery. 

ARMOUR, Philip Danforth, an Amer¬ 
ican merchant, born at Stockbridge, 
N. Y., 1832, died in 1901. He received 
a public school education, and traveled 
as a youth to California, but settled 
in Milwaukee in 1852. In 1863 he 
founded the house of Armour, Plank- 
ington & Co., packers, the offices of 
which were removed to Chicago in 
1870, where the house was soon reor¬ 
ganized as Armour & Co. Mr. Armour 
was not only a good business man, but 
a philanthropist as well. He founded 
the Armour Institute of Technology 
P. E.—6 


at Chicago, and the Armour Mission 
in the same city at an expense of $2.- 
500,000. 

ARMSTRONG, William George, Lord, 
engineer and mechanical inventor, born 
at Newcastle-on-Tyne, 10th Nov., 1810. 
He was trained as a solicitor, and prac¬ 
ticed as such for some time, though his 
tastes scarcely lay in that direction. 
Among his early inventions were the 
hydro-electric machine, a powerful ap¬ 
paratus for producing frictional electric¬ 
ity, and the hydraulic crane. In 1847 
the'Elswick works, near Newcastle, were 
established for the manufacture of his 
cranes and other heavy iron machinery, 
and these works are now among the 
most extensive of their kind. Here the 
first rifled ordnance gun which bears 
his name was made in 1854. His im¬ 
provements in the manufacture of guns 
and shells led to his being appointed 
engineer of rifled ordnance under gov¬ 
ernment, and he was knighted in 1858. 
This appointment came to an end in 
1863, since which time his ordnance has 
taken a prominent place in the arma¬ 
ments of different countries. He was 
raised to the peerage as Baron Arm¬ 
strong in 1887. He died in 1901. 

ARMSTRONG GUN, a kind of cannon, 
so called from its inventor, made of 
wought-iron, principally of spirally- 
coiled bars, so disposed as to bring the 
metal into the most favorable position 
for the strain to which it is to be exposed, 
and occasionally having an inner tube 
or core of steel, rifled with numerous 
shallow grooves. The size of these 
guns ranges from the smallest field- 
piece to pieces of the highest caliber. 
The projectile is coated with lead, and 
inserted into a chamber behind the bore. 
This the explosion drives forward, com¬ 
pressing its soft coating into the grooves, 
so as to give it a rotary motion, and 
at the same time obviate windage. 
Both breech-loading and muzzle-loading 
Armstrong guns have been made. 

ARMY, an organized body of drilled 
and disciplined men, furnished with 
weapons of offense and defense, for the 
protection of a state against external 
attack, for making war on foreign states 
or other enemies, and for the preserva¬ 
tion of order within the state itself. 

War in savage communities is carried 
on by armies of the comparatively crude 
organization, and the ancient army was 
a succession of mere lines of men, 
shoulder to shoulder, the cavalry being 
organized on virtually the same plan. 
The introduction of the Macedonian 
phalanx by Philip and its use by Alex¬ 
ander the Great was the first step to¬ 
ward the modern mobile regiment. 
The phalanx was ground to powder by 
the Roman legion which superceded it, 
and the legion itself was brought to 
perfection by its subdivision into cen¬ 
turies, each with a captain, or centurion. 
This is the modern company, and the 
modern regiment is substantially the 
same thing as the Roman legion. 

An army, in the modern sense, has 
four branches, each with its separate 
function, yet each of which may be 
brought into coordination with the 
others. These branches are the in¬ 
fantry, cavalry, artillery, and engineer 
corps. A fifth and sixth branch, that 


is, hospital corps and signal corps, are 
not fighting branches proper. 

The unit of infantry is the battalion, 
consisting of about 1000 men, divided 
into companies of say 250 each. Three 
or four battalions go to make a regi¬ 
ment, and three regiments, in the 
United States, comprise a brigade. 
Certain European countries make use 
of a mounted infantry, particularly 
Great Britain, and others have recently 
organized infantry bodies for the use 
of machine and automatic guns which 
cannot properly be classified with 
artillery. 

In the United States army the unit 
of cavalry is the squadron of 150 
mounted men armed with sabers. The 
squadron is subdivided into four troops, 
each of 100 men, when complete. A 
regiment of cavalry consists of three 
squadrons, the brigade consists of three 
regiments. 

The unit of artillery is, in the United 
States army, a battery. The field 
battery has 175 men and 250 horses, 
the horse battery has 165 men and 235 
horses. Normally the battery has 6 
guns, but the tendency is toward a re¬ 
duction of this number. It is believed 
that four guns will be the number 
which will constitute the battery of the 
United States army in the future. A 
battalion of artillery consists of three 
or four batteries, and the artillery regi¬ 
ment of three or four battalions. 

These various units combine to¬ 
gether into larger units, such as the 
division consisting of two brigades, and 
the army corps, which consists of two 
divisions of infantry, one regiment of field 
artillery, and other services. In the 
United States the army corps is com¬ 
posed of three divisions, several regi¬ 
ments of cavalry, and artillery. 

The engineer corps is organized into 
battalions of four companies each, the 
latter into regiments of two battalions 
each, including a balloon section. The 
organization of the engineer corps is 
substantially the same as that of the 
infantry. 

The army of the United States has 
a signal corps which operates the field 
telegraph, the military balloons, wire¬ 
less telegraphy, and the old-fashioned 
signaling by flag, torch, heliograph, etc. 
An army corps carries one company of 
signal corps, numbering 175 men. 

The medical department of the army 
includes the hospital corps, the sur¬ 
geons taking the rank of officers accord¬ 
ing to grade. 

ARMY SCHOOLS. See Military 

Schools. 

ARMY WORM, the very destructive 
larva of a moth, so called from its habit 
of marching in compact bodies of enor¬ 
mous number, devouring almost every 
green thing it meets. It is about 1$ 
inches long, greenish in color, with 
black stripes, and is found in various 
parts of the world, but is particularly 
destructive in North America. 

ARN'HEM, or ARNHEIM, a town in 
Holland, prov. of Gelderland, 18 miles 
southwest of Zutphen, on the right 
bank of the Rhine. In 1795 it was 
stormed by the French, who were driven 
from it by the Prussians in 1813. Pop. 
57,498. 











ARNICA 


ARSENAL 


AR'NICA, a genus of plants, consist¬ 
ing of some twelve species, one of which 
is found in central Europe, leopard’s 
bane or mountain tobacco, but is not a 
native of Britain. It has a perennial 
root, a stem about 2 feet high, bearing 
on the summit flowers of a dark golden 
yellow. In every part of the plant there 
is an acrid resin and a volatile oil, and 
in the flowers an acrid bitter principle 
called arnicin. The root contains also 
a considerable quantity of tannin. A 
tincture of it is employed as an external 
application to wounds and bruises. 

AR'NOLD, Benedict, a general in the 
American army during the war of in¬ 
dependence, who rendered his name 
infamous by his attempt to betray the 
strong fortress of West Point, with all 



the arms and immense stores which 
were there deposited, into the hands of 
the British. The project failed through 
the capture of Major Andr6, when 
Arnold made his escape to the British 
lines. He received a commission as 
major-general in the British army, and 
took part in several marauding expe¬ 
ditions. He subsequently settled in the 
West Indies, and ultimately went to 
London, where he died in 1801, aged 61. 

AR'NOLD, Edwin, K.C.I.E., poet, 
Sanskrit scholar, and journalist, born 
1832. Educated at Oxford, where he 
took the Newdigate prize for a poem 
entitled The Feast of Belshazzar. He 
is author of Poems, narrative and lyr¬ 
ical, numerous translations from the 
Greek and Sanskrit;The Light of Asia, 
a poem presenting the life and teaching 
of Gautama, the founder of Buddhism. 
Died 1904. 

AR'NOLD, Matthew, English critic, 
essayist, and poet, was born at Laleham, 
near Staines, 1822, being a son of Dr. 
Arnold, of Rugby. He was educated 
at Winchester, Rugby, and Oxford, and 
became a Fellow of Oriel College. He 
received the degree of LL.D. from both 
Oxford and Edinburgh, and lectured in 
Britain and in America. He died in 
1888. 

AR'NOLD, Thomas, head-master of 
Rugby School, and professor of modern 
history in the University of Oxford, 
born at Cowes, in the Isle of Wight, in 
1795, died 1842. Not only did Rugby 


School become crowded beyond any 
former precedent, but the superiority of 
Dr. Arnold’s system became so generally 
recognized that it may be justly said to 
have done much for the general im¬ 
provement of the public schools of 
England. 

ARNSBERG (arnz'berA), a town in 
Prussia, prov. of Westphalia, capital of 
the government of same name on the 
Ruhr. Pop. 8488.—The government of 
Arnsberg has an area of 2972 square 
miles, and a population of 1,851,319. 

ARO'MA, the distinctive fragrance 
exhaled from spices, plants, etc., gen¬ 
erally an agreeable odor, a sweet smell. 

AROMAT'ICS, drugs, or other sub¬ 
stances which yield a fragrant smell, 
and often a warm pungent taste, as 
calamus, ginger, cinnamon, cassia, laven¬ 
der, rosemary, laurel, nutmegs, carda¬ 
moms, pepper, pimento, cloves, vanilla, 
saffron. Some of them are used medi¬ 
cinally as tonics, stimulants, etc. 

AROMATIC VINEGAR, a very vola¬ 
tile and powerful perfume made by 
adding the essential oils of lavender, 
cloves, etc., and often camphor, to crys- 
tallizable acetic acid. It is a powerful 
excitant in fainting, languor, and head¬ 
ache. 

ARPEGGIO (ar-pej'o), the distinct 
sound of the notes of an instrumental 
chord; the striking^the notes of a chord 
in rapid succession, as in the manner of 
touching the harp instead of playing 
them simultaneously. 

AR'QUEBUS, a hand-gun; a species 
of fire-arm resembling a musket ancient¬ 
ly used. It was fired from a forked rest, 
and sometimes cocked by a wheel, and 
carried a ball that weighed nearly two 
ounces. A larger kind used in fortresses 
carried a heavier shot. 

AR'RAH, a town of British India, in 
Shahabad district, Bengal, rendered 
famous during the mutiny of 1857 by 
the heroic resistance of a body of twenty 
civilians and fifty Sikhs, cooped up 
within a detached house, to a force of 
3000 sepoys, who were ultimately 
routed and overthrown by the arrival of 
a small European reinforcement. Pop. 
46 905 

ARRAIGNMENT (ar-ran'-), the act of 
calling or setting a prisoner at the bar 
of a court to plead guilty or not guilty 
to the matter charged in an indictment 
or information. 

ARRANGEMENT, in music, the adap¬ 
tation of a composition to voices or 
instruments for which it was not origi¬ 
nally written; also, a piece so adapted. 

ARREST' is the apprehending or re¬ 
straining of one’s person, which, in 
civil cases, can take place legally only 
by process in execution of the command 
of some court or officers of justice; but 
in criminal cases any man may arrest 
without warrant or precept, and every 
person is liable to arrest without dis¬ 
tinction, but no man is to be arrested 
unless charged with such a crime as will 
at least justify holding him to bail when 
taken. Magna Charta and the Habeas 
Corpus Act are the two great statutes 
for securing the liberty of the subject 
against unlawful arrests and suits. 

ARREST OF JUDGMENT, in law, the 
staying or stopping of a judgment after 
verdict, for causes assigned. Courts 


have power to arrest judgment for in¬ 
trinsic causes appearing upon the face of 
the record; as when the declaration 
varies from the original writ; when the 
verdict differs materially from the plead¬ 
ings; or when the case laid in the decla¬ 
ration is not sufficient in point of law 
to found an action upon. 

ARRONDISSEMENT (a-ron-des-man), 
in France an administrative district, 
the subdivision of a department, or of 
the quarters of some of the larger cities. 

ARROWHEAD, a genus of aquatic 
plants found in all parts of the world 
within the torrid and temperate zones, 
distinguished by possessing barren and 
fertile flowers, with a three-leaved 
calyx and three colored petals. 

ARROW-ROOT, a starch largely used 
for food and for other purposes. Arrow- 
root proper is obtained from the 
rhizomes or rootstocks of several species 
of plants, and perhaps owes its name 



Arrow-root plant, a. a. Rhizomes. 


to the scales which cover the rhizome, 
which have some resemblance to the 
point of an arrow. Some, however sup¬ 
pose that the name is due to the fact 
of the fresh roots being used as an 
application against wounds inflicted by 
poisoned arrows, and others say that 
arrow is a corruption of ara, the Indian 
name of the plant. The species from 
which arrow-root is most commonly ob¬ 
tained is called the arrow-root plant. 
Brazilian arrow-root, or tapioca meal, 
is got from the large fleshy root, after 
the poisonous juice has been got rid of; 
East Indian arrow-root, from the large 
root-stalks; Chinese arrow-root, from 
the creeping rhizomes; English arrow- 
root, from the potato; and Oswego 
arrow-root, from Indian corn. 

ARROWSMITH, Aaron, a distin¬ 
guished English chartographer, born 
1750, died 1823; he raised the execution 
of maps to a perfection it had never 
before attained. His nephew, John, 
born 1790, died 1873, was no less dis¬ 
tinguished in the same field. 

AR'SENAL, a royal or public maga¬ 
zine or place appointed for the making, 
repairing, keeping, and issuing of mili¬ 
tary stores. An arsenal of the first class 
should include factories for guns and 
gun-carriages, small-arms, small-arms 
ammunition, harness, saddlery, tents, 
and powder; a laboratory and large 
store-houses. In arsenals of the second 
class workshops take the place of the 
factories. 






ARSENIC 


ARTHUR 


AR'SENIC, a metallic element of very 
common occurrence, being found in 
combination with many of the metals 
in a variety of minerals. It is of a dark- 
gray color, and readily tarnishes on 
exposure to the air, first changing to 
yellow, and finally to black. In hard¬ 
ness it equals copper; it is extremely 
brittle, and very volatile, beginning to 
sublime before it melts. It burns with 
a blue flame, and emits a smell of garlic. 
Its specific gravity is 5‘76. It forms 
alloys with most of the metals. Com¬ 
bined with sulphur it forms orpiment 
and realgar, which are the yellow and 
red sulphides of arsenic. Orpiment is 
the true arsenicum of the ancients. 
With oxygen arsenic forms two com¬ 
pounds, the more important of which 
is arsenious oxide or arsenic trioxide 
(AssOs), which is the white arsenic, or 
simply arsenic of the shops. It is 
usually seen in white, glassy, translu¬ 
cent masses, and is obtained by sub¬ 
limation from several ores containing 
arsenic in combination with metals, 
particularly from arsenical pyrites. 
Of all substances arsenic is that which 
has most frequently occasioned death 
by poisoning, both by accident and 
design. The best remedies against the 
effects of arsenic on the stomach are 
hydrated sesquioxide of iron or gelatin¬ 
ous hydrate of magnesia, or a mixture 
of both, with copious draughts of bland 
liquids of a mucilaginous consistence, 
which serve to procure its complete 
ejection from the stomach. Oils and 
fats generally, milk, albumen, wheat- 
flour, oatmeal, sugar or syrup, have all 
proved useful in counteracting its effect. 
Like many other virulent poisons it is a 
safe and useful medicine, especially in 
skin diseases, when judiciously em 
ployed. It is used as a flux for glass, 
and also for forming pigments. The 
arsenite of copper and a double arsenite 
and acetate of copper are largely used 
by painters; they are also used to color 
paper-hangings for rooms, a practice not 
unaccompanied with considerable dan¬ 
ger, especially if flock-papers are used or 
if the room is a confined one. Arsenic 
has been too frequently used to give that 
bright green often seen in colored con¬ 
fectionery, and to produce a green dye 
for articles of dress and artificial flowers. 

AR'SON, in English law, the malicious 
burning of a dwelling-house or outhouse 
of another man, which by the common 
law is felony, and which, if any person 
is therein, is capital. Also, the wilful 
setting fire to any church, chapel, ware¬ 
house, mill, barn, agricultural produce, 
ship, coal-mine, and the like. 

ART, in its most extended sense, as 
distinguished from nature on the one 
hand and from science on the other, has 
been defined as every regulated opera¬ 
tion or dexterity by which organized 
beings pursue ends which they knew 
beforehand, together with the rules and 
the result of every such operation or 
dexterity. In this wide sense it em¬ 
braces what are usually called the useful 
arts. In a narrower and purely aesthetic 
sense it designates what is more specif¬ 
ically termed the fine arts, as architec¬ 
ture, sculpture, painting, music, and 
poetry. The useful arts have their 
origin in positive practical needs, and 


restrict themselves to satisfying them. 
The fine arts minister to the sentiment 
of taste through the medium of the 
beautiful in form, color, rhythm, or 
harmony. See Painting, Sculpture, 
etc.—In the middle ages it was common 
to give certain branches of study the 
name of arts. See Arts. 

AR'TEMUS WARD. See Browne, 
Charles Farrar. 

ARTERIES, the system of cylindrical 
vessels or tubes, membranous, elastic, 
and pulsatile, which convey the blood 
from the heart to all parts of the body, 
by ramifications which as they proceed 
diminish in size and increase in number, 
and terminate in minute capillaries 
uniting the ends of the arteries with the 
beginnings of the veins. There are two 
principal arteries or arterial trunks: the 
aorta, which rises from the left ven¬ 
tricle of the heart and ramifies through 
the whole body, sending off great 
branches to the head, neck, and upper 
limbs and downward to the lower limbs, 
etc.'; and the pulmonary artery, which 
conveys venous blood from the right 
ventricle to the lungs, to be purified 
in the process of respiration. 

ARTERIOT'OMY, the opening or cut¬ 
ting of an artery for the purpose of 
blood-letting, as, for instance, to re¬ 
lieve pressure of the brain in apoplexy. 

ARTE’SIAN WELLS, so called from 
the French province of Artois, where 
they appear to have been first used on 
an extensive scale, are perpendicular 
borings into the ground through which 
water rises to the surface of the soil, pro¬ 
ducing a constant flow or stream, the 
ultimate sources of supply being higher 
than the mouth of the boring, and the 
water thus rising by the well-known 
law. They are generally sunk in valley 
plains and districts where the lower per¬ 
vious strata are bent into basin-shaped 
curves. The rain falling on the outcrops 
of these saturates the whole porous bed 
so that when the bore reaches it the 
water by hydraulic pressure rushes up 
toward the level of the highest portion 
of the strata. The supply is sometimes 
so abundant as to be used extensively 
as a moving power, and in arid regions 
for fertilizing the ground, to which pur¬ 
pose artesian springs have been applied 
from a very remote period. Thus many 
artesian wells have been sunk in the 
Algerian Sahara which have proved an 
immense boon to the district. The 
water of most of these is potable, but 
a few are a little saline, though not to 
such an extent as to influence vegeta¬ 
tion. The hollows in which London and 
Paris lie are both perforated in many 
places by borings of this nature. 
One of the most celebrated artesian 
wells is that of Grenelle near Paris, 1798 
feet deep, completed in 1S41, after eight 
years’ work. An artesian well at Buda¬ 
pest has a depth of 3182 feet; another 
at St. Louis, Mo., is 3843 feet deep. As 
the temperature of water from great 
depths is invariably higher than that 
at the surface, artesian wells have been 
made to supply warm water for heating 
manufactories, greenhouses, hospitals, 
fishponds, etc. Petroleum wells are 
generally of the same technical descrip¬ 
tion. Artesian wells are now made with 
larger diameters than formerly, and al¬ 


together their construction has been 
rendered much more easy in modem 
times. See Boring. 

ARTHUR, Chester Alan, the twenty- 
first president of the United States. He 
was born at Fairfield, Vt., Oct. 5, 1830, 
and died at New York Nov. 18, 1886. 
After taking his degree at Union College, 
in 1848, Mr. Arthur taught in various 
schools for a number of years, studying 
law meanwhile, and when the civil war 
broke out he was quite prominent in 
politics. An earnest abolitionist, he sided 
with the republican party, or, rather, 
was one of the founders and original 
members of that party. Soon after the 
beginning of the war Mr. Arthur was 
entrusted by General Morgan with the 
armament and commissariat of the 



Chester A. Arthur. 

New York troops—a duty in which he 
displayed such ability that he was soon 
promoted to the positions of engineer-in¬ 
chief, inspector-general, and quarter¬ 
master general. From 1871 to 1878 he 
was collector of the port of the city of 
New York, and when during the can¬ 
vass for the next election the republican 
party was split Mr. Arthur adopted the 
“Stalwart” side. In the convention 
that followed Grant was a strong candi¬ 
date, but the anti-Stalwarts defeated 
him and nominated Garfield. Not 
desiring to cause disaffection at the 
polls Mr. Arthur was placed on the 
ticket as candidate for vice-president. 
Garfield was assassinated and Mr. 
Arthur succeeded to the presidency on 
Sept. 19, 1881. Although there were 
some misgivings as to his course, Mr. 
Arthur made an acceptable president. 
His administration was not marked by 
any particular event of importance and 
he was unsuccessful in his candidacy 
for nomination before the succeeding 
convention. 

ARTHUR, Julia, an American actress, 
born at Hamilton, Ont., in 1869. She 
studied the stage abroad and her first 
American successes were with A. M. 
Palmer’s companies. She has played 
in The Black Masque, Becket, A Lady 
of Quality, and other plays. She re¬ 
tired in 1900. 

ARTHUR, King, an ancient British 
hero of the 6th century, son of Uther 
Pendragon and the Princess Igerna, 
wife of Gorlois, duke of Cornwall. He 
married Guinevere or Ginevra; estab- 






ARTHUR 


ASCETICS 


lished the famous order of the Round 
Table; and reigned, surrounded by a 
splendid court, twelve years in peace. 
After this, as the poets relate, he con¬ 
quered Denmark, Norway, and France, 
slew the giants of Spain, and went to 
Rome. From thence he is said to have 
hastened home on account of the faith¬ 
lessness of his wife, and Modred, his 
nephew, who had stirred up his subjects 
to rebellion. He subdued the rebels, 
but died in consequence of his wounds, 
on the island of Avalon. The story of 
Arthur is supposed to have some founda¬ 
tion in fact, it is generally believed that 
Arthur was one of the last great Celtic 
chiefs who led his countrymen from the 
west of England to resist the settlement 
of the Saxons in the country. But many 
authorities regard him as a leader of the 
Cymry of Cumbria and Strath-Clyde 
against the Saxon invaders of the east 
coast and the Piets and Scots north of 
the Forth and the Clyde. 

ARTHUR, Timothy Shay, an Ameri¬ 
can writer born in New York in 1809, 
died in 1885. He is principally known 
for his story Ten Nights in a Bar room. 

ARCTIC EXPLORATION. See 
Polar Exploration. 

ARTICHOKE, a well-known plant, 
somewhat resembling a thistle, with 
large divided prickly leaves. The erect 
flower-stem terminates in a large round 
head of numerous imbricated oval spiny 
seales which surround the flowers. The 
fleshy bases of the scales with the large 
receptacle are the parts that are 
eaten. 

ARTICLE, in grammar, a part of 
speech used before nouns to limit or 
define their application. In English a 
or an is usually called the indefinite 
article (the latter form being used be¬ 
fore a vowel sound), and the, the definite 
article, but they are also described as 
adjectives. An was originally the same 
as one, and the as that. In Latin there 
were no articles, and Greek has only the 
definite article. 

ARTICLES, The Thirty-nine, of the 
Church of England, a statement of the 
particular points of doctrine, thirty- 
nine in number, maintained by the 
English Church; first promulgated by a 
convocation held in London in 1562-63, 
and confirmed by royal authority; 
founded on and superseding an older 
code issued in the reign of Edward VI. 
They were ratified anew in 1604 and 
1628. All candidates for ordination 
must subscribe these articles. This 
formulary is now accepted by the Epis¬ 
copal Churches of Scotland, Ireland, 
and America. 

ARTICULA'TA, the third great sec¬ 
tion of the animal kingdom according 
to the arrangement of Cuvier, including 
all the invertebrates with the external 
skeleton forming a series of rings artic¬ 
ulated together and enveloping the 
body, distinct respiratory organs, and 
an internal ganglionated nervous sys¬ 
tem along the middle line of the body. 
They are divided into five classes, viz. 
Crustacea, Arachnida, Insecta, Myri- 
apoda, and Annelida. The first four 
classes are now commonly placed to¬ 
gether under the name of Arthropoda, 
and the whole are sometimes called 
Arthrozoa. 


ARTICULATION, in anatomy a joint; 
the joining or juncture of the bones. 
This is of three kinds: (1) a movable 
connection, such as the ball-and-socket 
joint; (2) immovable connection, as by 
suture, or junction by serrated margins; 
(3) union by means of another sub¬ 
stance, by a cartilage, tendon, or liga¬ 
ment. 

ARTIFICIAL LIMBS, legs or arms of 
wood, cork, or other material, made 
to replace the natural members which 
have been lost by disease or accident. 
The art of making artificial limbs is 
almost as old as history. Legs of 
bronze, ivory, and wood have been 
found on skeletons exhumed from 
tombs which date back to the fourth 
century before Christ. Artificial hands, 
feet and limbs were common during the 
middle ages. The earliest American 
invention in this line was the leg 
patented in 1846 by B. F. Palmer, 
which at once superseded all others of 
its kind. Other Americans followed 
Palmer, and the most serviceable legs 
and arms manufactured today are those 
made from American patents. The 
arm is usually mounted with a rubber 
hand, which is often of immense service 
to the wearer. Artificial legs consist of 
a hollow sheath or bucket, accurately 
fitting the stump and provided with a 
“pin” to reach the ground. This struc¬ 
ture is fitted with a rubber foot, and, 
simple as the structure may appear, it 
admirably supplies the place of the 
natural member. 

ARTIL'LERY, all sorts of great guns, 
cannon, or ordnance, mortars, howit¬ 
zers, machine-guns, etc., together with 
all the apparatus and stores thereto 
belonging, which are taken into the 
field, or used for besieging and defend¬ 
ing fortified places. The improvements 
and alterations in artillery and pro¬ 
jectiles have of late years been extra¬ 
ordinary, there being in the British 
service alone over 100 patterns of 
modern guns. Of these the largest is 
the 111-ton gun intended for ships and 
fortresses, the next largest being the 
100-ton gun for land service, and the 
80-ton gun for land and sea service. 
The most important modern improve¬ 
ments in artillery, besides the increase 
in size, is the general adoption of rifled 
ordnance, breech-loaders, and machine- 
guns. See Cannon, and other articles.— 
The name Park of Artillery is given 
to the entire train of artillery accom¬ 
panying a military force, with the 
apparatus, ammunition, etc., as well 
as the battalion appointed for its serv¬ 
ice and defense. 

ARTILLERY COMPANY, the Ancient 
and Honorable, of Boston, a historical 
company of artillery, the oldest mili¬ 
tary company of America, dating to 
1637. Its functions today are social. 

ARTILLERY CORPS, the entire artil¬ 
lery branch of the United States army. 
It consists of a commanding chief, 14 
colonels, 13 lieutenant-colonels, 39 
majors, 195 captains, 48 sergeants, 31 
batteries field, and 126 batteries coast 
artillery. Total, 18,920 men and 651 
officers. 

ARTILLERY SCHOOL, a military 

school of the United States at Fort 
Monroe, Va., for the teaching of 


the theory and practice of artillery 
work. 

ARTIODAC'TYLA, a section of the 
Ungulata or hoofed mammals, compris¬ 
ing all those in which the number of the 
toes is even (two or four), including the 
ruminants, such as the ox, sheep, deer, 
etc., and also a number of non-rumi¬ 
nating animals, as the hippopotamus 
and the pig. 

ARTS, the name given to certain 
branches of study in the middle ages, 
originally called the “liberal arts” to 
distinguish them from the “servile arts” 
or mechanical occupations. These arts 
were usually given as grammar, dia¬ 
lectics, rhetoric, music, arithmetic, 
geometry, and astronomy. Hence orig¬ 
inated the terms “art classes,” “de¬ 
grees in arts,” “Master of Arts,” etc., 
still in common use in universities, the 
faculty of arts being distinguished from 
those of divinity, law, medicine, or 
science 

ART STUDENTS’ LEAGUE, an Amer¬ 
ican art society with a membership of 
1000 and headquarters at New York. 
It was an offshoot from the academy of 
design, and was founded in 1878. A fee 
of $30 to $70 is charged, and the mem¬ 
ber is instructed by competent teachers. 
Scholarships and prizes are awarded 
annually. 

ASAFET'IDA, ASAFCETIDA, a fetid 

inspissated sap from central Asia. It 
is used in medicine as an anti-spasmodic, 
and in cases of flatulency, in hysteric 
paroxysms, and other nervous affec¬ 
tions. Notwithstanding its very dis¬ 
agreeable odor it is used as a seasoning 
in the East, and sometimes in Europe. 
An inferior sort is the product of certain 
species of Ferula. 

ASBESTOS, ASBESTUS, a remarkable 
and highly useful mineral, a fibrous 
variety of several members of the horn¬ 
blende family, composed of separable 
filaments, with a silky luster. The fibers 
are sometimes delicate, flexible, and 
elastic; at other times stiff and brittle. 
It is incombustible, and anciently was 
wrought into a soft, flexible cloth, which 
was used as a shroud for dead bodies. 
In modern times it has been manufac¬ 
tured into incombustible cloth, gloves, 
felt, paper, etc.; is employed in gas- 
stoves; is much used as a covering to 
steam boilers and pipes; is mixed with 
metallic pigments, and used as a paint 
on wooden structures, roofs, partitions, 
etc., to render them fire-proof, and is 
employed in various other ways, the 
manufacture having recently greatly 
developed. Some varieties are compact 
and take a fine polish, others are loose, 
like flax or silky wool. 

ASCENSION, Right, of a star, in 
astronomy, the arc of the equator inter¬ 
cepted between the first point of Aries 
and that point of the equator which 
comes to the meridian at the same in¬ 
stant with the star. 

ASCENSION DAY, the day on which 
the ascension of the Savior is com¬ 
memorated, often called Holy Thursday, 
a movable feast, always falling on the 
Thursday but one before Whitsuntide. 

ASCET'ICS, a name given in ancient 
times to those Christians who devoted 
themselves to severe exercises of piety 
! and strove to distinguish themselves 







ASCOLI 


ASIA 


from the world by abstinence from 
sensual enjoyments and by voluntary 
penances. Ascetics and asceticism have 
played an important part in the 
Christian church, but the principle of 
striving after a higher and more spiritual 
life by subduing the animal appetites 
and passions has no necessary connec¬ 
tion with Christianity. Thus there were 
ascetics among the Jews previous to 
Christ, and asceticism was inculcated 
by the Stoics, while in its most extreme 
form it may still be seen among the 
Brahmas and Buddhists. Monasticism 
was but one phase of asceticism. 

AS'COLI, or ASCOLI PICENO, capital 
of the province of the same name, on the 
Tronto, 14 miles above its embouchure 
in the Adriatic. Pop. 11,199.—The 
province has an area of 809 sq. miles, a 
pop. of 222,146. 

ASH, a genus of deciduous trees hav¬ 
ing imperfect flowers and a seed-vessel 
prolonged into a thin wing at the apex. 
There are many varieties of it, as the 
weeping-ash, the curled-leaved ash, the 
entire-leaved ash, etc. Among Ameri¬ 
can species are the white ash, with 
lighter bark and leaves; the red or black 
ash, with a brown bark; the black ash, 
the blue ash, the green ash, etc. They 
are all valuable trees. The mountain- 
ash or rowan belongs to a different order. 

ASH, ASHES, the incombustible resi¬ 
due of organic bodies (animal or vegeta¬ 
ble) remaining after combustion; in com¬ 
mon usage, any incombustible residue 
of bodies used as fuel; as a commercial 
term, the word generally means the 
ashes of vegetable substances, from 
which are extracted the alkaline matters 
called potash, pearl-ash, kelp, barilla, 
etc 

ASHANTEE', a kingdom of western 
Africa, in the interior of the Gold Coast, 
and to the north of the river Prah, with 
an area of about 70,000 sq. miles. It is 
in great part hilly, well-watered, and 
covered with dense tropical vegetation. 
The country round the towns, however, 
is carefully cultivated. The crops are 
chiefly rice, maize, millet, sugar-cane, 
and yams, the last forming the staple 
vegetable food of the natives. The 
domestic animals are cows, horses of 
small size, goats, and a species of hairy 
sheep. The larger wild animals are the 
elephant, rhinoceros, giraffe, buffalo, 
lion, hippopotamus, etc. Birds of all 
kinds are numerous, and crocodiles and 
other reptiles abound. Gold is abundant, 
being found either in the form of dust 
or in nuggets. The Ashantees are war¬ 
like and ferocious, with a love of shed¬ 
ding blood amounting to a passion, 
human sacrifices being formerly com¬ 
mon. Polygamy is practiced by them 
to an enormous extent. They make 
excellent cotton cloths, articles in gold, 
and good earthenware, tan leather, and 
make sword-blades of superior work¬ 
manship. The government is a mon¬ 
archy, and is now carried on under 
British supervision, Ashantee having 
become a protectorate of Britain in 
1896. The chief town is Coomassie, 
said to have from 70,000 to 100,000 
inhabitants. 

ASHEVILLE (ash'vil) a city and 
county seat of Buncombe Co., N. C., 
262 miles by rail northeast of Atlanta, 


Ga.; at the junction of the Swanna- 
noa and the French Broad rivers and on 
the Southern Railway. It is finely 
situated, at an elevation of 2300 feet 
in a mountainous region, and is widely 
celebrated as a health resort, both 
summer and winter. Pop. 15,000. 

ASH'BURTON, Alexander Baring, 
Lord, a British statesman and financier, 
born 1774, died 1848. After serving in 
parliament for many years he was 
raised to the peerage in 1835, after being 
a member of Peel’s government (1834-- 
35). 

ASH'BURTON TREATY, a treaty con¬ 
cluded at Washington, 1842, by Alex¬ 
ander Baring, Lord Ashburton, and the 
President of the United States; it 
defined the boundaries between the 
States and Canada, etc. 

ASH'ES. See Ash. 

ASH'LAND, a city and county seat of 
Ashland Co., Wis., 185 miles northeast 
of Saint Paul, Minn., on Chequamegon 
Bay, one of the finest harbors on Lake 
Superior. Steamers connect it with lake 
ports, and it is on the Wisconsin Central, 
the Chicago, Saint Paul, Minneapolis, 
and Omaha, the Northern Pacific, and 
the Chicago and Northwestern railroads. 
Ashland is one of the most important 
ports on the Great Lakes, the point from 
which the product of the iron mines of 
the Gogebic Range is shipped. Lumber, 
brown-stone, and the principal manu¬ 
factured products also constitute exten¬ 
sive shipments. Pop. 15,000. 

ASHLEY, Lord. See Shaftesbury, 
First Earl of. 

ASHTABU'LA, a city in Ashtabula 
Co., Ohio, on a river of the same name, 
3 miles from Lake Erie, and 54 miles east 
by north of Cleveland, on the Lake 
Shore and Michigan Southern, the New 
York, Chicago, and St. Louis, and the 
Pittsburg, Youngstown, and Ashtabula 
railroads. Pop. 14,000. 

ASH-WEDNESDAY, the first day of 
Lent, so called from a custom in the 
Western Church of sprinkling ashes that 
day on the heads of penitents, then ad¬ 
mitted to penance. The period at which 
the fast of Ash-Wednesday was insti¬ 
tuted is uncertain. In the R. Catholic 
Church the ashes are now strewn on the 
heads of all the clergy and people pres¬ 
ent. In the Anglican Church Ash- 
Wednesday is regarded as an important 
fast day. 

ASIA, the largest of the great divisions 
of the earth; length, from the extreme 
southwestern point of Arabia, at the 
strait of Babel-Mandeb, to the extreme 
northeastern point of Siberia—East 
Cape, or Cape Vostochni, in Bering’s 
strait—6900 miles; breadth, from Cape 
Chelyuskin, in northern Siberia, to Cape 
Romania, the southern extremity of the 
Malay Peninsula, 5300 miles; area esti¬ 
mated at 17,296,000 square miles, about 
a third of all the land of the earth’s sur¬ 
face. On three sides, n., e., and s., the 
ocean forms its natural boundary, while 
in the w. the frontier is marked mainly 
by the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, 
Caspian Sea, the Caucasus, the Black 
Sea, the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, 
and the Red Sea. There is no proper 
separation between Asia and Europe, 
the latter being really a great peninsula 
of the former. Asia, though not so ir¬ 


regular in shape as Europe, is broken in 
the s. by three great peninsulas, Arabia, 
Hindustan, and Farther India, while 
the east coast presents peninsular pro¬ 
jections and islands, forming a series of 
sheltered seas and bays, the principal 
peninsulas being Kamtchatka and 
Corea. The principal islands are those 
forming the Malay or Asiatic Archi¬ 
pelago, which stretch round in a wide 
curve on the s.e. of the continent. Be¬ 
sides the larger islands—Sumatra, Java, 
Borneo, Celebes, Mindanao, and Luzon 
(in the Philippine group)—there are 
countless smaller islands grouped round 
these. Other islands are Ceylon, in the 
s. of India; the Japanese islands and 
Sakhalin on the east of the continent; 
Formosa, s.e. of China; Cyprus, s. of 
Asia Minor; and New Siberia and Wran¬ 
gell Land, in the Arctic Ocean. 

The mountain systems of Asia are of 
great extent, and their culminating 
points are the highest in the world. The 
greatest of all is the Himalayan system, 
which lies mainly between Ion. 70° and 
100° e. and lat. 28° and 37° n. It ex¬ 
tends, roughly speaking, from northwest 
to southeast, its total length being about 
1500 miles, forming the northern barrier 
of Hindustan. The loftiest summits are 
Mount Everest, 29,002 feet high, God- 
win-Austen, 28,265, and Kanchinjinga, 
28,156. The principal passes, which 
rise to the height of 18,000 to 20,000 
feet, are the highest in the world. A 
second great mountain system of cen¬ 
tral Asia, connected with the north¬ 
western extremity of the Himalayan 
system by the elevated region of Pamir 
(about Ion. 70°-75° e., lat. 37°-40° n.), 
is the Thian-Shan system, which runs 
northeastward for a distance of 1200 
miles. In this direction the Altai, 
Sayan, and other ranges continue the 
line 'of elevations to the northeastern 
coast. A northwestern continuation of 
the Himalayas is the Hindu Kush, and 
farther westward a connection may be 
traced between the Himalayan mass 
and the Elburz range (18,460 feet), south 
of the Caspian, and thence to the moun¬ 
tains of Kurdistan, Armenia, and Asia 
Minor. 

There are vast plateaux and elevated 
valley regions connected with the great 
central mountain systems, but large 
portions of the continent are low and 
flat. Of the deserts of Asia the largest 
is that of Gobi (Ion. 90°-120° e., lat. 40°- 
48° n.), large portions of which are 
covered with nothing but sand or dis¬ 
play a surface of bare rock. An almost 
continuous desert region may also be 
traced from the desert of North Africa 
through Arabia (which is largely occu¬ 
pied by bare deserts), Persia, and Belu- 
chistan to the Indus. 

Some of the largest rivers of Asia flow 
northward to the Artie Ocean—the Obi, 
the Yenisei, and the Lena. The Hoang- 
Ho and Yang-tse, and the Amoor, are 
the chief of those which flow into the 
Pacific. The Ganges, Brahmaputra, 
Irawaddy, and Indus empty into the 
Indian Ocean. The Persian Gulf re¬ 
ceives the united waters of the Eu¬ 
phrates and the Tigris. There are sev¬ 
eral systems of inland drainage, large 
rivers falling into lakes which have no 
outlet. The largest lake of Asia (partly 




ASIA 


ASIA 


also European) is the Caspian Sea, which 
receives the Kur from the Caucasus 
(with its tributary the Aras from Ar¬ 
menia), and the Sefid Rud and other 
streams from Persia (besides the Volga 
from European Russia, and the Ural, 
which is partly European, partly 
Asiatic). The Caspian lies in the center 
of a great depression, being 83 feet 
below the level of the Sea of Azof. East 
from the Caspian is the Sea of Aral, 
which, like the Caspian, has no outlet, 
and is fed by the rivers Amoo Daria 
(Oxus) and Syr Daria. Still farther 
east, to the north of the Thian-Shan 
Mountains, and fed by the Hi and other 
streams, is Lake Balkash, also without 
an outlet, and very salt. Other lakes 
having no communication with the 
ocean are Lob Nor, in the desert of Gobi, 
receiving the river Tarim, and the Dead 
Sea, far below the level of the Mediter¬ 
ranean, and fed by the Jordan. The 
chief freshwater lake is Lake Baikal, in 
the south of Siberia, between Ion. 104° 
and 110° e., a mountain lake from which 
the Yenisei draws a portion of its waters. 

Active volcanoes are only met with in 
the extreme east (Kamtchatka) and in 
the Eastern Archipelago. From the 
remotest times Asia has been celebrated 
for its mineral wealth. In the Altai and 
Ural Mountains gold, iron, lead, and 
platinum are found; in India and other 
parts rubies, diamonds, and other gems 
are, or have been, procured; salt in 
central Asia; coal in China, India, 
central Asia, etc.; petroleum in the dis¬ 
tricts about the Caspian and in Burmah; 
bitumen in Syria; while silver, copper, 
sulphur, etc., are found in various parts. 

Every variety of climate may be ex¬ 
perienced in Asia, but as a whole it is 
marked by extremes of heat and cold 
and by great dryness, this in particular 
being the case with vast regions in the 
center of the continent and distant 
from the sea. 

The plants and animals of northern 
and western Asia generally resemble 
those of similar latitudes in Europe 
(which is really a prolongation of the 
Asiatic continent), differing more in 
species than in genera. The principal 
mountain trees are the pine, larch, and 
birch; the willow, alder, and poplar are 
found in lower grounds. In the central 
region European species reach as far 
as the western and central Himalayas, 
but are rare in the eastern. They are 
here met by Chinese and Japanese 
forms. The lower slopes of the Hima¬ 
layas are clothed almost exclusively with 
tropical forms. Higher up, between 
4000 and 10,000 feet, are found all the 
types of trees and plants that belong 
to the temperate zone, there being ex¬ 
tensive forests of conifers. Here is the 
native home of the deodar cedar. The 
southeastern region, including India, 
the eastern Peninsula, and China, with 
the islands, contains a vast variety of 
plants useful to man and having here 
their original habitat, such as the sugar¬ 
cane, rice, cotton, and indigo; pepper, 
cinnamon, cassia, clove, nutmeg, and 
cardamoms; banana, cocoanut, areca, 
and sago palms; the mango and many 
other fruits; with plants producing a 
vast number of drugs, caoutchouc, and 
gutta-percha. The forests of India and 


the Malay Peninsula contain oak, teak, 
s&l, and other timber woods, besides 
bomboos, palms, sandalwood, etc. The 
almyra palm is characteristic of 
outhern India; while the talipot palm 
flourishes on the western coast of Hin¬ 
dustan, Ceylon, and the Malay Penin¬ 
sula. The cultivated plants of India and 
China include wheat, barley, rice, maize, 
millet, sorghum, tea, coffee, indigo, 
cotton, jute, opium, tobacco, etc. In 
north China and the Japanese Islands 
large numbers of deciduous trees occur, 
such as oaks, maples, limes, walnuts, 
poplars, and willows, the genera being 
European, but the individual species 
Asiatic. Among cultivated plants are 
wheat, and in favorable situations rice, 
cotton, the vine, etc. Coffee, rice, 
maize, etc., are extensively grown in 
some of the islands of the Asiatic Archi¬ 
pelago. In Arabia and the warmer 
valleys of Persia, Afghanistan, and 
Beluchistan, aromatic shrubs are abun¬ 
dant. Over large parts of these regions 
the date-palm flourishes and affords a 
valuable article of food. Gum-produc¬ 
ing acacias are, with the date-palm, the 
commonest trees in Arabia. African 
forms are found extending from the 
Sahara along the desert region of Asia. 

Nearly all the mammals of Europe 
occur in northern Asia, with numerous 
additions to the species. Central Asia 
is the native land of the horse, the ass, 
the ox, the sheep, and the goat. Both 
varieties of the camel, the single and the 
double humped, are Asiatic. To the 
inhabitants of Tibet and the higher 
plateaux of the Himalayas the yak is 
what the reindeer is to the tribes of the 
Siberian plain, almost their sole wealth 
and support. The elephant, of a dif¬ 
ferent species from that of Africa, is 
a native of tropical Asia. The Asiatic 
lion, which inhabits Arabia, Persia, 
Asia Minor, Beluchistan, and some 
parts of India, is smaller than the Afri¬ 
can species. Bears are found in all parts, 
the white bear in the far north, and 
other species in the more temperate 
and tropical parts. The tiger is the 
most characteristic of the larger Asiatic 
Carnivora. It extends from Armenia 
across the entire continent, being absent, 
however, from the greater portion of 
Siberia and from the high tableland 
of Tibet; it extends also into Sumatra 
Java, and Bali. In southeastern Asia 
and the islands we find the rhinoceros, 
buffalo, ox, deer, squirrels, porcupines, 
etc. In birds nearly every order is repre¬ 
sented. Among the most interesting 
forms are the hornbills, the peacock, the 
Impey pheasant, the tragopan or horned 
pheasant, and other gallinaceous birds, 
the pheasant family being very char¬ 
acteristic of southeastern Asia. It was 
from Asia that the common domestic 
fowl was introduced into Europe. The 
tropical parts of Asia abound in mon¬ 
keys, of which the species are numerous. 
Some are tailed, others, such as the 
orang, are tailless, b.ut none have pre¬ 
hensile tails like the American monkeys. 
In the Malay Archipelago marsupial 
animals, so characteristic of Australia, 
first occur in the Moluccas and Celebes, 
while various mammals common in the 
'western part of the Archipelago are 
absent. A similar transition toward 


the Australian type takes place in the 
species of birds. Of marine mammals 
the dugong is peculiar to the Indian 
Ocean; in the Ganges is found a peculiar 
species of dolphin. At the head of the 
reptiles stands the Gangetic crocodile, 
frequenting the Ganges and other large 
rivers. Among the serpents are the 
cobra da capello, one of the most deadly 
snakes in existence; there are also large 
boas and pythons besides sea and fresh¬ 
water snakes. The seas and rivers pro¬ 
duce a great variety of fish. The Sal- 
monidae are found in the rivers flowing 
into the Arctic Ocean. Two rather re¬ 
markable fishes are the climbing perch 
and the archer-fish. The well-known 
goldfish is a native of China. 

Asia is mainly peopled by races be¬ 
longing to two great ethnographic types, 
the Caucasic or fair type, and the Mon- 
golic or yellow. To the former belong 
the Aryan or Indo-European, and the 
Semitic races, both of which mainly 
inhabit the southwest of the continent; 
to the latter belong the Malays and 
Indo-Chinese in the s.e., as well as the 
Mongolians proper (Chinese, etc.), occu¬ 
pying nearly all the rest of the con¬ 
tinent. To these may be added certain 
races of doubtful affinities, as the Dra- 
vidians of southern India, the Cin¬ 
galese of Ceylon, the Ainos of Yesso, 
and some negro-like tribes called Ne¬ 
gritos, which inhabit Malacca and the 
interior of several of the islands of the 
Eastern Archipelago. The total popu¬ 
lation is estimated at about 800,000,- 
000, or more than half that of the whole 
world. The chief independent states 
are the Chinese Empire (pop. 360,250,- 
000), Japan (pop. 40,000,000), Siam 
(pop. 6,000,000), Afghanistan (5,000,- 
000), Beluchistan, Persia (pop. 7,000,- 
000), and the Arabian states (3,000,- 
000). The most important of the 
religions of Asia are the Brahmanism 
of India, the creeds of Buddha, Con¬ 
fucius, and Lao-tse in China, and the 
various forms of Mohammedanism in 
Arabia, Persia, India, etc. Probably 
more than a half of the whole popula¬ 
tion profess some form of Buddhism. 
Several native Christian sects are found 
in India, Armenia, Kurdistan, and Syria. 

Asia is generally regarded as the 
cradle of the human race. It possesses 
the oldest historical documents, and 
next to the immediately contiguous 
kingdom of Egypt the oldest historical 
monuments in the world. At present 
the forms of government in Asia range 
from the primitive rule of the nomad 
sheik to the despotism of China. India 
has been brought by Britain directly 
under European influence, and Japan 
is freely modeling her institutions on 
those of the West. 

ASIA, Central, a designation loosely 
given to the regions in the center of 
Asia east of the Caspian, also called 
Turkestan, and formerly Tartary. The 
eastern portion belongs to China, the 
western now to Russia. Russian Cen¬ 
tral Asia comprises the Kirghiz Steppe 
(Uralsk, Turgai, Akmolinsk, Semipala- 
tinsk, etc.), and what is now the gov¬ 
ernment-general of Turkestan, besides 
the territory of the Turkomans, or 
Transcaspia and Merv. Russia has 
thus absorbed the old khanate of Kho- 






































.FRANZ JOSEPH LAND 


>IT.2 BERGEN, 


ARCrr'C_CI RC L E- 


StonV 


Nizhni U^insk 1 


/ ^"husnez^ 
Carna uTj %ii 

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jP 

‘Sesiipalatinsk 


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Ullaasutai: 


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Urumtsi; 




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Cherchi 


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Charing Nor 


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Bakha Namur 


Tengri Nori ?, 


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Chan derm 

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JangkOng 


Sholapur 


Sandoway' 


Yanaon ( jp r> j 
^Masulipatam, 

Nellore 

[Madras 


Basse] 


ENGLISH STATUTE MILES 


400 600 800 1000 

KILOMETERS 


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ANDAMAN 16. 


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ITANJAVAA b 


Hammond' a8zll Map of Asia. 
Copyright, 1902, by C.S. Hunjmond & Co. 


Kuclieg 


T Longitude 80 East «J" from 90 Greenwich' TC 


?Singapore 









































































































































ASIA MINOR 


ASSAULT AND BATTERY 


band and part of Bokhara and Khiva, 
and controls the vassal territories of 
Bokhara and Khiva, the southern 
boundary being the Persian and Afghan 
frontiers. 

ASIA MINOR, the most westerly por¬ 
tion of Asia, being the peninsula lying 
west of the Upper Euphrates, and form¬ 
ing part of Asiatic Turkey. It forms 
an extensive plateau, with lofty moun¬ 
tains rising above it, the most extensive 
ranges being the Taurus and Anti- 
Taurus, which border it on the south 
and southeast, and rise to over 10,000 
feet. There are numerous salt and 
fresh-water lakes. The chief rivers are 
the Kizil-Irmak (Halys), Sakaria (San- 
garius), entering the Black Sea; and the 
Sarabat (Hermus) and Menderes (Mae- 
ander), entering the yEgean. The coast 
regions are generally fertile, and have a 
genial climate; the interior is largely 
arid and dreary. Valuable forests and 
fruit-trees abound. Smyrna is the chief 
town. Anatolia is an equivalent 
name. 

ASP, a species of viper found in 
Egypt, resembling the cobra da capello 
or spectacle-serpent of the East Indies, 
and having a very venomous bite. 



Asp, from ancient Egyptian monument. 

When approached or disturbed it ele¬ 
vates its head and body, swells out its 
neck, and appears to stand erect to 
attack the agressor. Hence the ancient 
Egyptians believed that the asps were 
guardians of the spots they inhabited, 
and the figure of this reptile was adopted 
as an emblem of the protecting genius 
of the world. 

ASPAR'AGUS, a plant, the young 
shoots of which, cut as they are emerg¬ 
ing from the ground, are a favorite 
culinary vegetable. The plants should 
remain three years in the ground before 
they are cut; after which, for several 
years, they will continue to afford a 
regular annual supply. The beds are 

f rotected by straw or litter in winter, 
ts diuretic properties are ascribed to 
the presence of a crystalline substance 
found also in the potato, lettuce, etc. 

ASPA'SIA, a celebrated lady of 
ancient Greece, was born at Miletus, 
in Ionia, but passed a great part of her 
life at Athens, where her house was the 
general resort of the most distinguished 
men in Greece. She won the affection 
of Pericles, who united himself to As- 
pasia as closely as was permitted by 
the Athenian law, which declared 
marriage with a foreign woman illegal. 
In 432-1 b.c. she was accused of im¬ 
piety, and was only saved from con¬ 
demnation by the eloquence and tears 
of Pericles. She had a son by Pericles, 


who was legitimated (b.c. 430) by a 
special decree of the people. 

ASPHALT, ASPHAL'TUM, the most 
common variety of bitumen; also called 
mineral pitch. Asphalt is a compact, 
glossy, brittle, black or brown mineral, 
which breaks with a polished fracture, 
melts easily with a strong pitchy odor 
when heated, and when pure burns with¬ 
out leaving any ashes. It is found in 
the earth in many parts of Asia, Europe, 
and America, and in a soft or liquid 
state on the surface of the Dead Sea, 
which from this circumstance was called 
Asphaltltes. It is of organic origin, the 
asphalt of the great Pitch Lake of 
Trinidad being derived from bitumi¬ 
nous shales, containing vegetable re¬ 
mains in the process of transformation. 
Asphalt is produced artificially in mak¬ 
ing coal-gas. During the process much 
tarry matter is evolved and collected 
in retorts. If this be distilled, naphtha 
and other volatile matters escape, and 
asphalt is left behind. It is sometimes 
called Jew’s Pitch. 

ASPHYX'IA, literally, the state of a 
living animal in which no pulsation can 
be perceived, but the term is more par¬ 
ticularly applied to a suspension of the 
vital functions from causes hindering 
respiration. The normal accompani¬ 
ments of death from asphyxia are dark 
fluid blood, a congested brain and ex¬ 
ceedingly congested lungs, the general 
engorgement of the viscera, and an ab¬ 
sence of blood from the left cavities of 
the heart while the right cavities and 
pulmonary artery are gorged. The 
restoration of asphyxiated persons has 
been successfully accomplished at long 
periods after apparent death. The 
attempt should be made to maintain the 
heat of the body and to secure the infla¬ 
tion of the lungs as in the case of the 
apparently drowned. 

AS'PINWALL. See Colon. 

AS'PIRATE, a name given to any 
sound like our h, to the letter h itself, 
or to any mark of aspiration. 

ASS, a species of the horse genus, 
supposed by Darwin to have sprung 
from the wild variety found in Abyssinia, 
by some writers to be a descendant of 
the wild ass, inhabiting the mountain¬ 
ous deserts of Tartary, etc., and by 
others to have descended from the 
kiang of southwestern Asia. Both in 
color and size the ass is exceedingly 
variable, ranging from dark gray and 
reddish brown to white, and from the 
size of a Newfoundland dog in North 
India to that of a good-sized horse. In 
the southwestern countries of Asia and 
in Egypt, in some districts of southern 
Europe, as in Spain, and in Kentucky 
and Peru, great attention has been paid 
to selection and interbreeding, with a 
result no less remarkable than in the 
case of the horse. The male ass is 
mature at two years of age, the female 
still earlier. The she-ass carries her 
young eleven months. The teeth of 
the young ass follow the same order of 
appearance and renewal as those of the 
horse. The life of the ass does not 
usually exceed thirty years. It is in 
general much healthier than the horse, 
and is maintained in this condition by a 
smaller quantity and coarser quality 
of food; it is superior to the horse in its 


ability to carry heavy burdens over the 
most precipitous roads, and is in no re¬ 
spect its inferior in intelligence, despite 
the reputation for stupidity which it has 
borne from very ancient times. The 
skin is used as parchment to cover 
drums, etc., and in the East is made into 
shagreen. The hybrid offspring of the 
horse and the female ass is the hinny, 
that of the ass and the mare is the mule; 
but the latter is by far the larger and 
more useful animal. Asses’ milk, long 
celebrated for its sanative qualities, 
more closely resembles that of a woman, 
than any other. It is very similar in 
taste, and throws up an equally fluid 
cream, which is not convertible into 
butter. 

ASSAM', a chief commissionership or 
province of British India, on the north¬ 
east border of Bengal, bounded on the 
north by the Himalayas, on the east and 
south mainly by Burmah; area, 49,004 
sq. miles. Pop. 6,126,343, 3,429,459 
of whom are Hindus, 1,581,317 Moham- 



Assamese. 


medans, 35,969 Christians, 8911 Budd¬ 
hists, the rest being chiefly hill tribes 
of aboriginal faiths. 

AS'SAPAN, the flying-squirrel of N. 
America, an elegant little animal with 
folds of skin along its sides which enable 
it to take leaps of 40 or 50 yards. 

ASSASSINA'TION, an act by which 
life is taken in a treacherous or unex¬ 
pected manner, usually for the further¬ 
ance of a political or social purpose. 
The term is not customarily applied to 
murder accomplished for purely per¬ 
sonal reasons in the manner of assassina¬ 
tion, but rather to the murder of some 
public official or important person. The 
term “spadassin,” used during the 
French revolution, is of kindred origin 
and meaning. 

ASSASS'INS, an Asiatic order or 
society having the practice of assassina¬ 
tion as its most distinctive feature, 
founded by Hassan Ben Sabbah, a dai 
or missionary of the heterodox Moham¬ 
medan sect the Ismaelites. 

ASSAULT AND BATTERY, in law, 
an attempt or offer, with force and 
violence, to do a corporal hurt to 
another, as by striking at him with or 
without a weapon. If a person lift 
up or stretch forth his arm and offer 
to strike another, or menace any one 
with any staff or weapon, it is an as¬ 
sault in law. Assault, therefore, does 
not necessarily imply a hitting or blow, 







ASSAYING 


ASSYRIA 


because in trespass for assault and 
battery a man may be found guilty of 
the assault and acquitted of the battery. 
But every battery includes an assault. 

ASSAYING, the estimation of the 
amount of pure metal, and especially of 
the precious metals, in an ore or alloy. 
In the case of silver the assay is either 
by the dry or by the wet process. The 
dry process is called cupellation from 
the use of a small and very porous cup, 
called a cupel, formed of well-burned 
and finely-ground bone-ash made into 
a paste with water. The cupel, being 
thoroughly dried, is placed in a fire-clay 
oven about the size of a drain-tile, with 
a flat sole and arched roof, and with 
slits at the sides to admit air. This 
oven, called a muffle, is set in a furnace, 
and when it is at a red heat the assay, 
consisting of a small weighed portion of 
the alloy wrapped in sheet-lead, is laid 
upon the cupel. The heat causes the 
lead to volatilize or combine with the 
other metals, and to sink with them into 
the cupel, leaving a bright globule of 
pure metallic silver, which gives the 
amount of silver in the alloy operated 
on. In the wet process the alloy is dis¬ 
solved in nitric acid, and to the solution 
are added measured quantities of a 
solution of common salt of known 
strength, which precipitates chloride of 
silver. The operation is concluded when 
no further precipitate is obtained on the 
addition of the salt solution, and the 
quantity of silver is calculated from 
the amount of salt solution used. An 
alloy of gold is first cupelled with lead as 
above, with the addition of three parts 
of silver for every one of gold. After 
the cupellation is finished the alloy of 
gold and silver is beaten and rolled out 
into a thin plate, which is curled up by 
the fingers into a little spiral or cornet. 
This is put into a flask with nitric acid, 
which dissolves away the silver and 
leaves the cornet dark and brittle. After 
washing with water the cornet is boiled 
with stronger nitric acid to remove the 
last traces of silver, well washed, and 
then allowed to drop into a small 
crucible, in which it is heated, and then 
it is weighed. The assay of gold, there¬ 
fore, consists of two parts: cupellation, 
by which inferior metals ’(except silver) 
are removed; and quartation, by which 
the added silver and any silver originally 
present are got rid of. The quantity of 
silver added has to be regulated to about 
three times that of the gold. If it be 
more the cornet breaks up, if it be less 
the gold protects small quantities of 
the silver from the action of the acid. 
Where, as in some gold manufactured 
articles, these methods of assay cannot 
be applied, a streak is drawn with the 
article upon a touchstone consisting of 
coarse-grained Lydian quartz saturated 
with bituminous matter, or of black 
basalt. The practiced assayer will 
detect approximately the richness of 
the gold from the color of the streak, 
which may be further subjected to an 
£Lcid test 

ASSAY OFFICE, a laboratory con¬ 
ducted by the United States govern¬ 
ment for the valuation of gold and silver 
deposited for coinage. The principal 
mints have assay offices attached to 
them, and there is an assay office at 


Seattle, Wash. The largest in the 
country is that at New York. 

AS'SEGAI, a spear used as a weapon 
among the Kaffirs of S. Africa, made of 
hard wood tipped with iron, and used 
for throwing or thrusting. 

ASSESS'OR, a person appointed to 
ascertain and fix the amount of taxes, 
rates, etc.; or a person who sits along 
with the judges in certain courts,_ and 
assists them with his professional 
knowledge. 

AS'SETS, property or goods available 
for the payment of a bankrupt or de¬ 
ceased person’s obligations. Assets are 
personal or real, the former comprising 
all goods, chattels, etc., devolving upon 
the executor as saleable to discharge 
debts and legacies. In commerce and 
bankruptcy the term is often used as the 
antithesis of “liabilities,” to designate 
the stock in trade and entire property 
of an individual or an association. 

ASSIGNEE', a person appointed by 
another to transact some business, or 
exercise some particular privilege or 
power. Formerly the persons appointed 
under a commission of bankruptcy, to 
manage the estate of the bankrupt on 
behalf of the creditors, were so called, 
but now trustees. 

ASSIGN'MENT is a transfer by deed 
of any property, or right, title, or inter¬ 
est, in property, real or personal. As¬ 
signments are usually given for leases, 
mortgages, and funded property. 

ASSINIBOI'A, the smallest of the four 
districts into which a portion of the 
northwestern territories of Canada was 
divided in 1882. It lies immediately to 
the west of Manitoba, with Saskatche¬ 
wan and Alberta as its northern and 
western boundaries. It is intersected 
by the Saskatchewan (south branch) 
and the Qu’Appelle river, and contains 
much good wheat land. Some coal is 
mined. Area, 89,535 sq. miles. Pop. 
67,385. Capital, Regina, on the Cana¬ 
dian Pacific Railway, which intersects 
the district. 

ASSINIBOINE, a river of Canada, 
which flows through Manitoba and joins 
the Red river at Winnipeg, about 40 
miles above the entrance of the latter 
into Lake Winnipeg, after a somewhat 
circuitous course of about 500 miles 
from the west and northwest. Steamers 
ply on it for over 300 miles. 

ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS, the term 
used in psychology to comprise the con¬ 
ditions under which one idea is able to 
recall another to consciousness. Psy¬ 
chologists have been disposed to classify 
these conditions under two general 
heads: the law of contiguity, and the 
law of association. The first states the 
fact that actions, sensations, emotions, 
and ideas, which have occurred together, 
or in close succession, tend to suggest 
each other when any one of them is 
afterward presented to the mind. The 
second indicates that present actions, 
sensations, emotions, or ideas tend to 
recall their like from among previous 
experiences. Other laws have at times 
been enunciated, but they are reducible 
to these; thus, the “law of contrast or 
contrariety” is properly a case of con¬ 
tiguity. On their physical side the 
principles of association correspond 
with the physiological facts of re¬ 


excitation of the same nervous centers, 
and in this respect they have played an 
important part in the endeavor to place 
psychology upon a basis of positive 
science. The laws of association, taken 
in connection with the law of relativity, 
are held by many to be a complete 
exposition of the phenomena of intellect. 

ASSUMP'SIT, in English law, an 
action to recover compensation for the 
non-performance of a parole promise; 
that is, a promise not contained in a 
deed under seal. Assumpsits are of 
two kinds, express and implied. The 
former are where the contracts are 
actually made in word or writing; the 
latter are such as the law implies from 
the justice of the case; e.g. employment 
to do work implies a promise to pay. 

ASSUMPTION, the ecclesiastical fes¬ 
tival celebrating the miraculous ascent 
into heaven of the Virgin Mary’s body 
as well as her soul, kept on the 15th of 
August. The legend first appeared in 
the 3d or 4th century, and the festival 
was instituted some three centuries later. 

ASSURANCE. See Insurance. 

ASSYR'IA, an ancient monarchy in 
Asia, intersected by the upper course 
of the Tigris, and having the Armenian 
mountains on the north and Babylonia 
on the south; area, probably about 
100,000 sq. miles; surface partly moun¬ 
tainous, hilly, or undulating, partly a 
portion of the fertile Mesopotamian 



lain. The numerous remains of ancient 
abitations show how thickly this vast 
flat must have once been peopled; now, 
for the most part, it is a mere wilder¬ 
ness. The chief cities of Assyria in the 
days of its prosperity were Nineveh, the 
site of which is marked by mounds 
opposite Mosul (Nebi Yunus and Koy- 
unjik), Calah or Kalakh (the modern 
Nimrud), Asshur or A1 Asur (Kalah 
Sherghat), Sargina (Khorsabad), and 
Arbela (Arbil). 

Much light has been thrown on the 
history of Assyria by the decipherment 
of the cuneiform inscriptions obtained 
by excavation. About 1120 b.c. Tiglath- 
Pileser I., one of the greatest of the 
sovereigns of the first Assyrian monar¬ 
chy, ascended the throne, and carried 
his conquests to the Mediterranean on 
the one side and to the Caspian and the 
Persian Gulf on the other. At his death 
there ensued a period of decline, which i 
lasted over 200 years. Under Assur- i 
nazir-pal, who reigned from 884 to 859 














ASTARTE 


ASTEROIDS 


b.c., Assyria once more advanced to 
the position of the leading power in the 
world, the extent of his kingdom being 
greater than that of Tiglath-Pileser. 
The magnificent palaces, temples, and 
other buildings of his reign prove the 
advance of the nation in wealth, art, 
and luxury. In 859 he was succeeded 
by his son Shalmaneser II., whose 
career of conquest was equally success- 
fill. Sargon (722-705), a usurper, 
claimed descent from the ancient 
Assyrian kings. After taking Samaria 
and leading over 27,000 people captive, 
he overthrew the combined forces of 
Elam (Susiana) and Babylon. He de¬ 
feated the King of Hamath, who along 
with other princes had revolted, took 
him prisoner, and flayed him alive, ad¬ 
vanced through Philistia and captured 
Ashdod; then pushing southward to¬ 
tally defeated the forces of Egypt 
and Gaza at Raphia (719). The re¬ 
volted Armenians had also more than 
once to be put down. In 710 Merodach- 
baladan was driven out of Babylonia 
by Sargon, after holding it for twelve 
years as an independent king, and being 
supported by the rulers of Egypt and 
Palestine; his allies were also crushed, 
Judah was overrun, and Ashdod leveled 
to the ground. Sargon latterly crossed 
over and took Cyprus, where he left an 
inscription telling of his expedition. 


and Arabia. Egypt was the only power, 
however, which regained its indepen¬ 
dence; fire, sword, and famine reduced 
the rest to submission. In 640 the 
Medes revolted, and latterly made 
themselves independent. Though the 
king’s character was marked by cruelty 
and sensuality, he was a zealous patron 
of the arts and learning. He died in 
625, and was succeeded by his son Assur- 
emid-ilin (or Sarakos), under whom 
Babylon definitely threw off the As¬ 
syrian yoke. The country continued 
rapidly to decline, fighting hard for 
existence until the capital Nineveh was 
captured and burned by the allied 
forces of the Medes and Babylonians, 
about 607 or 606 b.c. The story of 
Sardanapalus associated with this event 
is a mere myth or legend. Assyria now 
fell partly to Media, partly to Baby¬ 
lonia, and afterwards formed with 
Babylonia one of the satrapies of the 
Persian empire. In 312 b.c. it became 
part of the kingdom of the Seleucidse; 
later on it came under Parthian rule, 
and was more than once a Roman pos¬ 
session. For a long period it was under 
the caliphs of Bagdad. In 1638 the 
Turks wrested it from the Persians, and 
it has continued under their dominion 
since that date. 

The Assyrians were far advanced in 
art and industry, and in civilization in 


Hunting wild bull, from monuments at Nineveh. 



He spent the latter years of his reign 
in internal reforms, in the midst of 
which he was murdered, being suc¬ 
ceeded by Sennacherib, one of his 
younger sons, in 705. Sennacherib at 
once had to take up arms against 
Merodach-baladan, who had again ob¬ 
tained possession of Babylon. In 701 
fresh outbreaks in Syria led him in that 
direction. He captured Zidon and 
Askelon, and defeated Hezekiah and 
his Egyptian and Ethiopian allies, and 
forced him to pay tribute, after which 
he returned to Assyria to overawe the 
Babylonians, Elamites, and the north¬ 
ern hill tribes. A second expedition 
into Syria is briefly recorded in 2 Kings 
xix., where we are told that, as his army 
lay before Libnah, in one night the angel 
of Jehovah went out, and smote in the 
camp of the Assyrians 185,000 men 
(2 Kings xix. 35). In 681 he was mur¬ 
dered by his two sons, Adrammelech 
and Sharezer, but they were defeated 
by their brother Esar-haddon, who then 
mounted the throne. In 652 a general 
insurrection broke out, headed by 
Sammughes, governor of Babylonia, 
Assur-bani-pal’s own brother, and in¬ 
cluding Babylonia, Egypt, Palestine, 


general. They constructed large build¬ 
ings, especially palaces, of a most impos¬ 
ing character, the materials being brick, 
burned or sun-dried, stone, alabaster 
slabs for lining and adorning the walls 
internally and externally, and timber 
for pillars and roofs. These alabaster 
slabs were elaborately sculptured with 
designs serving to throw much light on 
the manners and customs of the people. 
A most characteristic feature of the 
palaces were gigantic figures of winged, 
human-headed bulls, placed at gate¬ 
ways (often arched over) or other im¬ 
portant points; figures of lions, etc., 
were also similarly employed. The 
palaces were raised on high terraces, 
and often comprised a great number of 
apartments; there were no windows, 
light being obtained by carrying the 
walls up to a certain height and then 
raising on them pillars to support the 
roof and admit light and air. The cities 
of Nineveh, Assur, and Arbela had each 
their royal observatories, superintended 
by astronomers-royal, who had to send 
in their reports to the king twice a 
month. At an early date the stars were 
numbered and named; a calendar was 
formed, in which the year was divided 


into twelve months (of thirty days each), 
called after the zodiacal signs, but as 
this division was found to be inaccurate 
an intercalary month was added every 
six years. The week was divided into 
seven days, the seventh being a day of 
rest; the day was divided into twelve 
periods of two hours each, each of these 
being subdivided into sixty minutes, 
and these again into sixty seconds. The 
Assyrians employed both the dial and 
the clepsydra. Eclipses were recorded 
from a very remote epoch, and their 
recurrence roughly determined. The 
principal astronomical work, called the 
Illumination of Bel, was inscribed on 
seventy tablets, and went through 
numerous editions, one of the latest 
being in the British Museum. It treats 
among other things of comets, the polar 
star, the conjunction of the sun and 
moon, and the motions of Venus and 
Mars. 

ASTAR'TE, a Syrian goddess, prob¬ 
ably corresponding to the Semgle of the 
Greeks and the Ashtaroth of the He¬ 
brews, and representing the productive 
power of nature. She was a moon- 
goddess. Some regard her as corre¬ 
sponding with Hera (Juno), and others 
with Aphrodite. See Ashtaroth. 

AS'TER, a genus of plants, compre¬ 
hending several hundred species, mostly 
natives of North America, although 
others are widely distributed. Many 
are cultivated as ornamental plants. 
Asters generally flower late in the sea¬ 
son, and some are hence called Michael¬ 
mas or Christmas Daisies. The China 
Aster is a very showy annual, of which 
there are many varieties. 

ASTE'RIA, a name applied to a vari¬ 
ety of corundum, which displays an 
opalescent star of six rays of fight when 
cut with certain precautions; and also 
to the cat’s-eye, which consists of quartz, 
and is found especially in Ceylon. 

AS'TERISK, the figure of a star, 
thus *, used in printing and writing, 
as a reference to a passage or note in 
the margin, or to fill the space when a 
name, or the like, is omitted. 

ASTEROIDS, or PLANETOIDS, a 
numerous group of very small planets 
revolving round the sun between the 
orbits of Mars and Jupiter, remarkable 
for the eccentricity of their orbits and 
the large size of their angle of inclina¬ 
tion to the ecliptic. The diameter of 
the largest is not supposed to exceed 
450 miles, while most of the others are 
very much smaller. They number over 
400, and new members are being con¬ 
stantly discovered. Ceres, the first of 
them, was discovered 1st January, 1801, 
and within three years more Pallas, 
Juno, and Vesta were seen. The extraor¬ 
dinary smallness of these bodies, and 
their nearness to each other, gave rise 
to the opinion that they were but the 
fragments of a planet that had formerly 
existed and had been brought to an end 
by some catastrophe. For nearly forty 
years investigations wereAcarried on, 
but no more planets were discovered 
till 8th December, 1845, when a fifth 
planet in the same region was dis¬ 
covered. The rapid succession of dis¬ 
coveries that followed was for a time 
taken as a corroboration of the dis¬ 
ruptive theory, but the breadth of the 










ASTHMA 


ASTRONOMY 


zone occupied makes the hypothesis of 
a shattered planet more than doubtful. 
Their mean distances from the sun vary 
between 200,000,000 and 300,000,000 
miles; the periods of revolution be¬ 
tween 1191 days (Flora) and 2868 
(Hilda). Their eccentricities and in¬ 
clinations are on the average greater 
than those of the earth, but their total 
mass does not exceed one-fourth that 
of the earth. 

ASTHMA (ast'ma), difficulty of respi¬ 
ration, returning at intervals, with a 
sense of stricture across the chest and 
in the lungs, a wheezing, hard cough at 
first, but more free toward the close 
of each paroxysm, with a discharge of 
mucus, followed by a remission. Asth¬ 
ma is essentially a spasm of the mus¬ 
cular tissue which is contained in the 
smaller bronchial tubes. It generally 
attacks persons advanced in years, and 
seems, in some instances, to be hered¬ 
itary. The exciting causes are various 
—accumulation of blood or viscid mucus 
in the lungs, noxious vapors, a cold and 
foggy atmosphere, or a close, hot air, 
flatulence, accumulated faeces, violent 
passions, organic diseases in the tho¬ 
racic viscera, etc. By far the most im¬ 
portant part of the treatment consists 
in the obviating or removing the several 
exciting causes. It seldom proves fatal 
except as inducing dropsy, consump¬ 
tion, etc. 

ASTIG'MATISM, a malformation, con¬ 
genital or accidental, of the lens of the 
eye, in consequence of which the indi¬ 
vidual does not see objects in the same 
plane, although they may really be so. 
It is due to the degree of convexity of 
the horizontal and vertical meridians 
being different, so that corresponding 
rays, instead of converging into one 
point, meet at two foci. 



ASTOR, John Jacob, born near 
Heidelberg, Germany, 1763; died at 
New York 1848. In 1783 he emigrated 
to the United States, settled at New 
York, and became extensively engaged 
in the fur trade. In 1811 the settlement 
of Astoria, founded by him, near the 
mouth of the Columbia river, was 
formed to serve as a central depot for 
the fur trade between the lakes and the 


Pacific. He subsequently engaged in 
various speculations, and died worth 
130,000,000, leaving $350,000 to found 
the Astor Library in New York. This 
institution is contained in a splendid 
building, enlarged in 1859 at the cost of 
his son, and comprises about 260,000 
volumes. 

ASTOR, John Jacob, an American 
millionaire, and fourth of that name. 
Born in New York in 1864. Died 1890. 

ASTOR, William Waldorf, a famous 
millionaire, born in New York in 1848, 
and great-grandson of the first John 
Jacob Astor. Defeated as a candidate 
for congress in 1881, he was American 
minister to Italy from 1882 to 1885. 
In 1890 he removed to England and be¬ 
came a British subject. His income is 
derived from a fortune of $200,000,000 
in the United States. 

ASTRAKHAN (as-tra-Aan'), a Russian 
city, capital of government of same 
name, on an elevated island in the Volga, 
about 30 miles above its mouth in the 
Caspian, communicating with the oppo¬ 
site banks of the river by numerous 
bridges. Pop. 113,001, composed of 
various races. — The government has 
an area of 85,000 square miles. It con¬ 
sists almost entirely of two vast steppes, 
separated from each other by the Volga, 
and forming for the most part arid 
sterile deserts. Pop. 994,775. 

ASTRAKHAN, a name given to sheep¬ 
skins with a curled woolly surface 
obtained from a variety of sheep found 
in Bokhara, Persia, and Syria; also a 
rough fabric with a pile in imitation of 
this. 

ASTRAL SPIRITS, spirits formerly 
believed to people the heavenly bodies 
or the aerial regions. In the middle 
ages they were variously conceived as 
fallen angels, souls of departed men, or 
spirits originating in fire, and belonging 
neither to heaven, earth, nor hell. 
Paracelsus regarded them as demoniacal 
in character. 

ASTRIN'GENT, a medicine which 
contracts the organic textures and 
canals of the body, thereby checking or 
diminishing excessive discharges. The 
chief astringents are the mineral acids, 
alum, lime-water, chalk, salts of copper, 
zinc, iron, lead, silver; and among vege¬ 
tables catechu, kino, oak-bark, and galls. 

ASTROL'OGY, literally, the science 
or doctrine of the stars. The name was 
formerly used as equivalent to astron¬ 
omy but is now restricted in meaning 
to the pseudo-science which pretends 
to enable men to judge of the effects and 
influences of the heavenly bodies on 
human and other mundane affairs, and 
to foretell future events by their situa¬ 
tions and conjunctions. As usually 
practiced the whole heavens, visible and 
invisible, was divided by great circles 
into twelve equal parts, called houses. 
As the circles were supposed to remain 
immovable every heavenly body passed 
through each of the twelve houses every 
twenty-four hours. The portion of the 
zodiac contained in each house was the 
part to which chief attention was paid, 
and the position of any plant was settled 
by its distance from the boundary circle 
of the house, measured on the ecliptic. 
The houses had different names and 
different powers, the first being called 


the house of life, the second the house of 
riches, the third of brethren, the sixth 
of marriage, the eighth of death, and so 
on. The part of the heavens about to 
rise was called the ascendant, the planet 
within the house of the ascendant being 
the lord of the ascendant. The different 
aspects of the planets were of great 
importance. To cast a person’s nativity 
(or draw his horoscope) was to find the 
position of the heavens at the instant of 
his birth, which being done the astrolo¬ 
ger, who knew the various powers and 
influences possessed by the sun, the 
moon, and the planets, could predict 
what the course and termination of that 
person’s life would be. The tempera¬ 
ment of the individual was ascribed to 
the planet under which he was born, as 
saturnine from Saturn, jovial from 
Jupiter, mercurial from Mercury, etc.— 
words which are now used with little 
thought of their original meaning. The 
virtues of herbs, gems, and medicines 
were supposed to be due to their ruling 
planets. 

ASTRON'OMY is that science which 
investigates the motions, distances, 
magnitudes, and various phenomena 
of the heavenly bodies. That part of 
the science which gives a description of 
the motions, figures, periods of revolu¬ 
tion, and other phenomena of the 
heavenly bodies is called descriptive 
astronomy; that part which teaches 
how to observe the motions, figures, 
periodical revolutions, distances, etc., 
of the heavenly bodies, and how to use 
the necessary instruments, is called 
practical astronomy; and that part 
which explains the causes of their 
motions, and demonstrates the laws by 
which those causes operate, is termed 
physical astronomy. Recent years have 
added two new fields of investigation 
which are full of promise for the advance¬ 
ment of astronomical science. The first 
of these—celestial photography—has 
furnished us with invaluable light- 
ictures of the sun, moon, and other 
odies, and has recorded the existence 
of myriads of stars invisible even by 
the best telescopes; while the second, 
spectrum analysis, now at work in 
many hands, reveals to us a knowledge 
of the physical constituents of the 
universe, telling us for instance that in 
the sun (or his atmosphere) there exist 
many of the elements familiar to us on 
the earth. It has also been applied to 
the determination of the velocity with 
which stars are approaching to, or 
receding from, our system; and to the 
measurement of movements taking place 
within the solar atmospheric envelopes. 
From analysis of some of the unresolved 
nebulae the inference is drawn that they 
are not star-swarms but simply cosmical 
vapor; whence a second inference results 
favorable to the hypothesis of the grad¬ 
ual condensation of nebulae, and the 
successive evolutions of suns and 
systems. 

The most remote period to which we 
can go back in tracing the history of 
astronomy refers us to a time about 
2500 b.c., when the Chinese are said to 
have recorded the simultaneous con¬ 
junction of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and 
Mercury with the moon. The Arabs 
began to make scientific astronomical 








I.—Northern Hemisphere, 



II.—Southern Hemisphere. 

Equal-surface projection of the celestial sphere, showing all the stars 
visible to the naked eye. 



























Total Bcltpse of the Sun. 
Observed at Creston, Wvo., 
July 29, 1878. 



Great Nebula in Orion. 
From a Study made in 
Tears 1876-1870. 




The Planet Mars. Observed 
Sept. 3, 1877 at 11:66 P. M. 



Solar Protuberances. 120,000 Miles 
High Observed May 6, 1873. 



The Planet Saturn. 
Observed Nov. 30, 1874, 
at 6:60 P. M. 


Aurora Borealis. 
Observed March 1. 1872, 
at 9:26 P. M. 


























ASTRO-PHOTOGRAPHY 


ATHENA 


observations about the middle of the 
8th century, and for 400 ,years they 

{ irosecuted the science with assiduity. 
bn-Yunis (1000 a.d) made important 
observations of the disturbances and 
eccentricities of Jupiter and Saturn. 
In the 16th century Nicholas Co¬ 
pernicus, born in 1473, introduced the 
system that bears his name, and 
which gives to the sun the central place 
in the solar system, and shows all the 
other bodies, the earth included, revolv¬ 
ing around him. This arrangement of 
the universe (see Copernicus) came at 
length to be generally received on ac¬ 
count of the simplicity it substitued for 
the complexities and contradictions of 
the theory of Ptolemy. The observa¬ 
tions and calculations of Tycho Brahe, a 
Danish astronomer, born in 1546, con¬ 
tinued over many years, were of the 
highest value, and claim for him the 
title of regenerator of practical astron¬ 
omy. His assistant and pupil, Kepler, 
born in 1571, was enabled, principally 
by the aid he received from his master’s 
labors, to arrive at those laws which 
have made his name famous: 1. That 
the planets move, not in circular, but 
in elliptical orbits, of which the sun 
occupies a focus. 2. That the radius 
vector, or imaginary straight line joining 
the sun and any planet, moves over 
equal spaces in equal times. 3. That 
the squares of the times of the revolu¬ 
tions of the planets are as the cubes of 
their mean distances from the sun. 
Galileo, who died in 1642, advanced the 
science by his observations and by the 
new revelations he made through his 
telescopes, which established the truth 
of the Copernican theory. Newton, 
born in 1642, carried physical astronomy 
suddenly to comparative perfection. 
The splendid analytical researches of 
Lalande, Lagrange, Delambre, and La¬ 
place, mark the same period. The 
19th century opened with the dis¬ 
covery of the first four minor planets; 
and the existence of another planet 
(Neptune), more distant from the sun 
than Uranus, was, in 1845, simultane¬ 
ously and independently predicted by 
Leverrier and Adams. Of late years 
the sun has attracted a number of 
observers, the spectroscope and photo¬ 
graphy having been especially fruitful 
in this field of investigation. From 
recent transit observations the former 
calculated distance of the sun has been 
corrected, and is now given as 92,560,- 
000 miles. An interesting recent dis¬ 
covery is that of the two satellites of 
Mars. The existence of an intra- 
Mercurial planet, which has been named 
Vulcan, has not yet been verified. Much 
valuable work has of late been accom¬ 
plished in ascertaining the parallax of 
fixed stars. 

The objects with which astronomy 
has chiefly to deal are the earth, the sun, 
the moon, the planets, the fixed stars, 
comets, nebulae, and meteors. The 
stellar universe is composed of an 
unknown host of stars, many millions 
in number, the most noticeable of which 
have been formed into groups called 
constellations. The nebulae are cloud¬ 
like patches of light scattered all over 
the heavens. Some of them have been 
resolved into star-clusters, but many of 


them are but masses of incandescent 
gas. The observation of meteors has 
recently attracted much attention. 
They most frequently occur in the 
autumn, and have been supposed to be 
the debris of comets. See articles Earth, 
Sun, Moon, Planet, Comet, Stars, Mer¬ 
cury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, 
Asteroids, etc. 

ASTRO-PHOTOGRAPHY, the art of 

photographing heavenly bodies. It has 
been particularly useful in bringing out 
nubulse, stars, star-clusters, and other 
bodies of that kind which remain invis¬ 
ible in the most powerful telescopes. 
Several important discoveries have 
been made by the use of the camera. 
Among these may be mentioned the 
lanet Eros, the earth’s nearest neigh- 
or (excepting the moon), and a number 
of comets. Various large observatories 
in all countries are now engaged in 
making a complete atlas of all the stars 
down to the 11th magnitude by means of 
the photographic camera. 

AS'WAIL, the native name for the 
sloth-bear of the mountains of India, 
an uncouth, unwieldy animal, with very 
long black hair, inoffensive when not 
attacked. 

ASY'LUM, a sanctuary or place of 
refuge, where criminals and debtors 
sheltered themselves from justice, and 
from which they could not be taken 
without sacrilege. Temples were an¬ 
ciently asylums, as .were Christain 
churches in later times. (See Sanc¬ 
tuary.) The term is now usually ap¬ 
plied to an institution for receiving, 
maintaining, and, so far as possible, 
ameliorating the condition of persons 
laboring under certain bodily defects or 
mental maladies; sometimes also a 
refuge for the unfortunate. 

ATACAMA (a-ta-ka'ma), a desert 
region on the west coast of S. America 
belonging to Chile, comprised partly in 
the province of Atacama, partly in the 
territory of Antofagasta. It forms the 
chief mining district of Chile, there being 
here rich silver mines, while gold is also 
found, as well as argentiferous lead, 
copper, nickel, cobalt, and iron; with 
guano on the coast. The northern 
portion till recently belonged to Bolivia. 
The Chilean province of Atacama has 
an area of 39,000 sq. miles and a pop. 
of 84,000. 

ATACA'MITE, a mineral consisting of 
a combination of the protoxide and 
chloride of copper, occurring abundantly 
in some parts of South America, as at 
Atacama, whence it has its name. It is 
worked as an ore in South America, and 
is exported to the United States. 

ATALANTA, in the Greek mythol¬ 
ogy, a famous huntress of Arcadia. 
She was to be obtained in marriage only 
by him who could outstrip her in a race, 
the consequence of failure being death. 
One of her suitors obtained from Aphro¬ 
dite (Venus) three golden apples, which 
he threw behind him, one after another, 
as he ran. Atalanta stopped to pick 
them up, and was not unwillingly de¬ 
feated. There was another Atalanta 
belonging to Bceotia, who cannot very 
well be distinguished, the same stories 
being told about both. 

AT'AVISM, in biology, the tendency to 
reproduce the ancestral type in animals 


or plants which have become consider¬ 
ably modified by breeding or cultivation; 
the reversion of a descendant to some 
peculiarity of a more or less remote 
ancestor. 

ATAXY, ATAXIA, in medicine, irreg¬ 
ularity in the animal functions, or in 
the symptoms of a disease. See Loco¬ 
motor ataxia. 

ATCH'ISON, a city of Kansas, on 
the Missouri river, about 30 miles 
from Leavenworth, an important rail¬ 
way center, with an increasing trade. 
Pop. 18,785. 

ATHABAS'CA, a river, lake, and dis¬ 
trict of Canada. The Athabasca river 
rises on the eastern slopes of the Rocky 
Mountains in the district of Alberta, 
flows in a n.e. direction through the 
district of the same name, and falls into 
Lake Athabasca after a course of about 
600 miles.—Lake Athabasca, or Lake of 
the Hills, is about 190 miles s.s.e. of 
the Great Slave Lake, with which it is 
connected by means of the Slave river, 
a continuation of the Peace. It is about 
200 miles in length from east to west, 
and about 35 miles wide at the broadest 
part, but gradually narrows to a 
point at either extremity.—The dis¬ 
trict of Athabasca, formed in 1882, lies 
immediately e. of British Columbia and 
n. of Alberta; area about 251,300 sq. 
miles. It is intersected by the Atha¬ 
basca and the Peace river, and 
as yet has a scanty population. The 
name is also given to a family of 
Indians. 

A'THEISM, the disbelief of the exist¬ 
ence of a God or supreme intelligent 
being; the doctrine opposed to theism or 
deism. The term has been often loosely 
used as equivalent with infidelity gener¬ 
ally, with deism, with pantheism, and 
with the denial of immortality. 

ATH'ELING, a title of honor among 
the Anglo-Saxons, meaning one who is 
of noble blood. The title was gradually 
confined to the princes of the blood 
royal, and in the 9th and 10th centuries 
is used exclusively for the sons or 
brothers of the reigning king. 

ATHE'NA, or ATHENE, a Greek god¬ 
dess, identified by the Romans with 
Minerva, the representative of the 
intellectual powers; the daughter of 
Zeus (Jupiter) and Metis (that is, wisdom 
or cleverness). According to the legend, 
which is perhaps allegorical, before her 
birth Zeus swallowed her mother, and 
Athena afterwards sprang from the 
head of Zeus with a mighty war shout 
and in complete armor. In her char¬ 
acter of a wise and prudent warrior she 
was contrasted with the fierce Ares 
(Mars). In the wars of the giants she 
slew Pallas and Enceladus. She is also 
represented as the patroness of the arts 
of peace. The sculptor, the architect, and 
the painter, as well as the philosopher, 
the orator, and the poet, considered her 
their tutelar deity. She is also repre¬ 
sented among the healing gods. In all 
these representations she is the symbol 
of the thinking faculty, the goddess 
of wisdom, science, and art. As a 
warrior she is represented completely 
armed, her head covered with a gold 
helmet. As the goddess of peaceful arts 
she appears in the dress of a Grecian 
matron. All Attica, but particularly 





ATHENEUM 


ATLANTA 


Athens, was sacred to her, and she had 
numerous temples there. 

ATHENE'UM, the temple of Athena 
or Minerva, at Athens, frequented by 
poets, learned men, and orators. In 
modern times the same name is given 
to literary clubs and establishments con¬ 
nected with the sciences. 

ATH'ENS, anciently the capital of 
Attica and center of Greek culture, now 
the capital of the Kingdom of Greece. 


the aid of the architects Ictinus and 
Mnesicles and of the sculptor Phidias 
the Acropolis was perfected. Covering 
the whole of the western end rose the 
Propylaea, of Pentelic marble and con¬ 
sisting of a central portico with two 
wings in the form of Doric temples. 
Within, to the left of the entrance, 
stood the bronze statue of Athena 
Promachus, and beyond it the Erech- 
theum, containing the statue of Athena 



Athens—The Acropolis and Areopagus. 


It is situated in the central plain of 
Attica, about 4 miles from the Saronic 
Gulf or Gulf of Egina, an arm of the 
Egean Sea running in between the 
mainland and the Peloponnesus. It 
is said to have been founded about 1550 
b.c. by Cecrops, the mythical Pelasgian 
hero, and to have borne the name 
Cecropia until under Erechtheus it 
received the name of Athens in honor 
of Athene. The Acropolis, an irregular 


Polias; while to the right, on the high¬ 
est part of the Acropolis, was the mar¬ 
ble Parthenon or temple of Athena, the 
crowning glory of the whole. About 
420 a.d. paganism was totally anni¬ 
hilated at Athens, and when Justinian 
closed even the schools of the philoso¬ 
phers, the reverence for buildings as¬ 
sociated with the names of the ancient 
deities and heroes was lost. The Par¬ 
thenon was turned into a church of the 



Athens 

and 

The Piraeus 

ENGLISH MILES 




Mt.Daphnej 


p^mpoiii 


o Kerasinl 


^Piraeus 
3 ff 


‘t^f&halertm Ba 


Brahaml 


'Kara 


[C.Cohaa 


oval crag 150 ft. high, with a level sum¬ 
mit 1000 feet long by 500 in breadth, 
was the original nucleus of the city, 
which according to tradition was ex¬ 
tended by Theseus when Athens became 
the head of the confederate Attic states. 
Under Pericles the highest point of 
artistic development was reached. An 
Odeium was erected on the east of the 
Dionysiac theater for the recitations of 
rhapsodists and musicians; and with 


Virgin Mary, and St. George stepped 
into the place of Theseus. Finally, in 
1456, the place fell into the hands of the 
Turks. The Parthenon became a mos¬ 
que, and in 1687 was greatly damaged 
by an explosion at the siege of Athens 
by the Venetians. Enough, however, 
remains of it and of the neighboring 
structures to abundantly attest the 
splendor of the Acropolis; while of the 
other buildings of the city the Theseum 


and Horologium, or Temple of the 
Winds, are admirably preserved, as also 
are the Pnyx, Panathenaic stadium, etc. 
Soon after the commencement of the 
war of liberation in 1821 the Turks sur¬ 
rendered Athens, but captured it again 
in 1826-27. It was then abandoned 
until 1830. In 1835 it became the royal 
residence, and made rapid progress. 
The modern city mostly lies northward 
and eastward from the Acropolis, and 
consists mainly of straight and well- 
built streets. Among the principal 
buildings are the royal palace, a stately 
building with a fagade of Pentelic mar¬ 
ble (completed 1843), the university, 
the academy, public library, theater, 
and obervatory. The university was 
opened in 1836, and has 3000 students. 
There are valuable museums, in particu¬ 
lar the National Museum and that in the 
Polytechnic School, which embraces the 
Schliemann collection, etc. These are 
constantly being added to by excava¬ 
tions. There are four foreign archaeo¬ 
logical schools or institutes, the French, 
German, American, and British. Tram¬ 
ways have been made in the principal 
streets, and the city is connected by 
railway (6 miles) with its port, the 
Piraeus. Pop. 128,735. 

ATHENS, the name of many places in 
the U. States, the chief being in Georgia, 
and containing the Georgia University. 
Pop. 10,245. 

ATHERTON, Gertrude Franklin, an 
American novelist born in California in 
1859. She is the author of several 
novels, among which The Aristocrats, 
The Conqueror, American Wives and 
English Husbands, and Senator North 
are popular in America and England. 
She removed to England in 1895. 

ATHLETES (ath'lets), combatants 
who took part in the public games of 
Greece. The profession was an honor¬ 
able one; tests of birth, position, and 
character were imposed, and crowns, 
statues, special privileges, and pensions 
were among the rewards of success.— 
Athletic sports, if they do not hold such 
an honorable position today as they did 
in antiquity, are still practiced with 
great enthusiasm and excite the keen¬ 
est interest in their patrons. Among 
them are running, jumping, rowing, 
swimming, baseball, cricket, football, 
wrestling, throwing the hammer, “put¬ 
ting” the shot, etc. 

ATKINSON, Edward, an American 
economist, born in Massachussetts in 
1827. He was for many years engaged 
in business, and meanwhile was a hard 
student of various sciences. He is the 
author of several works on economic 
subjects and of The Science of Nutri¬ 
tion, which has run through several 
editions. 

ATKINSON, George Francis, an Amer¬ 
ican botanist and educator, born in 
Michigan in 1854. He filled several 
chairs in various institutions till 1892, 
when he became professor of botany at 
Cornell University. 

ATLANTA, a city in the United 
States, capital of Georgia, on an elevated 
ridge, 7 miles southeast of the Chatta¬ 
hoochee river. It is an important rail¬ 
way center; carries on a large trade in 
grain, paper, cotton, flour, and especially 
tobacco, and possesses flour-mills, paper- 














ATLANTIC CITY 


ATMOSPHERE 


mills, iron-works, etc. Here are Atlanta 
University for colored male and female 
students, a theological college, a medical 



State capitol, Atlanta, Ga. 

college, etc. Atlanta suffered severely 
during the civil war. Pop. 150,000. 

ATLANTIC CITY, a fashionable water¬ 
ing-place on the coast of New Jersey. 
Pop. 27,838. During the summer the 
transient population varies between 
250,000 and 300,000. 

ATLANTIC OCEAN, the vast expanse 
of sea lying between the west coasts of 
Europe and Africa and the east coasts 
of North and South America, and ex¬ 
tending from the Arctic to the Antarctic 
Ocean; greatest breadth, between the 
west coast of northern Africa and the 
east coast of Florida, 4150 miles; least 
breadth, between Norway and Green¬ 
land, 930 miles; superficial extent, 
25,000,000 square miles. The principal 
inlets and bays are Baffin’s and Hud¬ 
son’s Bays, the Gulf of Mexico, the Car¬ 
ibbean Sea, the North Sea or German 
Ocean, the Bay of Biscay, and the Gulf 
of Guinea. The principal islands north 
of the equator are Iceland, the Faroe 
and British Islands, the Azores, Canaries, 
and Cape de Verd Islands, Newfound¬ 
land, Cape Breton, and the West India 
Islands; and, south of the equator, 
Ascension, St. Helena, and Tristan da 
Cunha. 

The great currents of the Atlantic are 
the Equatorial Current (divisible into 
the Main, Northern, and Southern 
Equatorial Currents), the Gulf-stream, 
the North African and Guinea Current, 
the Southern Connecting Current, the 
Southern Atlantic Current, the Cape 
Horn Current, Rennel’s Current, and 
the Arctic Current. The current system 
is primarily set in motion by the trade- 
winds which drive the water of the 
intertropical region from Africa toward 
the American coasts. The Main Equa¬ 
torial Current, passing across the Atlan¬ 
tic, is turned by the S. American coast, 
along which it runs at a rate of 30 to 50 
miles a day, till, having received part 
of the North Equatorial Current, it 
enters the Gulf of Mexico. Issuing 
thence between Florida and Cuba under 
the name of the Gulf-stream, it flows 
with a gradually expanding channel 
nearly parallel to the coast of the United 
States. It then turns northeastward 
into the mid-Atlantic, the larger pro¬ 
portion of it passing southward to the 
east of the Azores to swell the North 
African and Guinea Current created by 
the northerly winds off the Portuguese 
coast. The Guinea Current, which takes 
a southerly course, is divided into two 


on arriving at the region of the northeast 
trades, part of it flowing east to the 
Bight of Biafra and joining the South 
African feeder of the Main Equatorial, 
but the larger portion being carried 
westward into the North Equatorial 
drift. Rennel’s Current, which is pos¬ 
sibly a continuation of the Gulf-stream, 
enters the Bay of Biscay from the west, 
curves round its coast, and then turns 
northwest toward Cape Clear. The 
Arctic Current runs along the east coast 
of Greenland (being here called the 
Greenland Current), doubles Cape Fare¬ 
well, and flows up toward Davis’ Strait; 
it then turns to the south along the 
coasts of Labrador and the United 
States, from which it separates the 
Gulf-stream by a cold band of water. 
Immense masses of ice are borne south 
by this current from the Polar seas. 
In the interior of the North Atlantic 
there is a large area comparatively free 
from currents, called the Sargasso Sea, 
from the large quantity of seaweed 
which drifts into it. A similar area 
exists in the South Atlantic. In the 
South Atlantic, the portion of the 
Equatorial Current which strikes the 
American coast below Cape St. 
Roque flows southward at the rate of 
from 12 to 20 miles a day along the 
Brazil coast under the name of the 
Brazil Current. It then turns eastward 
and forms the South Connecting Cur¬ 
rent, which, on reaching the South 
African coast, turns northward into the 
Main and Southern Equatorial Currents. 
Besides the surface currents, an under 
current of cold water flows from the 
poles to the equator, and an upper 
current of warm water from the equator 
toward the poles. 

The greatest depth as yet discovered 
is north of Porto Rico, in the West 
Indies, namely 27,360 feet. Cross- 
sections of the North Atlantic between 
Europe and America show that its bed 
consists of two great valleys lying in a 
north-and-south direction, and sepa¬ 
rated by a ridge, on which there is an 
average depth of 1600 or 1700 fathoms, 
while the valleys on either side sink 
to the depth of 3000 or 4000 fathoms. 
A ridge, called the Wyville-Thomson 
Ridge, with a depth of little more than 
200 fathoms above it, runs from near 
the Butt of Lewis to Iceland, cutting 
off the colder water of the Arctic Ocean 
from the warmer water of the Atlantic. 
The South Atlantic, of which the great¬ 
est depth yetjfound is over 3000 fathoms, 
resembles the North Atlantic in having 
an elevated plateau or ridge in the 
center with a deep trough on either side. 
The saltness and specific gravity of the 
Atlantic gradually diminish from the 
tropics to the poles, and also from 
within a short distance of the tropics to 
the equator. In the neighborhood of 
the British Isles the salt has been stated 
at one thirty-eighth of the weight of the 
water. The North Atlantic is the 
greatest highway of ocean traffic in the 
world. It is also a great area of sub¬ 
marine communication, by means of the 
telegraphic cables that are laid across 
its bed. 

AT'LAS, an extensive mountain sys¬ 
tem in North Africa, starting near Cape 
Nun on the Atlantic Ocean, traversing 


Morocco, Algiers, and Tunis, and ter¬ 
minating on the coast of the Mediter¬ 
ranean; divided . generally into two 
parallel ranges, running w. to e., the 
Greater Atlas lying toward the Sahara 
and the Lesser Atlas toward the Med¬ 
iterranean. The principal chain is about 
1500 miles long, and the principal peaks 
rise above or approach the line of perpet¬ 
ual congelation; Miltsin in Morocco being 
11,400 feet high, and Tizi Likumpt being 
13,150. The highest elevation is per¬ 
haps Tizi Tamyurt, estimated at fully 
15,000 feet. Silver, antimony, lead, cop¬ 
per, iron, etc., are among the minerals. 
The vegetation is chiefly European in 
character, except on the low grounds 
and next the desert. 

ATLAS, in Greek mythology, the 
name of a Titan whom Zeus condemned 
to bear the vault of heaven.—The same 
name is given to a collection of maps and 
charts, and was first used by Gerard 
Mercator in the 16th century, the figure 
of Atlas bearing the globe being given 
on the title-pages of such works. 

ATONEMENT, DAY OF, a Jewish fast 
day observed on the tenth day of the 
seventh month. Its origin goes back 
to the Mosaic law, and in ancient times 
it was observed with much ceremony in 
the temple at Jerusalem. Today the 
fast of the atonement is kept by the 
orthodox among the Jews, who do with¬ 
out food from sunset to sunset, the fast 
being accompanied by appropriate serv¬ 
ices in the temple of the congregation. 

AT'MOSPHERE, primarily the gase¬ 
ous envelope which surrounds the earth; 
but the term is applied to that of any 
orb. The atmosphere of the earth con¬ 
sists of a mass of gas extending to a 
height variously estimated at from 45 
to 212 miles, and pressing on every part 
of the earth’s surface with a pressure of 
about 15 (14‘73) lbs. per square inch. 
The existence of this atmospheric pres¬ 
sure was first proved by Torriculli, who 
thus accounted for the rush of a liquid 
to fill a vacuum, and who, working out 
the idea, produced the first barometer. 
The average height of the mercurial 
column counterbalancing the atmos¬ 
pheric weight at the sea-level is a little 
less than 30 inches; but the pressure 
varies from hour to hour, and, roughly 
speaking, diminishes geometrically with 
the arithmetical increase in altitude. 
Of periodic variations there are two 
maxima of daily pressure occurring, 
when the temperature is about the mean 
of the day, and two minima, when it is at 
its highest and lowest respectively; but 
the problems of diurnal and seasonal 
oscillations have yet to be fully solved. 
The pressure upon the human body of 
average size is no less than 14 tons, but 
as it is exerted equally in all directions 
'no inconvenience is caused by it. It 
is customary to take the atmospheric 
pressure as the standard for measuring 
other fluid pressures; thus the steam 
pressure of 30 lbs. per square inch on a 
boiler is spoken of as a pressure of two 
atmospheres. 

The atmosphere, first subjected to 
analysis by Priestley and Scheele in the 
latter part of the 18th century, con¬ 
sists of a mixture of oxygen and 
nitrogen in the almost constant pro¬ 
portion of 20" 81 volumes of oxygen to 











ATMOSPHERIC RAILWAY 


ATROPOS 


79'19 volumes of nitrogen, or, by weight, 
23' 01 parts of oxygen to 76’ 99 of nitro¬ 
gen. The gases are associated together, 
not as a chemical compound, but as a 
mechanical mixture. Upon the oxygen 
present depends the power of the atmos¬ 
phere to support combustion and respira¬ 
tion, the nitrogen acting as a diluent to 
prevent its too energetic action. Be¬ 
sides these gases, the air contains the 
recently-discovered ga^ argon, aqueous 
vapor in variable quantity, ozone, car¬ 
bonic acid gas, traces of ammonia, 
nitric acid, and, in towns, sulphuretted 
hydrogen and sulphurous acid gas. In 
addition to its gaseous constituents the 
atmosphere is charged with minute par¬ 
ticles of organic and inorganic matter. 

ATMOSPHERIC RAILWAY. See 
Pneumatic Despatch. 

ATOLL', the Polynesian name for coral 
islands of the ringed type inclosing a 
lagoon in the center. They are found 



Bird’s-eye view of an atoll. 


chiefly in the Pacific in archipelagoes, 
and occasionally are of large size. 
Suadiva Atoll is 44 miles by 34; Rimsky 
is 54 by 20. See Coral. 

ATOM, until the last decade supposed 
to be the smallest particle of matter in 
existence, but since the wonderful dis¬ 
coveries of Becquerel and Thomson, 
regarded as a whole universe in itself. 
Recent theories and discoveries re¬ 
garding the nature of the atom have 
so altered the views of scientists that 
today it is believed that in the future 
man will be able to replace all kinds of 
power in industry and elsewhere with 
a force so great that a reservoir a foot 
or so big will generate enough power to 
run a railroad train or a steamship; and 
of such infinite quantity that the bare 
contemplation of it staggers the intel¬ 
lect. These discoveries lead to the 
conviction that matter comes into 
existence out of force and goes back 
again into force; in other words, that 
the universe did not exist as matter at 
one time, and that the time will come 
when it will cease to exist as matter, but 
that the universal force will still con¬ 
tain the potentiality of issuing in 
matter, and so on forever. 

The atom of the chemists, then, has 
been changed into a marvelous world of 
electromagnetic energy, which is made 
up of bodies so small as to be simply 
inconceivable. The atom itself is so 
small that countless billions of them 
are required to make up the smallest 
visible bit of matter; and in one of 
these atoms exist thousands of these 
smaller bodies, called “corpuscles” by 
the English physicists and “electrons” 
by the French school. The atom 
breaks down, or disintegrates, when 
the electrons composing it are at¬ 


tracted to other corpuscles to form new 
atoms. This implies that the old idea 
that the elements were the simplest bod¬ 
ies is false. The energy bound up in a 
cubic inch of iron, or any other element, 
is 60 vast that it cannot be imagined. 
If all the atoms in a cubic inch of iron 
were dissociated, or broken up, the 
power obtained would be enormous. 
If man could once discover a way of 
producing and controlling such a disin¬ 
tegration, the effect on human society 
could not be pictured by the most 
gigantic imagination. Scientists every¬ 
where are working on this problem and 
the great secret may be discovered 
at any time. 

ATOMIC THEORY, a theory as to the 
existence and properties of atoms (see 
Atoms); especially, in chemistry, the 
theory accounting for the fact that in 
compound bodies the elements combine 
in certain constant proportions, by 
assuming that all bodies are composed 
of ultimate atoms, the weight of which 
is different in different kinds of matter. 
It is associated with the name of Dalton, 
who systematized and extended the 
imperfect results of his predecessors. 
On its practical side the atomic theory 
asserts three Laws of Combining Pro¬ 
portions: (1) The Law of Constant or 
Definite Proportions, teaching that in 
every chemical compound the nature 
and proportion of the constituent ele¬ 
ments are definite and invariable; thus 
water invariably consists of 8 parts by 
weight of oxygen to 1 part by weight 
of hydrogen; (2) The Law of Combi¬ 
nation in Mutiple Proportions, accord¬ 
ing to which the several proportions in 
which one element unites with another 
invariably bear toward each other a 
simple relation; thus 1 part by weight 
of hydrogen unites with 8 parts by 
weight of oxygen to form water, and 
with 16 parts (i.e. 8X2) parts of oxygen 
to form peroxide of hydrogen; (3) The 
Law of Combination in Reciprocal Pro¬ 
portions, that the proportions in which 
two elements combine with a third also 
represent the proportions in which, or 
in some simple multiple of which, they 
will themselves combine; thus in ole¬ 
fiant gas hydrogen is present with car¬ 
bon in the proportion of 1 to 6, and in 
carbonic oxide oxygen is present with 
carbon in the proportion of 8 to 6; 1 to 8 
being also the proportions in which 
hydrogen and oxygen combine with 
each other. The theory that these 
proportional numbers are, in fact, noth¬ 
ing else but the relative weights of 
atoms so far accounts for the phenomena 
that the existence of these laws might 
have been predicted by the aid of the 
atomic hypothesis long before they were 
actually discovered by analysis. In 
themselves, however, the laws do not 
prove the theory of the existence of 
ultimate particles of matter of a certain 
relative weight; and although many 
chemists, even without expressly adopt¬ 
ing the atomic theory itself, have 
followed Dalton in the use of the terms 
atom and atomic weight, in preference to 
proportion, combining proportion, equiv¬ 
alent, and the like, yet in using the 
word atom it should be held in mind 
that it merely denotes the proportions in 
which elements unite. These will re¬ 


main the same whether the atomic 
hypothesis which suggested the employ¬ 
ment of the term be true or false. Dal¬ 
ton supposed that the atoms of bodies 
are spherical, and invented certain 
symbols to represent the mode in which 
he conceived they might combine 
together. 

ATOMISTS. See Atoms. 

ATOMS, according to the hypothesis 
of some philosophers, the primary parts 
of elementary matter not further 
divisible. The principal theorists of 
antiquity upon the nature of atoms 
were Moschus of Sidon, Leucippus 
(510 b.c.), Democritus, Epicurus, and Lu¬ 
cretius. These philosophers explained 
all phenomena on the theory of the 
existence of atoms possessing various 
properties and motions, and are hence 
sometimes called Atomists. Among the 
moderns, Gassendi illustrated the doc¬ 
trine of Epicurus. Descartes formed 
from this his system of the vortices. 
Newton and Boerhaave supposed that 
the original matter consists of hard, 
ponderable, impenetrable, inactive, and 
immutable particles, from the variety 
in the composition of which the variety 
of bodies originates. According to 
Boscovich every atom is an indivisible 
point possessing position, mass, and 
potential force or capacity for attraction 
and repulsion. Upon the discovery of 
Helmholtz that a vortex in a perfect 
liquid possesses certain permanent char¬ 
acteristics, Sir W. Thomson (Lord 
Kelvin) has based a theory that atoms 
are vortices in a homogeneous, incom¬ 
pressible, and frictionless fluid. As to 
chemical atoms, see Atomic Theory. 

ATONEMENT, in Christian theology, 
the special work of Christ effected by 
his life, sufferings, and death. The 
first explicit exposition of the evangel¬ 
ical doctrine of the atonement is 
ascribed to Anselm, Archbishop of 
Canterbury, in 1093. 

AT'ROPHY, a wasting of the flesh 
due to some interference with the 
nutritive processes. It may arise from 
a variety of causes, such as permanent, 
oppressive, and exhausting passions, 
organic disease, a want of proper food 
or of pure air, suppurations in impor¬ 
tant organs, copious evacuations of 
blood, saliva, semen, etc., and it is also 
sometimes produced by poisons] for 
example, arsenic, mercury, lead, in 
miners, painters, gilders, etc. In old 
age the whole frame except the heart 
undergoes atrophic change, and it is 
of frequent occurrence in infancy as a 
consequence of improper, unwholesome 
food, exposure to cold, damp, or impure 
air, etc. Single organs or parts of the 
body may be affected irrespective of the 
general state of nutrition; thus local 
atrophy may be superinduced by 
palsies, the pressure of tumors upon 
the nerves of the limbs, or by artificial 
pressure, as in the feet of Chinese 
ladies 

AT'ROPIN, AT'ROPINE, a crystal¬ 
line alkaloid obtained from the deadly 
nightshade. It is very poisonous, and 
produces persistent dilatation of the 
pupil. 

AT'ROPOS, the eldest of the Fates, 
who cuts the thread of life with her 
shears. 









ATTACHE 


AUCKLAND 


ATTACHE (at-a-sha'), a junior mem¬ 
ber of the diplomatic service attached 
to an embassy or legation. 

ATTACH'MENT, in English law, a 
taking of the person, goods, or estate 
by virtue of a writ or precept. It is 
distinguished from an arrest by pro¬ 
ceeding out of a higher court by precept 
or writ, whereas the latter proceeds out 
of an inferior court by precept only. An 
arrest lies only against the body of a 
man, whereas an attachment lies often 
against the goods only, and sometimes 
against the body and goods. It differs 
from a distress in that an attachment 
does not extend to lands, while a dis¬ 
tress cannot touch the body. 

ATTAIN'DER, the legal consequences 
of a sentence of death or outlawry pro¬ 
nounced against a person for treason or 
felony, the person being said to be 
attainted. It resulted in forfeiture of 
estate and “corruption of blood,” ren¬ 
dering the party incapable of inheriting 
property or transmitting it to heirs; 
but these results now no longer follow. 
Formerly persons were often subjected 
to attainder by a special bill or act 
passed in parliament. 

AT'TAR, in the East Indies, a general 
term for a perfume from flowers; in 
Europe generally used only of the attar 
or otto of roses, an essential oil made 
from the hundred-leaved or cabbage- 
rose, or damask-rose, or musk-rose, etc., 
100,000 roses yielding only 180 grains of 
attar. Cashmere, Shiraz, and Damascus 
are celebrated for its manufacture, and 
there are extensive rose farms in the 
valley of Kezanlik in Roumelia and 
at Ghazipur in Benares. The oil is at 
first greenish, but afterwards it presents 
various tints of green, yellow, and 
red. It is concrete at all ordinary tem¬ 
peratures, but becomes liquid about 
84° Fahr. It consists of two substances, 
a hydrocarbon and an oxygenated oil, 
and is frequently adulterated with the 
oils of rhodium, sandalwood, and gera¬ 
nium, with the addition of camphor or 
spermaceti. 

ATTIC, an architectural term various¬ 
ly used. An Attic base is a peculiar kind 
of base, used by the ancient architects 
in the Ionic order and by Palladio and 
some others in the Doric. An Attic story 
is a low story in the upper part of a house 
rising above the main portion of the 
building. In ordinary language an 
attic is an apartment lighted by a 
window in the roof. 

AT'TICA, a state of ancient Greece, 
the capital of which, Athens, was once 
the first city in the world. According to 
tradition the earliest inhabitants of 
Attica lived in a savage manner until 
the time of Cecrops, who came, b.c. 
1550, with a colony from Egypt, taught 
them all the essentials of civilization, 
and founded Athens. The period 
from the Persian war to the time of 
Alexander (b.c. 500 to 336) was most 
remarkable for the development of the 
Athenian constitution. Attica appears 
to have contained a territory of nearly 
850 square miles, with some 500,000 
inhabitants, 360,000 of whom were 
slaves, while the inhabitants of the city 
numbered 180,000. Cimon and Pericles 
(b.c. 444) raised Athens to its point of 
greatest splendor, though under the latter 


began the Peloponnesian war, which 
ended with the conquest of Athens by 
the Lacedaemonians. The attempts at 
revolt after the death of Alexander 
were crushed, and in 260 b.c. Attica 
was still under the sway of Antigonus 
Gonatas, the Macedonian king. A 
period of freedom under the shelter of 
the Achaean League then ensued, but 
their support of Mithridates led in 
b.c. 146 to the subjugation of the 
Grecian states by Rome. After the 
division of the Roman Empire Attica 
belonged to the empire of the East 
until in a.d. 396 it was conquered by 
Alaric the Goth and the country dev¬ 
astated. Attica now forms a nome or 
province of the Kingdom of Greece, 
with a population of 255,978. 

AT'TILA, the famous leader of the 
Huns, was the son of Mundzuk, and the 
successor, in conjunction with his 
brother Bleda, of his uncle Rhuas. The 
rule of the two leaders extended over a 
great part of northern Asia and Europe, 
and they threatened the Eastern Em¬ 
pire, and twice compelled the weak 
Theodosius II. to purchase an inglorious 
peace. Attila caused his brother Bleda 
to be murdered (444), and in a short 
time extended his dominion over all the 
peoples of Germany and exacted tribute 
from the eastern and western emperors. 
The Vandals, the Ostrogoths, the Gepi- 
dse, and a part of the Franks united 
under his banners, and he speedily 
formed a pretext for leading them 
against the Empire of the East. He laid 
waste all the countries from the Black 
to the Adriatic Sea, and in three en¬ 
counters defeated the Emperor Theodo¬ 
sius, but could not take Constantinople. 
Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece all sub¬ 
mitted to the invader, who destroyed 
seventy flourishing cities; and Theodo¬ 
sius was obliged to purchase a peace. 
Attila went back to Hungary, and died 
on the night of his marriage with Hilda 
or Ildico (453), either from the bursting 
of a blood-vessel or by her hand. 

ATTOR'NEY, a person appointed to 
do something for and in the stead and 
name of another. An attorney may 
have general powers to act for another; 
or his power may be special, and limited 
to a particular act or acts. A special 
attorney is appointed by a deed called 
a power or letter of attorney, specifying 
the acts which he is authorized to do. 
An attorney-at-law is a person qualified 
to appear for another before a court of 
law to prosecute or defend any action 
on behalf of his client. In the United 
States the term attorney, or attorney- 
-at-law is used to designate a practicing 
lawyer of any kind. Qualifications for 
the profession are fixed, generally, by 
statute. The attorney must have 
studied law either in a college or in the 
offices of a lawyer, must pass an exami¬ 
nation, and must be a man of good 
moral character. He takes, upon ad¬ 
mission to the bar, an oath that he will 
demean himself uprightly and will sup¬ 
port the constitution of the United 
States. 

ATTORNEY-GENERAL, in the United 
States an officer of the president’s 
cabinet, the chief of the law depart¬ 
ment of the government. He receives 
a salary of $8000 a year. The attorney- 


general of the several states has a func¬ 
tion similar to that of his federal proto¬ 
type. 

ATTORNEY, POWER OF, the power 
given by one person to another enabling 
him to act, generally or specifically, as 
the agent of the principal. 

ATTORNEY, WARRANT OF, author¬ 
ity given to a lawyer to appear in court 
as representative for a client. 

ATTRAC'TION, the tendency of all 
material bodies, whether masses or 
particles, to approach each other, to 
unite, and to remain united. It was 
Newton that first adopted the theory 
of a universal attractive force, and 
determined its laws. When bodies tend 
to come together from sensible distances 
the tendency is termed either the at¬ 
traction of gravitation, magnetism, or 
electricity, according to circumstances; 
when the attraction operates at insensi¬ 
ble distances it is known as adhesion 
with respect to surfaces, as cohesion 
with respect to the particles of a body, 
and as affinity when the particles of 
different bodies tend together. It is by 
the attraction of gravitation that all 
bodies fall to the earth when unsup¬ 
ported. 

ATTRIBUTE, in philosophy, a qual¬ 
ity or property of a substance, as white¬ 
ness or hardness. A substance is known 
to us only as a congeries of attributes. 
—In the fine arts an attribute is a sym¬ 
bol regularly accompanying and mark¬ 
ing out some personage. Thus the 
caduceus, purse, winged hat, and san¬ 
dals are attributes of Mercury, the 
trampled dragon of St. George. 

ATWOOD, Charles B., an American 
architect, born in 1849, died in 1895. 
He is known as the designer of the Art 
Building at the Chicago World’s Fair, 
and of W. H. Vanderbilt’s residence in 
New York City. 

AUBE (ob), a northeastern French 
department; area, 2351 sq. miles; pop. 
257,374. The surface is undulating, 
and watered by the Aube, etc. Troyes 
is the capital.—The river Aube, which 
gives name to the department, rises 
in Haute-Marne, flows n.w., and after 
a course of 113 miles joins the 
Seine. 

AU'BURN, the name of many places 
in America, the chief being a city of 
New York state, at the north end of 
Owasco Lake. It is chiefly famous for 
its state prison, large enough to receive 
1000 prisoners. In the town or vicinity 
various manufactures are carried on. 
Pop. 32,000. 

AUBURN, a city, and the county 
seat of Androscoggin Co., Maine, 34 
miles north of Portland, on the Maine 
Central and Grand Trunk railroads. 
Pop. 12,951. 

AUCK'LAND, a town of New Zea¬ 
land, in the North Island, founded in 
1840. It has a large and increasing 
trade, there being connection with the 
chief places on the island by rail, and 
regular communication with the other 
orts of the colony, Australia, and Fiji 
y steam. It was formerly the capital 
of the colony. Pop., (including suburbs), 
67,226.—The provincial district of 
Auckland forms the northern part of 
North Island, with an area of 25,746 
sq. miles; pop. 175,854. 





AUCKLAND ISLANDS 


AUGUSTINE 


AUCKLAND ISLANDS, a group of 
islands about 180 miles s. of New Zea¬ 
land, discovered in 1806, and belonging 
to Britain. They are of volcanic origin 


and fertile; and the largest, which is 
30 miles by 15, has two good harbors. 
No settled inhabitants. 

AUCTION is a public sale to the party 
offering the highest price where the 
buyers bid upon each other, or to the 
bidder who first accepts the terms of¬ 
fered by the vendor where he sells by 
reducing his terms until some one ac¬ 
cepts them. 

AUDE (od), a maritime department 
in the s. of France; area, 2437 sq. miles; 
Carcassonne is the capital; other towns 
are Narbonne and Castelnaudary. Pop. 
332,080.—The river Aude rises in the 
eastern Pyrenees, and flowing nearly 
parallel to the canal du Midi falls into 
the Mediterranean, after a course of 130 
miles. 

AU'DIPHONE, an acoustic instru¬ 
ment by means of which deaf persons 
are enabled to hear. It consists essen¬ 
tially of a fan-shaped plate of hardened 
caoutchouc, which is bent to a greater 
or less degree by strings, and is very 
sensitive to sound-waves. AA'hen used 
the up edge is pressed against the upper 
front teeth, with the convexity outward, 
and the sounds being collected are con¬ 
veyed from the teeth to the auditory 
nerve without passing through the 
external ear. 

AU'DIT, an examination into ac¬ 
counts or dealings with money or prop¬ 
erty, along with vouchers or other 
documents connected therewith, espe¬ 
cially by proper officers, or persons 
appointed for the purpose. Also the 
occasion of receiving the rents from the 
tenants on an estate. 

AUDITORY NERVES. See Ear. 

AU'DUBON, John James, an Ameri¬ 
can naturalist of French extraction, 
born near New Orleans in 1775. In 1798 
he settled in Pennsylvania, but having 
a great love for ornithology he set out 
in 1810 with his wife and child, de¬ 
scended the Ohio, and for many years 
roamed the forests in every direction, 
drawing the birds which he shot. In 
1826 he exhibited his drawings in Liver¬ 
pool, Manchester, and Edinburgh, and 
finally published them in an unrivaled 
work of double-folio size, with 435 
colored plates of birds the size of life 
(The Birds of America, 4 vols., 1827- 
39), with an accompanying text (Orni¬ 
thological Biography, 5 vols. 8vo, partly 
written by Prof. Macgillivray). On his 
final return to America be labored with 


Dr. Bachman on a finely illustrated 
work entitled The Quadrupeds of 
America (1843-50, 3 vols.). He died at 
New York in 1851. 


AUGEAS (a-je'as), a fabulous king of 
Elis, in Greece, whose stable contained 
3000 oxen, and had not been cleaned for 
thirty years. Hercules undertook to 
clear away the filth in one day in return 
for a tenth part of the cattle, and exe¬ 
cuted the task by turning the river 
Alpheus through it. Augeas, having 
broken the bargain, was deposed and 
slain by Hercules. 

AUGER (a'ger), an instrument for 
boring holes considerably larger than 
those bored by a gimlet, used by car¬ 
penters and joiners, shipwrights, etc. 

AUGITE (a'jit), or PYROXENE, a 
mineral of the hornblende family, an 
essential component of many igneous 
rocks, such as basalt, greenstone, and 
porphyry. AVhen crystallized it assumes 
the form of short, slightly rhombic 
prisms, with their lateral edges replaced, 
and terminated at one or both extremi¬ 
ties by numerous planes. 



AUGSBURG (ougz'bur/i), a city of Ba¬ 
varia, at the junction of the AA'ertach 
and Lech. Augsburg was a renowned 
commercial center in the middle ages, 
and is still an important emporium of 
South German and Italian trade. It 
early took a conspicuous part in the 
Reformation. In 1806 it was incor¬ 
porated in Bavaria. Pop. 88,700. 

AUGSBURG CONFESSION, a docu¬ 
ment which was presented by the Prot¬ 


estants at the Diet of Augsburg, 1530, 
to the Emperor Charles V. and the diet, 
and being signed by the Protestant 
states was adopted as their creed. 
Luther made the original draught; but 
as its style appeared too violent it was 
given to Melanchthon for amendment. 
The original is to be found in the im¬ 
perial Austrian archives. Afterwards 
Melanchthon arbitrarily altered some 
of the articles, and there arose a division 
between those who held the original and 
those who held the altered Augsburg 
Confession. The former is received by 
the Lutherans, the latter by the German 
Reformed. 

AU'GUST, the eighth month from 
January. It was the sixth of the Roman 
year, and hence was called Sextilis till 
the Emperor Augustus affixed to it his 
own name. 

AUGUS'TA, capital of Maine, United 
States, on the river Kennebec, which is 
crossed by a bridge and is navigable for 



State capitol, Augusta, Me. 

small vessels 43 miles from its mouth, 
while a dam enables steamboats to ply 
for 20 miles farther up and furnishes 
immense water-power. Pop. 11,683. 

AUGUSTA, the capital of Richmond 
Co., Georgia, United States, on the left 
bank of the Savannah river, 231 miles 
from its mouth; well built, and con¬ 
nected with the river by high-level 
canals; an important manufacturing 
center, having cotton-mills, machine- 
shops, and railroad works, etc. Pop. 
39 441 

AU'GUSTINE (Aurelius Augustinus), 
St., a renowned father of the Christian 
Church, was born at Tagaste, in Africa, 
in 354, his mother Monica being a Chris¬ 
tian, his father Patricius a Pagan. Of 
his various works his Confessions is most 
secure of immortality. He died August 
28, 430. He was a man of great en¬ 
thusiasm, self-devotion, zeal for truth, 
and powerful intellect, and though there 
have been fathers of the church more 
learned, none have wielded a more 
powerful influence. His writings are 
partly autobiographical (as the Con¬ 
fessions), partly polemical, homiletic, or 

AU'GUSTINE, or AUSTIN, St., the 
Apostle of the English, flourished at the 
close of the 6th century, was sent with 
forty monks by Pope Gregory I. to intro¬ 
duce Christianity into Saxon England, 



























AUGUSTUS 


AURELIUS ANTONINUS 


and was kindly received by Ethelbert, 
king of Kent, whom he converted, 
baptizing 10,000 of his subjects in one 
day. In acknowledgment of his tact 
and success Augustine received the 
archiepiscopal pall from the pope, with 
instructions to establish twelve sees in 
his province, but he could not persuade 
the British bishops in Wales to unite 
with the new English Church. He died 
in 604 or 605. 

AUGUS'TUS, Caius Julius Csesar Octa- 
vianus, originally called Caius Octavius, 
Roman Emperor, was the son of Caius 
Octavius and Atia, a daughter of Julia, 
the sister of Julius Caesar. He was born 



63 B.C., and died a.d. 14. Octavius was 
at Apollonia, in Epirus, when he re¬ 
ceived news of the death of his uncle 
(b.c. 44), who had previously adopted 
him as his son. He returned to Rome 
to claim Caesar’s property and avenge 
his death, and now took, according to 
usage, his uncle’s name with the surname 
Octavianus. He was aiming secretly at 
the chief power, but at first he joined 
the republican party, and assisted at 
the defeat of Antony at Mutlna. He 
got himself chosen consul in 43. Soon 
after the first triumvirate was formed 
between him and Antony and Lepidus, 
and this was followed by the conscrip¬ 
tion and assassination of three hundred 
senators and two thousand knights of 
the party opposed to the triumvirate. 
Next year Octavianus and Antony 
defeated the republican army under 
Brutus and Cassius at Philippi. The 
victors now divided the Roman world 
between them, Octavianus getting the 
West, Antony the East, and Lepidus 
Africa. Sextus Pompeius, who had 
made himself formidable at sea, had 
now to be put down; and Lepidus, who 
had hitherto retained an appearance of 
power, was deprived of all authority 
(b.c. 36) and retired into private life. 
Antony and Octavianus now shared the 
empire between them; but while the 
former, in the East, gave himself up to a 
life of luxury, and alienated the Romans 
by his alliance with Cleopatra and his 
adoption of Oriental manners, Octavi¬ 
anus skilfully cultivated popularity, 
and soon declared war ostensibly against 
the Queen of Egypt. The naval victory 
of Actium, in which the fleet of An¬ 
tony and Cleopatra was defeated, made 
Octavianus master of the world, b.c. 
31. He returned to Rome b.c. 29, cele¬ 
brated a splendid triumph, and caused 

P. E.—7 


the temple of Janus to be closed in 
token of peace being restored. Gradu¬ 
ally all the highest offices of state, civil 
and religious, were united in his hands, 
and the new title of Augustus was also 
assumed by him, being formally con¬ 
ferred by the senate in b.c. 27. Great 
as was the power given to him, he exer¬ 
cised it with wise moderation, and kept 
up the show of a republican form of 
government. He adorned Rome in 
such a manner that it was said, “He 
found it of brick, and left it of marble.” 
The people erected altars to him, and, 
by a decree of the senate, the month 
Sextilis was called Augustus (our Aug¬ 
ust). He was a patron of literature; Virgil 
and Horace were befriended by him, and 
their works and those of their contem¬ 
poraries are the glory of the Augustan 
Age. His death, which took place at 
Nola, plunged the empire into the great¬ 
est grief. 

AUGUSTUS n., or FREDERICK- 
AUGUSTUS I., Elector of Saxony and 
King of Poland, second son of John 
George III., elector of Saxony, was born 
at Dresden in 1670, died at Warsaw 
1733. He succeeded his brother in the 
electorate in 1694, and the Polish 
throne having become vacant, in 1696, 
by the death of John Sobieski, Augus¬ 
tus presented himself as a candidate for 
it and was successful. His wife left him 
one son. The Countess of Konigsmark 
bore him the celebrated commander 
Marshal Saxe (Maurice of Saxony). 

AUGUSTUS III., or FREDERICK- 
AUGUSTUS H., Elector of Saxony and 
King of Poland, son of Augustus II., 
born at Dresden 1696, succeeded his 
father as elector in 1733, and was chosen 
King of Poland through the influence 
of Austria and Russia. He died in 1763. 
His son, Frederick Christian, succeeded 
him as Elector of Saxony, and Stanis¬ 
laus Poniatowski as King of Poland. 

AUK, a name of certain swimming 
birds, including the great auk, the little 
auk, the puffin, etc. The great auk or 
gair-fowl, a bird about 3 feet in length, 
used to be plentiful in northerly regions, 



Great auk. 


and also visited the British shores, but 
has become extinct. Some seventy 
skins, about as many eggs, with bones 
representing perhaps a hundred individ¬ 
uals, are preserved in various museums. 
Though the largest species of the family, 


the wings were only 6 inches from the 
carpal joint to the tip, totally useless 
for flight, but employed as fins in swim¬ 
ming, especially under water. The tail 
was about 3 inches long; the beak was 
high, short, and compressed; the head, 
neck, and upper parts were blackish} 
a large spot under each eye, and most 



Kazor-bill auk. 


of the under parts white. Its legs were 
placed so far back as to cause it to sit 
nearly upright. The razor-bill is about 
15 inches in length, and its wings are 
sufficiently developed to be used for 
flight. It is found in numbers on some 
parts of the British shores, as the Isle of 
Man. 

AURE'LIAN, Lucius Domitius Aureli- 
anus, Emperor of Rome, of humble 
origin, was born about 212 a.d., rose 
to the highest rank in the army, and 
on the death of Claudius II. (270) was 
chosen emperor. He delivered Italy 
from the barbarians, and conquered the 
famous Zenobia, queen of Palmyra. 
He followed up his victories by the 
reformation of abuses, and the restora¬ 
tion throughout the empire of order 
and regularity. He lost his life, a.d. 275, 
by assassination, when heading an expe¬ 
dition against the Persians. 

AURE'LIUS ANTONI'NUS, Marcus, 
often called simply Marcus Aurelius, 
Roman emperor and philosopher, son- 
in-law, adopted son, and successor of 
Antoninus Pius, born a.d. 121, suc¬ 
ceeded to the throne 161, died 180. He 
voluntarily shared the government with 
Lucius Verus, whom Antoninus Pius 
had also adopted. Brought up and in¬ 
structed by Plutarch’s nephew, Sextus, 
the orator Herodes Atticus, and L. 
Volusius Mecianus, the jurist, he had 
become acquainted with learned men, 
and formed a particular love for the 
Stoic philosophy. A war with Parthia 
broke out in the year of his accession, and 
did not terminate till 166. A confed¬ 
eracy of the northern tribes now threat¬ 
ened Italy, while a frightful pestilence, 
brought from the East with the army, 
raged in Rome itself. Both emperors 
set out in person against the rebellious 
tribes. In 169 Verus died, and the 
sole command of the war devolved on 
Marcus Aurelius, who prosecuted it with 
the utmost rigor, and nearly extermi¬ 
nated the Marcomanni. After this vic¬ 
tory the Marcomanni, the Quadi, as 
well as the rest of the barbarians, sued 
for peace. The sedition of the Syrian 
governor Avidius Cassius, with whom 
Faustina, the empress, was in treason¬ 
able communication, called off the 
emperor from his conquests, but before 
he reached Asia the rebel was assassi¬ 
nated. Aurelius returned to Rome, 






AURENZLEBE 


AUSTRALIA 




Aurora borealis, as seen when crossing the polar circle. 


on the Fox river, 40 miles w. by s. of 
Chicago; it has flourishing manufac¬ 
tories, railway works, and a considerable 
trade. Pop. 21,000. 


this connection is found to be so c 
tain that, upon remarking the displ 
of one of the three classes of phenomei 
we can at once assert that the otl 


two are also observable. The aurora 
borealis is said to be frequently accom¬ 
panied by sound, which is variously de¬ 
scribed as resembling the rustling of 
pieces of silk against each other, or 
the sound of wind against the flame of 
a candle. The aurora of the southern 
hemisphere is quite a similar phenom¬ 
enon to that of the north. 

AUS'TEN, Jane, English novelist, 
born 1775, at Steventon, in Hants. 
Her principal [novels are Sense and 
Sensibility ; Pride and Prejudice; Mans¬ 
field Park; and Emma. She died in 
1817. 

AUS'TERLITZ, a town with 3452 
inhabitants, in Moravia, 10 miles e. of 
Brilnn, famous for the battle of the 2d 
of December, 1805, fought between the 
French (70,000 in number) and the 
allied Austrian and Russian armies 
(95,000). The decisive victory of the 
French led to the Peace of Pressburg 
between France and Austria. 

AUS'TIN, capital of the state of Texas, 
on the Colorado, about 200 miles from 
its month, and accessible to steamboats 


State capitol, Austin, Tex. 

during certain seasons. There is a state 
university and other institutions, and 
a splendid capitol built of red granite. 
Pop. 25,000. 

AUSTRALASIA, a division of the 
globe usually regarded as comprehend¬ 
ing the islands of Australia, Tasmania, 
New Zealand, New Caledonia, the New 
Hebrides, the Solomon Islands, New 
Ireland, New Britain, the Admiralty 
Islands, New Guinea, and the Arru 
Islands, besides numerous other islands 
and island groups; estimated area, 
3,400,000 sq. miles; pop. 6,000,000. It 
forms one of three portions into which 
some geographers have divided Oceania, 
the other two being Maylasia and Poly¬ 
nesia. 

AUSTRALIA, the largest island in the 
world, a sea-girt continent, lying be¬ 
tween the Indian and Pacific Oceans, 
s.e. of Asia; between lat. 10° 39' and 39° 
11' s.; Ion. 113° 5' and 153° 16' e.; great¬ 
est length, from w. to e., 2400 miles; 
greatest breadth, from n. to s., 1700 ta 
1900 miles. It is separated from New 
Guinea on the north by Torres Strait, 
from Tasmania on the south by Bass 
Strait. It is divided into two unequal 
parts by the Tropic of Capricorn, and 
consequently belongs partly to the 
South Temperate, partly to the Torrid 
Zone. It is occupied by five British 
colonies; namely, New South Wales, 
Victoria, and Queensland in the east; 
South Australia in the middle, stretch¬ 
ing from sea to sea; and Western Aus¬ 
tralia in the west. Their area and popu— 


AURO'RA BOREA'LIS, a luminous 

meteoric phenomenon appearing in the 
north, most frequently in high latitudes, 
the corresponding phenomenon in the 
southern hemisphere being called Aurora 
Australis, and both being also called 
Polar Light, Streamers, etc. The north¬ 
ern aurora has been far the more ob¬ 
served and studied. It usually mani¬ 
fests itself by streams of light ascending 
toward the zenith from a dusky line 
of cloud or haze a few degrees above the 
horizon, and stretching from the north 
toward the west and east, so as to form 
an arc with its ends on the horizon, and 
its different parts and rays are con¬ 
stantly in motion. Sometimes it appears 
in detached places; at other times it 
almost covers the whole sky. It as¬ 
sumes many shapes and a variety of 
colors, from a pale red or yellow to a 
deep red or blood color; and in the 
northern latitudes serves to illuminate 
the earth and cheer the gloom of the 
long winter nights. The appearance 
of the aurora borealis so exactly re- 
semples the effects of artificial electricity 
that there is every reason to believe 
that their causes are identical. When 
electricity passes through rarefied air 
it exhibits a diffused luminous stream 
which has all the characteristic appear¬ 
ance of the aurora, and hence is is highly 
probable that this natural phenomenon 
is occasioned by the passage of electric¬ 
ity through the upper regions of the 
atmosphere. The influence of the 
aurora upon the magnetic needle is now 
considered as an ascertained fact, and 
the connection between it and mag¬ 
netism is further evident from the fact 
that the beams or coruscations issuing 
from a point in the horizon west of north 
are frequently observed to run in the 
magnetic meridian. What are known as 
magnetic storms are invariably con¬ 
nected with exhibitions of the aurora, 
and with spontaneous galvanic currents 
in the ordinary telegraph wires; and 


after visiting Egypt and Greece, but 
soon new incursions of the Marcomanni 
compelled him once more to take the 
field. He defeated the enemy several 
times, but was taken sick at Sirmium, 
and died at Vindobona (Vienna) in 180. 
His only extant work is the Meditations, 
written in Greek, and which has been 
translated into most modern languages. 
This may be regarded as a manual of 
practical morality, in which wisdom, 
gentleness, and benevolence are com¬ 
bined in the most fascinating manner. 
Many believe it to have been intended 
for the instruction of his son Commodus. 
Aurelius was one of the best emperors 
ever Rome saw, although his philosophy 
and the magnanimity of his character 
did not restrain him from the perse¬ 
cution of the Christians, whose religious 
doctrines he was led to believe were sub¬ 
versive of good government. 

AU'RENGZEBE (-zeb), one of the 
greatest of the Mogul emperors of Hin¬ 
dustan, born in Oct., 1618 or 1619. In 
his twentieth year he raised a body of 
troops by his address and good fortune, 
and obtained the government of the 
Deccan. He murdered his relatives one 
after the other, and in 1659 ascended the 
throne. Two of his sons, who endeavored 
to form a party in their own favor, he 
caused to be arrested and put to death 
by slow poison. He carried on many 
wars, conquered Golconda and Bijapur, 
and drove out, by degrees, the Mahrattas 
from their country. After his death in 
1707 the Mogul Empire declined. 

AURICULAR CONFESSION. See Con¬ 
fession 

AURO'RA, in classical mythology, 
the goddess of the dawn, daughter of 
Hyperion and Theia, and sister of Helios 
and Selene (Sun and Moon). She was 
represented as a charming figure, “rosy- 
fingered,” clad in a yellow robe, rising 
at dawn from the ocean and driving her 
chariot through the heavens. 

AURO'RA, a city of Kane Co., Illinois, 
























bses 


wa&ffi 










































YICIXIT5T 

OP 

SYDNEY 

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MAP OF 

AUSTRALIA 


60 109 


Scale of Miles 

200 


r 

L 


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to r> s wy*-- 

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Cape o/ Good Hope to Melbourne 6,010 Afiles 



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TASMANIA' 

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120 Longitude East 125 from Greenwich 130 


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AUSTRALIA 


AUSTRALIA 


lation are as follows (but authorities 
differ as to the areas): 

Area in 


sq. m. Pop. 

N. S. Wales. 310,700 1,459,943 

Victoria. 87,884 1,341,506 

Queensland. 668,497 503,266 


South Australia... 903,425 402,604 
Western Australia. 975,920 192,553 


2,946,426 3,899,872 

Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Bris¬ 
bane, and Perth are the chief towns. 
The population of the Commonwealth 
of Australia, which includes the above 
colonies or states and also Tasmania, 
was 4,282,347 

The interior, so far as explored, is 
largely composed of rocky tracts and 
barren plains with little or no water. 
The whole continent forms an immense 
plateau, highest in the east, low in the 
center, and with a narrow tract of land 
usually intervening between the ele¬ 
vated area and the sea. 

The rivers of Australia are nearly all 
subject to great irregularities in volume, 
many of them at one time showing a 
channel in which there is merely a series 
of pools, while at another they inundate 
the whole adjacent country. The chief 
is the Murray, which, with its affluents 
the Murrumbidgee, Lachlan, and Dar¬ 
ling, drains a great part of the interior 
west of the Dividing Range, and falls 
into the sea on the south coast (after 
entering Lake Alexandrina). Its great¬ 
est tributary is the Darling, which may 
even be regarded as the main stream. 
On the east coast are the Hunter, Clar¬ 
ence, Brisbane, Fitzroy, and Burdekin; 
on the west, the Swan, Murchison, Gas¬ 
coyne, Ashburton, and De Grey; on the 
north, the Fitzroy, Victoria, Flinders, 
and Mitchell. The Australian rivers 
are of little service in facilitating inter¬ 
nal communciation. Many of them lose 
themselves in swamps or sandy wastes 
of the interior. A considerable river 
of the interior is Cooper’s Creek, or the 
Barcoo, which falls into Lake Eyre, one 
of a group of lakes on the south side of 
the continent having no outlet, and 
accordingly salt. The principal of these 
are Lakes Eyre, Torrens, and Gairdner, 
all of which vary in size and saltness 
according to the season. Another large 
salt lake of little depth, Lake Amadeus, 
lies a little west of the center of Austra¬ 
lia. Various others of less magnitude 
are scattered over the interior. 

The climate of Australia is generally 
hot and dry, but very healthful. 

Australia is a region containing a vast 
quantity of mineral wealth. Foremost 
come its rich and extensive deposits of 
old, which, since its discovery in 1851, 
ave produced a total of more than 
two billion dollars. The greatest quan¬ 
tity has been obtained in Victoria, but 
New South Wales and Queensland have 
also yielded a considerable amount. 
Rich stores of gold have recently been 
discovered in W. Australia. Australia 
also possesses silver, copper, tin, lead, 
zinc, antimony, mercury, plumbago, 
etc., besides coal (now worked to a con¬ 
siderable extent in New South Wales) 
and iron. Various precious stones are 


found, as the garnet, ruby, topaz, sap¬ 
phire, and even the diamond. Of build¬ 
ing stone there are granite, limestone, 
marble, and sandstone. 

The Australian flora presents pecu¬ 
liarities which mark it off by itself in a 
very decided manner. Many of its 
most striking features have an un¬ 
mistakable relation to the general dry¬ 
ness of the climate. The trees and 
bushes have for the most part a scanty 
foliage, presenting little surface for 
evaporation, or thick leathery leaves 
well fitted to retain moisture. The most 
widely spread types of Australian vege¬ 
tation are the various kinds of gum- 
tree, the shea-oak, the acacia or wattle, 
the grass-tree, and a great number of 
ferns and tree-ferns. Of the gum-tree 
there are found upward of 150 species, 
many of which are of great value. 
Individual specimens of the “pepper¬ 
mint” have been found to measure from 
480 to 500 feet in height. As timber- 
trees the most valuable members of this 
genus are the red-gum, the timber of 



Australian aboriginals. 


which is hard, dense, and almost in¬ 
destructible. A number of the gum- 
trees have deciduous bark. The wattle 
or acacia includes about 300 species, 
some of them of considerable economic 
value, yielding good timber or bark for 
tanning. The most beautiful and most 
useful is that known as the golden wattle, 
which in spring is adorned with rich 
masses of fragrant yellow blossom. 
Palms—of which there are 24 species, 
all except the coco-palm peculiar to 
Australia—are confined to the north 
and east coasts. Beautiful flowering 
plants are numerous. Australia also 
possesses great numbers of turf-forming 
grasses, such as the kangaroo-grass, 
which survives even a tolerably pro¬ 
tracted drought. The native fruit-trees 
are few and unimportant, and the same 
may be said of the plants yielding roots 
used as food; but exotic fruits and 
vegetables may now be had in the differ¬ 
ent colonies in great abundance and of 
excellent quality. The vine, the olive, 
and mulberry thrive well, and quantities 


of wine are now produced. The cereals 
of Europe and maize are extensively 
cultivated, and large tracts of country, 
particularly in Queensland, are under 
the sugar-cane. 

The Australian fauna is almost unique 
in its character. Its great feature is the 
nearly total absence of all the forms of 
Mammalia which abound in the rest of 
the world, their place being supplied by 
a great variety of marsupials—these 
animals being nowhere else found, ex¬ 
cept in the opossums of America. There 
are about 110 kinds of marsupials (of 
which the kangaroo, wombat, bandicoot, 
and phalangers or opossums, are the 
best-known varieties), over twenty 
kinds of bats, a wild dog (the dingo), 
and a number of rats and mice. Two 
extraordinary animals, the platypus, 
or water-mole of the colonist, and the 
porcupine ant-eater, constitute the 
lowest order of mammals, and are con¬ 
fined to Australia. Their young are 
produced from eggs. Australia now 
possesses a large stock of the domestic 
animals of Britain, which thrive there 
remarkably well. The breed of horses 
is excellent. Horned cattle and sheep 
are largely bred, the first attaining a 
great size, while the sheep improve in 
fleece and their flesh in flavor. There 
are upward of 650 different species of 
birds, the largest being the emu, or 
Australian ostrich, and a species of 
cassowary. Peculiar to the country are 
the black-swan, the honey-sucker, the 
lyre-bird, the brush-turkey, and other 
mound-building birds, the bower-birds, 
etc. The parrot tribe preponderate 
over most other groups of birds in the 
continent. There are many reptiles, 
the largest being the alligator, found in 
some of the northern rivers. There are 
upwards of 60 different species of snakes, 
some of which are very venomous. 
Lizards, frogs, and insects are also 
numerous in various parts. The seas, 
rivers, and lagoons abound in fish of 
numerous varieties, and other aquatic 
animals, many of them peculiar. 
Whales and seals frequent the coasts. 
On the n. coasts are extensive fisheries 
of trepang, much visited by native 
traders from the Indian Archipelago. 
Some animals of European origin, such 
as the rabbit and the sparrow, have 
developed into real pests in several of 
the colonies. 

The natives belong to the Australian 
negro stock, and are sometimes con¬ 
sidered the lowest as regards intelligence 
in the whole human family, though this 
is doubtful. They number about 60,000, 
exclusive of those in the unexplored 
parts, and are of a dark-brown or black 
color, with jet-black curly but not 
woolly hair, of medium size, but inferior 
muscular development. In the settled 
parts of the continent they are inoffen¬ 
sive, and rapidly dying out. 

Till recently each of the colonies was 
quite independent of the others. Lat¬ 
terly for a number of years there had 
been a movement in favor of Australian 
federation and a Federal Convention 
sat at Adelaide in 1897-98 and drafted 
a Constitution Bill for the formation of 
an Australian Commonwealth, which 
in 1900 was actually established by act 
of the British Parliament. The.colonies 




















AUSTRIA 


AUSTRIA 


or states included in the Commonwealth 
comprise Tasmania as well as the five 
Australian colonies proper. The col¬ 
onies have a considerable defensive 
force of militia and volunteers, also a 
number of gun-boats, torpedo-boats, 
etc., besides which there is always a 
squadron of British men-of-war on the 
Australian station. Education is well 
provided for, instruction in the primary 
schools being in some cases free and 
compulsory, and the higher education 
being more and more attended to. 
There are flourishing universities in 
Melbourne, Sydney, and Adelaide. 
Newspapers are exceedingly numerous, 
and periodicals of all kinds are abundant. 
There is as yet no native literature of 
any distinctive type, but names of Aus¬ 
tralian writers of ability both in prose 
and poetry are beginning to be known 
beyond their own country. 

Pastoral and agricultural pursuits 
and mining are the chief occupations 
of the people, though manufactories and 
handicrafts also employ large numbers. 

It is doubtful when Australia was 
first discovered by Europeans. Be¬ 
tween 1531 and 1542 the Portuguese 
published the existence of a land which 
they called Great Java, and which cor¬ 
responded to Australia, and probably 
the first discovery of the country was 
made by them early in the 16th century. 
The first authenticated discovery is said 
to have been made in 1601, by a Por¬ 
tuguese named Manoel Godinh de 
Eredia. In 1606 Torres, a Spaniard, 
assed through the strait that now 
ears his name, between New Guinea 
and Australia. Between this period and 
1628 a large portion of the coast-line 
of Australia had been surveyed by 
various Dutch navigators. In 1664 
the continent was named New Holland 
by the Dutch government. In 1688 
Dampier coasted along part of Australia, 
and about 1700 explored a part of the 
w. and n.w. coasts. In 1770 Cook 
carefully surveyed the e. coast, named 
a number of localities, and took posses¬ 
sion of the country for Britain. He 
was followed by Bligh in 1789, who 
carried on a series of observations on 
the n.e. coast, adding largely to the 
knowledge already obtained of this new 
world. Colonists had now arrived on 
the soil, and a penal settlement was 
formed (1788) at Port Jackson. In this 
way was laid the foundation of the 
future colony of New South Wales. The 
Moreton Bay district (Queensland) was 
settled in 1825; in 1835 the Port Phillip 
district. In 1851 the latter district was 
erected into a separate colony under 
the name of Victoria. Previous to this 
time the colonies both of Western 
Australia and of South Australia had 
been founded—the former in 1829, the 
latter in 1836. The latest of the colonies 
is Queensland, which only took an 
independent existence in 1859. 

July 9, 1900, the British Parliament 
passed an act empowering the six 
provinces of Australia to form a federal 
union and Jan. 1 1901, the new com¬ 
monwealth was proclaimed at Sydney, 
N. S. VV. Its first parliament was 
opened May 9, 1901. In 1903 Bombala, 
N. S. W., was chosen as the permanent 
capital. 


AUSTRIA, or AUSTRIA-HUNGARY, 

an extensive duplex monarchy in cen¬ 
tral Europe, inhabited by several dis¬ 
tinct nationalities, and consisting of 
two semi-independent countries, each 
with its own parliament and government, 
but with one common sovereign, army, 
and system of diplomacy, and also with 
a common parliament. The Austrian 
Empire now has a total area of about 
240,000 sq. miles, and is bounded s. 
by Turkey, the Adriatic, and Italy; w. 
by Switzerland, Bavaria, and Saxony; 
n. by Prussia and Russian Poland; and 
e. by Russia and Rumania. On the 
shores of the Adriatic, along the coasts 
of Dalmatia, Croatia, Istria, etc., lies 
its only sea frontage, which is of com¬ 
paratively insignificant extent. Pop. 
about 43,000,000. The largest cities 
are Vienna, Budapest, Prague, Trieste, 
Lemberg, Gratz, Brunn, Szegedin, Maria 
Theresiopol, Cracow. Bosnia and Herze¬ 
govina, formerly Turkish, now admin¬ 
istered by Austria, have an area of 
19,728 sq. miles. Pop. 1,591,036. 

The prevailing character of the 
Austrian dominions is mountainous or 
hilly, the plains not occupying more than 
a fifth part of the whole surface. The 
loftiest ranges belong to the Alps, and 
are found in Tyrol, Styria, Salzburg, 
and Carinthia, the highest summits 
being the Ortlerspitzen (12,814 feet) on 
the western boundary of Tyrol, and the 
Grossglockner (12,300) on the borders 
of Salzburg, Tyrol, and Carinthia. 
Another great range is that of the Car¬ 
pathians, bounding Hungary on the 
north. The most extensive tracts of 
low or flat land, much of which is very 
fertile, occur in Hungary, Galicia, and 
Slavonia, the great Hungarian plain 
having an area of 36,000 sq. miles. They 
stretch along the courses of the rivers, 
of which the chief are the Danube, 
with its tributaries the Save, the Drave, 
the Theiss, the Maros, the Waag, the 
March, the Raab, the Inn; also the 
Elbe and Moldau and the Dniester. 
The Danube for upward of 800 miles 
is navigable for pretty large vessels; 
the tributaries also are largely navigable. 
The lakes are numerous and often pic¬ 
turesque, the chief being Lake Balaton 
on the Plattensee. The climate is ex¬ 
ceedingly varied, but generally good. 
The principal products of the north are 
wheat, barley, oats, and rye; in the 
center vines and maize are added; and 
in the south olives and various fruits. 
The cereals grow to perfection, Hun¬ 
garian wheat and flour being celebrated. 
Other crops are hops, tobacco, flax, and 
hemp. Wine is largely made, but the 
wines are inferior on the whole, with 
exception of a few kinds, including 
Tokay. The forests cover 70,000 sq. 
miles, or one-third of the productive 
soil of the empire. Sheep and cattle 
are largely reared.—Wild deer, wild 
swine, chamois, foxes, lynxes, and a 
species of small black bear are found in 
many districts, the fox and lynx being 
particularly abundant. Herds of a 
small native breed of horses roam wild 
over the plains of Hungary.—In mineral 
productions Austria is very rich, pos¬ 
sessing, with the exception of platinum, 
all the useful metals, the principal being 
coal, salt, and iron. 


Manufactures are in the most flourish¬ 
ing condition in Bohemia, Moravia, 
Silesia, and Lower Austria; less so in the 
eastern provinces, and insignificant in 
Dalmatia, Bukowina, Herzegovina, etc. 
Among the most important manufac¬ 
tures are those of machinery and metal 
goods, Austria holding a high place for 
the manufacture of musical and scien¬ 
tific instruments, gold and silver plate 
and jewelry; of stone and china-ware, 
and of glass, which is one of the oldest 
and most highly developed industries 
in Austria; of chemicals; of sugar from 
beet; of beer, spirits, etc., and espe¬ 
cially the manufactures of woolen, 
cotton, hemp, and flax. The manufac¬ 
ture of tobacco is a state monopoly. 
Tanning is carried on to a great extent, 
and in the production of gloves (in 
Vienna and Prague) Austria stands 
next to France. 

None of the European states, except 
Russia, exhibits such a diversity of race 
and language as the Austrian Empire. 
The Slavs—who differ greatly, however, 
among themselves in language and 
civilization—amount to above 17,000,- 
000, or 45 per cent of the total popula¬ 
tion, and form the great mass of the 
population of Bohemia, Moravia, Car- 
niola, Galicia, Dalmatia, Croatia, and 
Slavonia, and northern Hungary, and 
half of the population of Silesia and 
Bukowina. The Germans, about 10,- 
600,000, form almost the sole popula¬ 
tion of the archduchy of Austria, Salz¬ 
burg, the greatest portion of Styria and 
Carinthia, almost the whole of Tyrol 
and Vorarlberg, large portions of 
Bohemia and Moravia, the whole of 
West Silesia, etc.; and they are also 
numerous in Hungary and Transyl¬ 
vania. The Magyars or Hungarians 
(7,400,000) form the bulk of the inhabi¬ 
tants of the Kingdom of Hungary and 
eastern Transylvania. Of the Italic or 
western Romanic stock there are about 
700,000, and in the southeast about 
2,800,000 of the Rumanian or eastern 
Romanic stock. The number of Jews 
is above 1,000,000; and there are other 
races, such as the Gypsies (150,000), 
who are most numerous in Hungary 
and Transylvania, and the Albanians 
in Dalmatia and the adjacent parts. 
The population, generally speaking, 
decreases in density from west to east. 

The state religion of Austria is the 
Roman Catholic, but the civil power 
exercises supreme control in all ecclesi¬ 
astical matters. In 1900 there were in 
the Austrian portion of the monarchy 
20,660,279 Roman Catholics, 3,136,535 
Greek Catholics united to the Roman 
Church, 606,764 non-united, 494,011 
Protestants, and 1,224,899 Jews. In 
Hungary and Transylvania there were 
9,919,913 Roman Catholics, 1,854,143 
Greek united and 2,815,713 non-united, 
3,730,0S4 Protestants, and 851,378 
Jews. 

The intellectual culture of the people 
is highest in the German provinces, 
but in some of the other provinces the 
illiterates number as many as 80 to 90 
per cent. Yet for a number of years 
attendance on the elementary schools 
has been compulsory on all children 
from their sixth to the end of their 
twelfth year; and there are higher 









































































































































































































AUTOCRAT 


AUTOMATON 


schools on which attendance is com¬ 
pulsory for young people of thirteen to 
fifteen years (not elsewhere educated). 
There are numerous gymnasia and 
“real-schools,” the gymnasia being 
intended chiefly to prepare pupils for 
the universities, while in the real-schools 
a more practical end is kept in view, 
and modern languages and physical 
science form the groundwork of the 
educational course; also agricultural, 
commercial, industrial, art, music, and 
other special schools. There are eleven 
universities, viz. in Vienna, Prague (2), 
Budapest, Gratz, Cracow, Lemberg, 
Innsbruck, Klausenburg, Agram, and 
Czernowitz. Most of these have four 
faculties—Catholic theology, law and 
politics, medicine, and philosophy. 

The ruler of the Austro-Hungarian 
monarchy has the title of emperor so far 
as concerns his Austrian dominions, but 
he is only king of Hungary. All matters 
affecting the joint interests of the two 
divisions of the empire, such as foreign 
affairs, war, and finance, are dealt with 
by a supreme body known as the Dele¬ 
gations—a parliament of 120 members, 
one-half of whom are chosen by and 
represent the legislature of German 
Austria and the other half that of 
Hungary. The legislative center of the 
Austrian division of the empire is the 
Reichsrath, or council of the realm, 
consisting of an upper house (Herren- 
haus), composed of princes of the 
imperial family, nobles with the heredi¬ 
tary right to sit, archbishops and life- 
members nominated by the emperor; 
and a lower house (Abgeordnetenhaus) 
of 353 elected deputies. There are 
seventeen provincial diets or assemblies, 
each provincial division having one. 
In the Hungarian division of the empire 
the legislative power is vested in the 
king and the diet or Reichstag con¬ 
jointly, the latter consisting of an upper 
house or house of magnates and of a 
lower house or house of representatives, 
the latter elected by all citizens of full 
age paying direct taxes to the amount 
of 16s a year. The powers of the Hun¬ 
garian Reichstag correspond to those 
of the Reichsrath of the Cisleithan 
provinces. There being three distinct 
parliaments in the empire, there are also 
three budgets, that, viz., for the whole 
empire, that for Cisleithan, and that for 
Transleithan Austria. A small portion 
of the imperial revenue of Austria is 
derived from customs and other sources, 
70 per cent of the remainder being 
made up by the Cisleithan and 30 per 
cent by the Transleithan divisions of 
the empire. 

Military service is obligatory on all 
citizens capable of bearing arms who 
have attained the age of twenty. The 
period of service is twelve years, of 
which three are passed in the line, seven 
in the reserve, and two in the landwehr. 
The army numbers over 290,000 men 
(including officers) on the peace-footing 
and over 1,500,000 on the war-footing. 
The most important portion of the 
Austrian navy comprises 12 iron-cLads, 
of from 5 to 14-inch armor, the largest 
having a tonnage of over 7000, and 
carrying 27-ton guns; besides gun¬ 
boats, torpedo vessels, and other vessels, 
mostly small and intended for coast 


defense. The crews number about 
10,000 officers and men. 

In 791 Charlemagne drove the Avars 
from the territory between the Ens and 
the Raab, and united it to his empire 
under the name of the Eastern Mark 
(that is March or boundary land); and 
from the establishment by him of a 
margraviate in this new province the 
present empire took its rise. The 
present imperial family descends from 
Rudolph von Hapsburg, and the house 
of Hapsburg furnished 24 sovereigns 
from Albert I. (1282) to Maria Theresa 
(1740). With the marriage of the 
latter to Stephen, Duke of Lorraine, the 
house of Hapsburg-Lorraine acceded 
to the throne in the person of Joseph 
III. in 1780. The succession then fell 
to Leopold II. (1790), Franz I. (1792), 
Ferdinand I. (1835), and Franz Joseph 
I., the present emperor (1848). 

In the troubled period following the 
French revolution of 1830 insurrections 
took place in Modena, Parma, and the 
Papal States (1831-32), but were sup¬ 
pressed without much difficulty; and 
though professedly neutral during the 
Polish insurrections Austria clearly 
showed herself on the side of Russia, 
with whom her relations became more 
intimate as those between Great Britain 
and France grew more cordial. The 
death of Francis I. (1835) and accession 
of his son Ferdinand I. made little 
change in the Austrian system of govern¬ 
ment, and much discontent was the 
consequence. In 1846 the failure of the 
Polish insurrection led to the incor¬ 
poration of Cracow with Austria. In 
Italy the declarations of Pio Nono in 
favor of reform increased the diffi¬ 
culties of .Austria, and in Hungary the 
opposition under Kossuth and others 
assumed the form of a great constitu¬ 
tional movement. In 1848, when the 
expulsion of Louis Philippe shook all 
Europe, Metternich found it impossible 
any longer to guide the helm of the 
state, and the government was com¬ 
pelled to admit a free press and the right 
of citizens to arms. Apart from the 
popular attitude in Italy and in Hun¬ 
gary, where the diet declared itself per¬ 
manent under the presidency of Kos¬ 
suth, the insurrection made equal prog¬ 
ress in Vienna itself, and the royal 
family, no longer in safety, removed to 
Innsbruck. After various ministerial 
changes the emperor abdicated in favor 
of his nephew 1 , Francis Joseph; more 
vigorous measures were adopted; and 
Austria, aided by Russia, reduced Hun¬ 
gary to submission. 

The year 1855 is memorable for the 
Concordat with the pope, which put the 
educational and ecclesiastical affairs of 
the empire entirely into the hands of the 
Papal see. In 1859 the hostile inten¬ 
tions of France and Sardinia against the 
possessions of Austria in Italy became 
so evident that she declared war by 
sending an army across the Ticino; 
but after disastrous defeats at Magenta 
and Solferino she was compelled to cede 
Milan and the northwest portion of 
Lombardy to Sardinia. In 1864 she 
joined with the German states in the 
war against Denmark, but a dispute 
about Schlesw'ig-Holstein involved her 
in a w'ar with her allies (1866), while at 


the same time Italy renewed her at¬ 
tempts for the recovery of Venice. The 
Italians were defeated at Custozza 
and driven back across the Mincio; but 
the Prussians, victorious at Kbniggratz 
(or Sadowa), threatened Vienna. Peace 
was concluded with Prussia on Aug. 23 
and with Italy on Oct. 3, the result of the 
w'ar being the cession of Venetia through 
France to Italy and the withdrawal of 
Austria from all interference in the 
affairs of Germany. 

Since 1866 Austria has been occupied 
chiefly with the internal affairs of the 
empire. Hungarian demands for self- 
government were finally agreed to, and 
the Empire of Austria divided into the 
two parts already mentioned—the Cis¬ 
leithan and the Transleithan. This 
settlement was consummated by the 
coronation of the Emperor Francis 
Joseph I., at Budapest, as King of 
Hungary, on the 8th of June, 1867. In 
the same year the Concordat of 1855 
came up for discussion, and measures 
were passed for the reestablishment 
of civil marriage, the emancipation of 
schools from the domination of the 
church, and the placing of different 
creeds on a footing of equality. The 
fact of the Austro-Hungarian dominions 
comprising so many different nationali¬ 
ties has always given the central govern¬ 
ment much trouble, both in regard to 
internal and to external affairs. In re¬ 
gard to the “Eastern Question,” for 
instance, the action of Austria has been 
hampered by the sympathies show'n by 
the Magyars for their blood relations, 
the Turks, while the Slavs have natu¬ 
rally been more favorable to Russia. 
During the war between Russia and 
Turkey in 1877-78 Austria remained 
neutral; but at its close, in the middle of 
1878, it was decided, at the Congress of 
Berlin, that the provinces of Bosnia and 
Herzegovina should in future be admin¬ 
istered by Austria-Hungary instead of 
Turkey. Since that time the external 
history of the Austro-Hungarian mon¬ 
archy has been uneventful, but in 
internal affairs there has been consider¬ 
able friction between the different 
nationalities and the numerous political 
parties. The language question has been 
a fruitful source of controversy. 

AU'TOCRAT, an absolute or uncon¬ 
trolled ruler; the head of a state who is 
not controlled by any constitutional lim¬ 
itations ; such as the Emperor of Russia. 

AUTO DE FE (Spanish); AUTO DA FE 
(Portuguese), lit. “act of faith.” See 
Inquisition. 

AU'TOGRAPH, a person’s own hand¬ 
writing; an original manuscript or signa¬ 
ture, as opposed to a copy. The prac¬ 
tice of collecting autographs or signa¬ 
tures dates at least from the 16th cen¬ 
tury, among the earliest collections 
known being those of Lom4nie de 
Brienne and Lacroix du Maine. 

AUTOM'ATON, a self-moving machine 
erforming actions like those of a living 
eing, and often shaped like one. The 
walking statues of Daedalus, the flying 
dove of Archytas, the brazen head of 
Friar Bacon, the iron fly of Regiomon¬ 
tanus, the door-opening figure of Alber- 
tus Magnus, the parading knights of the 
clock presented to Charlemagne by 
Harun al Rashid, the toy carriage and 




AUTOMOBILE 


AUTOMOBILE 


attendants constructed by Camus for 
Louis XIV., the flute-player, tambour- 
player, and duck of Vaucanson, and the 
writing child of the brothers Droz are 
among the more noteworthy of tradi¬ 
tional automata. 

AUTOMOBILE (a-to-md-bel'), a self- 
propelling vehicle for use on streets or 
roads for conveying passengers or 
freight. The earliest automobile was 
the crude vehicle invented by the Eng¬ 
lishman, Hancock, and patented in 
1827. Other early automobile invent¬ 
ors, none of whom, however, were 
successful, were Sir Charles Dance, 
Guideworthy Gurney, W. A. Summers, 
Nathaniel Ogle, Macerone and Squire, 
Henry James, Scott Russell, and Robert 
Griffith, whose patents date between 
1827 and 1836. These inventions were 
regarded as curiosities only, and it was 
not until 1885 when Gottlieb Daimler 
invented his small powerful gas-engine 
that the modern automobile became 
possible. 

The first American self-propelling 
road vehicle was made by Oliver Evans 
in 1786, at which time he planned a steam 
wagon that could be made to transport 
merchandise at less expense than the 
same work could be done by horses. 

It was not, however, until recent 
years, that any widespread interest 
was manifested in the subject of 
horseless vehicles. All such machines 
may be classified, according to their 
motor power, under the following 
general heads: 1. Steam vehicles 
with boilers and engines burning coal, 
oil, etc. 2. Machines driven by oil 
or vapor engines, gasoline, naphtha, 
etc. 3. Machines driven by com- 
ressed air (liquid air being a possi- 
ility.) 4. Machines run by elec¬ 
tricity. 

The equipment of the modern elec¬ 
tric automobile consists of a storage 
battery for supplying the current, the 
motor for transforming this current 
into mechanical power, and the con¬ 
troller for regulating the speed of the 
motor. In most electric vehicles two 
motors or a double motor drive are 
employed, the motor being either sup¬ 
ported on the rear axle or on the reach. 
The battery is either placed in a case 
hung under the body of the vehicle or 
else inside the body. The motors and 
other moving parts are placed in dust- 
proof cases. The efficiency of the bat¬ 
tery is of course the most important 
consideration, and its deterioration 
with service has to be borne in mind 
in such commercial applications as 
automobiles. In 1908 the batteries 
then in use were considered to be good 
for 5000 miles by observing ordinary 
precautions in charging and use. In 
the United States electric power has 
been applied to a great variety of 
vehicles, including, besides pleasure 
carriages of various types, delivery 
wagons, cabs, omnibuses, and trucks. 

Since 1900 in the United States 20- 
passenger omnibuses and heavy trucks 
with double electric motor drives have 
been constructed and are in active 
use. 

The most popular motor is some 
form of oil engine. The number and 
variety of these motors makes de¬ 


scription of them impossible. In the in¬ 
ternal combustion motor the propulsive 
power is given to the piston by the ex¬ 
plosion of vaporized oil, such as ben¬ 
zine or gasoline in the cylinder. The 
mechanism comprises, besides the 
engine and its connections, a carbureter 
for vaporizing and feeding the oil to 
the cylinder, and a cooler, by which 
water is kept in circulation around the 
cylinder. The engine transmits its 
power to a crank-shaft , from which it 
is led off by a chain drive or gearing to 
the driving shaft of the vehicle. These 
motors are made with one, two and four 
cylinders, and are of various powers, 
They will not start up of themselves 
under load, and cannot be reversed. 
Backing the carriage is effected by 
gears, and a steady movement of the 
engine is produced by a fly-wheel. The 
gasoline motor is unable to run under 
overload, but on the other hand con¬ 
sumes less fuel, and on this account 
has a greater radius of action. 

The speed attained by the automo¬ 
biles has been and is being enormously 
increased, and it is in this respect that 
there have been the most remarkable 
developments. These have progressed 
from time to time, so that at present the 
horseless carriage rivals modern express 
trains in the speed of its travel, while it 
is also able to operate for long distances, 
requiring supplies of fuel and water in a 
manner similar to the railway locomo¬ 
tive. If a machine is constructed to run 
comparatively short distances on a 
level and well-surfaced road, a mile 
may be accomplished in from 40 to 60 
seconds. 

The years 1907 and 1908 were the 
most successful in the history of the 
automobile industry. There were 
in use in the United States 175,000 
pleasure vehicles of various models 
and horse power and 18,000 com¬ 
mercial vehicles, both gasoline and 
electric. The estimated valuation of 
all types of motor-driven vehicles in 
use is $370,000,000. 

The estimated production of auto¬ 
mobiles of the entire industry in the 
United States is placed at 65,000 ma¬ 
chines. The approximate value of this 
output is $110,000,000. The capital 
employed in the automobile industry 
is approximately $90,000,000. 

There are about fifty companies en¬ 
gaged exclusively or partially in the 
manufacture of motor vehicles for 
business purposes. A decided change 
is noticeable in the attitude of those 
who are using horses in their business 
toward the possible adoption of the 
motor. The failure of some of the 
earliest installations, owing largely to 
exorbitant claims made for them, 
somewhat retarded the development 
for a time, but the prejudice so born 
has been largely overcome, and with 
the much improved vehicle and the more 
rational demands as to what it should 
do, the machine is beginning steadily 
to replace the animal as it has in every 
field where they have come in conflict 
so far, and naturally always will. The 
much greater working capacity of the 
motor vehicle—owing to its speed and 
ability to work for indefinite periods 
of time—is its chief advantage. 


Economy of use usually results through 
this feature rather than through re¬ 
duced cost of operation, although the 
relative value of the latter item in¬ 
creases rapidly in favor of the motor 
with the number of vehicles employed, 
it being capable of displacing a greater 
number of horse-drawn vehicles. It is 
generally conceded by those who 
should know' that the best field for the 
electric commercial vehicle is in the 
lines where the length of the runs to be 
made is relatively short and the num¬ 
ber of stops great. The gasoline 
vehicle is coming rapidly to the front 
in all other lines, and, in many cases, 
is doing well in this one, too. Very 
little has been done with steam, ex¬ 
cept that one company has built a 
number of ambulances, although it 
seems to have great possibilities. 

The taximeter cab service now in 
operation in the large cities opens a 
new field for the American automo¬ 
bile. These motor cabs will carry taxi¬ 
meters to determine the fares, and 
promise to be popular throughout the 
country, and seems destined to shortly 
replace the horse-drawn cab. 

Federal statistics show there are 
more than 2,151,670 miles of public 
highways in the United States. Of 
this mileage 108,232.9 miles are sur¬ 
faced with gravel, 38,621.7 miles with 
stone, and 6,809.7 miles with special 
materials, such as shells, sand, clay, 
oil and brick, making in all 153,664.3 
miles of improved rotm. From this it 
follows that 7.14 per cent, of all the 
roads in this country have been im¬ 
proved. 

Automobile speed may be judged by 
a study of the record table which show s 
that the fastest mile ever recorded is 
the :28 1-5 made by F. H. Marriott in a 
Stanley steamer at Ormond, Fla., in 
1906. The fastest average pace for a 
middle-distance race was made at Or¬ 
mond, March 5, 1908, when Maurice 
Bernin, in a sixty-horse power Renault, 
traveled 100 miles in 1:12:561-5, an 
average of 82.26 miles per hour. At 
the same meet Emanuel Cedrino, in 
the sixty-horse pow r er Fiat Cyclone, 
established a 300-mile record of 3:53:44, 
an average of 77.02 miles per hour. 
Greater speed than even this is report¬ 
ed to have been made by Nazzaro in a 
Fiat in a match race at Brooklands, 
England, it being said he showed 120 
miles an hour for two and three-quarter 
miles, but these figures never were 
officially accepted. On the road the 
fastest average pace was made in the 
Florio cup race in Italy, in 1908, by 
Nazzaro in a Fiat, who averaged 74.27 
miles per hour. 

The world’s record for twenty-four 
hours is 1,581 miles 1,310 yards, an 
average pace of 65.9 miles an hour, 
made June 28-29, 1907, by S. F. Edge 
in a six-cylinder Napier on the three 
and one-quarter mile cement track at 
Weybridge, England. During the year 
there were run in the United States ten 
twenty-four-hour races, five of them 
single car events and the other five re¬ 
lay or team races in w r hich two cars of 
the same make constituted a team. 

Motor-bicycles and quadricycles were 
built in New York in 1895. Gasoline 











3°-35 horse-power landaulet. 

Victoria phaeton. 



Touring car. Electric truck, 3 )^ tons capacity. 






























































AUTONOMY 


AXIOM 


motors provided the propelling force. 
The former weighs only sixty pounds. 
A naphtha tank is fastened on top of 
the frame between the saddle and the 
handles. It feeds down through the 
frame to the cylinders, one on each 
side of the rear wheel. The drops of 
naphtha are exploded by an electric 
spark from a small battery hung to 
the frame, thus giving impulse to the 
pistons. The speed depends upon the 
amount of oil let down. The machine 
is started by pedals, and the rotation of 
the wheels, together with the turning 
of the switch, sets the motor to working. 

AUTONOMY, the power of a state, 
institution, etc., to legislate for itself. 

AUTOP'SY, literally, personal obser¬ 
vation or inspection, commonly re¬ 
stricted to post-mortem examination. 

AUTOSUGGESTION, in hypnotism, 
the power of suggesting thought or ac¬ 
tion to one’s self. It is used largely 
in medicine under the name suggestive 
therapeutics, by which the patient, be¬ 
ing given an inert_ remedy, suggests a 
cure to himself. 

AUTOTYPE, a species of photo¬ 
graphic print. A thin sheet of gelatine 
on paper is rendered sensitive to light 
by treatment with bichromate of potash, 
and then exposed under an ordinary 
photographic negative. The portions 
of gelatine affected by the light become 
insoluble, the remainder of the gelatine 
is then washed away, and the picture 
remains reproduced in the gelatine, 
there being slight elevations and depres¬ 
sions corresponding with the distribu¬ 
tion of light and shade. This may be 
printed from, but it is more often made 
use of to obtain electrotypes or other 
reverses, from which impressions can 
more easily be taken. 

AUTUMN, the season between sum¬ 
mer and winter, in the northern hemi¬ 
sphere often regarded as embracing 
August, September, and October, or 
three months about that time. The be¬ 
ginning of the astronomical autumn is 
September 22, the autumnal equinox; 
and the end is December 21, the shortest 
day. The autumn of the southern 
hemisphere takes place at the time of 
the northern spring. 

AUTUN 6-tun; ancient Bibracte, 
later Augustodunum) a town, South¬ 
eastern France, department of Saone-e 
-Loire. It has two Roman gates of ex¬ 
quisite workmanship, the ruins of an 
amphitheater and of several temples, 
the cathedral of St. Lazare, a fine Gothic 
structure of the eleventh century; 
manufactures of carpets, woolens, cot¬ 
ton, velvet, hosiery, etc., Pop. 14,066. 

AUVERGENE (o-var-nye), a prov¬ 
ince, Central France, now merged into 
departments Cantal and Puy-de-D6me, 
and an arrondissement of Haute-Loire. 
The Auvergne Mountains, separating 
the basins of the Allier, Cher and 
Creuse from those of the Lot and Dor¬ 
dogne, contain the highest points of 
Central France: Mount Dor, 6188 
feet; Captal, 6093 feet, and Puy-de- 
D6me, 4806 feet. The number of ex¬ 
tinct volcanoes and general geologic 
formation make the district one of 
great scientific interest. The minerals 
include iron, coal, copper and _ lead, 
and there are wapni and cold mineral 


springs. Auvergne contributes a large 
supply to the labor markets of Paris 
and Belgium, there being in Paris 
alone some 50,000 Auvergnats. 

AUXERRE (o-s4r), a town, France, 
department of Yonne, 110 miles south¬ 
east of Paris, Principal edifices: A 
fine Gothic cathedral, unfinished ; the 
abbey of St. Germain, with curious 
crypts;’ and an old Episcopal palace, 
now the Hotel de-Prefecture; it manu¬ 
factures woolens, hats, casks, leather, 
earthern ware, violin strings, etc. ; trade 
chiefly in wood and wines, Of which the 
best known is white Chablis. Pop.20,236. 

AUXOM’ETER, an instrument to 
measure the magnifying powers of an 
optical apparatus. 

AUXONNE (o-son; anc. Aussona) a 
town, France, department of C6te- 
d’Or (Burgundy), on theSadne; a forti¬ 
fied place with some manufactures. 
Pop. 5911. 

A’VA, a town in Asia, formerly the 
capital of Burmah, on the Irrawady, 
now almost wholly in ruins. 

AVA-AVA, Abva, Kava or Yava, 
plant of the nat. order Piperacese(pepper 
family), so called by the inhabitants of 
Polynesia, who make an intoxicating 
drink out of it. Its leaves are chewed 
with betel in Southeastern Asia. 

AV'ALANCHES, large masses of snow 
or ice precipitated from the mountains, 
and distinguished as wind or dust ava¬ 
lanches, when they consist of fresh- 
fallen snow whirled like a dust storm 
into the valleys; as sliding avalanches, 
when they consist of great masses of 
snow sliding down a slope by^their own 
weight; and as glacier or summer ava¬ 
lanches, when ice-masses are detached 
by heat from the high glaciers. 

AVELLINO (a-vel-le'no), a town in 
southern Italy, capital of the province 
of Aveilino, 29 miles east of Naples, the 
seat of a bishop. Aveilino nuts were 
celebrated under the Romans. Pop. 
16,376.—Area of the province, 1409 sq. 
miles; pop. 419,688. 

A'VE MARFA, the first two words of 
the angel Gabriel’s salutation (Luke i. 
28), and the beginning of the very com¬ 
mon Latin prayer to the Virgin in the 
Roman Catholic Church. Its lay use 
was sanctioned at the end of the 12th 
century, and a papal edict of 1326 or¬ 
dains the repetition of the prayer thrice 
each morning, noon, and evening, the 
hour being indicated by sound of bells 
called the Ave Maria or Angelus Domini. 
The d rayers are counted upon the small 
beads of the rosary, as the Paternosters 
are upon the largest ones. 

AVERAGE, in maritime law, any 
charge or expense over and above the 
freight of goods, and payable by their 
owner .—General average is the sum fall¬ 
ing to be paid by the owners of ship, 
cargo and freight, in proportion to their 
several interests, to make good any 
loss or expense intentionally incurred 
for the general safety of ship and cargo, 
e. g. throwing goods overboard, cutting 
away masts, port dues in cases of dis¬ 
tress, etc .—Particular average is the 
sum falling to be paid for unavoidable 
loss when the general safety is not in 
question, and therefore chargeable on 
the individual owner of the property 
lost. A policy of insurance generally 


covers both general and particular 
average, unless specially excepted. 

AVESTA. See Zendavesta. 

AVEYRON (a-va-ron), a department 
occupying the southern extremity of the 
central plateau of France, traversed by 
mountains belonging to the Cevennes 
and the Cantal ranges; principal rivers, 
Aveyron, Lot, and Tarn, the Lot alone 
being navigable. The climate is cold, 
and agriculture is in a backward state, 
but considerable attention is paid to 
sheep-breeding. It is noted for its 
“Roquefort cheese.” It has coal, iron and 
copper mines, besides other minerals. 
Area, 3340 sq. miles; capital, Rhodez. 
Pop. 377,559. 

AVIGNON (a-ve-nyon), an old town 
of s.e. France, capital of department 
Vaucluse, on the left bank of the 
Rhone; inclosed by lofty battlemented 
and turreted walls, well built, but with 
rather narrow streets. The silk manu¬ 
facture and the rearing of silk-worms 
are the principal employments in the 
district. Here Petrarch lived several 
years, and made the acquaintance of 
Laura, whose tomb is in the Franciscan 
church. From 1309 to 1376 seven popes 
in succession, from Clement V. to 
Gregory XI., resided in this city. After 
its purchase by Pope Clement VI. in 
1348 Avignon and its district continued, 
with a few interruptions, under the 
rule of a vice-legate of the pope’s till 
1791, when it was formally united to the 
French Republic. Pop. 46,209. 

AVILA (a've-14), town of Spain, capital 
of province of Avila, a modern division 
of Old Castile. Pop., town, 11,885] 
province, 197,164. 

AV'OSET, a bird about the size of a 
lapwing. The bill is long, slender, 
elastic, and bent upward toward the 
tip, the legs long, the feet webbed, and 
the plumage variegated with black and 



white. The bird feeds on worms and 
other small animals, which it scoops up 
from the mud of the marshes and fens 
that it frequents. It is found in Europe, 
Asia, Africa, and America; but the 
American species is slightly different 
from the other. 

AX, or AXE, a well-known tool for 
cutting or chipping wood, consisting of 
an iron head with an arched cutting edge 
of steel, which is in line with the wooden 
handle of the tool, and not at right 
angles to it as in the adz. 

AX'IOM, a universal proposition, 
which the understanding must perceive 
to be true as soon as it perceives the 
meaning of the words, and therefore 
called a self-evident truth: e.g., A is A. 
In mathematics axioms are those prop¬ 
ositions which are assumed without 
proof, as being in themselves independ- 








AXIS 


BABCOCK 


ent of proof, and which are made the 
basis of all the subsequent reasoning; 
as, "The whole is greater than its part”; 
"Things that are equal to the same 
thing are equal to one another.” 

AXIS, the straight line, real or im¬ 
aginary, passing through a body or mag¬ 
nitude, on which it revolves, or may be 
supposed to revolve; especially a 
straight line with regard to which the 
different parts of a magnitude, or several 
magnitudes, are symmetrically arranged; 
e g., the axis of the world, the imagi¬ 
nary line drawn through its two poles. 

In botany the word is also used, the 
stem being termed the ascending axis, 
the root the descending axis. 

In anatomy the name is given to the 
second vertebra from the head, that 
on which the atlas moves. See Atlas. 

AYE-AYE (I'i), an animal of Mada¬ 
gascar, so called from its cry, now referred 
to the lemur family. It is about the size 
of a hare, has large flat ears and a bushy 



Aye-aye. 


tail; large eyes; long sprawling fingers, 
the third so slender as to appear shriv¬ 
eled; color, musk-brown, mixed jwith 
black and gray ash; feeds on grubs, 
fruits, etc.; habits, nocturnal. 

AYR (ar), a town of Scotland, a royal 
and pari, burgh, and capital of Ayrshire, 
at the mouth of the river Ayr, on the 
Firth of Clyde. The house in which 
Bums was born stands within 1J miles 
of the town, between it and the church 
of Alloway (“Alloway’s auld haunted 
kirk”), and a monument to him stands 
on a height between the kirk and the 
bridge over the Doon. Pop. 28,697.— 
The county has a length along the Firth 
of Clyde and North Channel of 80 miles; 


area, 735,262 acres. It is divided into 
the districts of Carrick in the south, 
Kyle in the middle, and Cunningham in 
the north. Chief towns, Ayr, Kilmar¬ 
nock, and Irvine. North Ayrshire and 
South Ayrshire each returns one member 
to parliament. Pop. (1901), 254,436. 

AZA'LEA, a genus of plants remark¬ 
able for the beauty and fragrance of 
their flowers, and distinguished from 
the rhododendrons chiefly by the 
flowers having five stamens instead 



of ten. Many beautiful rhododendrons 
with deciduous leaves are known under 
the name of azalea in gardens. The 
azaleas are common in North America. 

AZAMGARH, a town of India, United 
Provinces, capital of dist. of same name. 
Pop. 18,528.—The district has an area 
of 2418 sq. miles; a pop. of 1,728,625. 

AZERBIJAN (a-zer-bl-jan'), a province 
of northwestern Persia; area, 40,000 
sq. miles; pop. estimated at 2,000,000. 
It consists generally of lofty mountain 
ranges, some of which rise to a height of 
between 12,000 and 13,000 feet. Prin¬ 
cipal rivers: the Aras or Araxes, and the 
Kizil-Uzen, which enter the Caspian; 
smaller streams discharge themselves 
within the province into the great salt 
lake of Urumiyah. 

AZORES (a-zorz' or a-zo'res) or WEST¬ 
ERN ISLANDS, a group belonging to and 
900 miles west of Portugal, in the North 
Atlantic Ocean. The total area is about 
900 sq. miles; Sao Miguel (containing 
the capital Ponta Delgada), Pico, and 
Terceira are the largest. The islands, 
which are volcanic and subject to earth¬ 
quakes, are apparently of comparatively 


recent origin, and are conical, lofty, 
precipitous, and picturesque. The most 
remarkable summit is the peak of Pico, 
about 7600 feet high. There are nu¬ 
merous hot springs. They are covered 
with luxuriant vegetation, and diversi¬ 
fied with woods, corn-fields, vineyards, 
lemon and orange groves, and rich open 
pastures. When first visited they were 
uninhabited, and had scarcely any other 
animals except birds, particularly 
hawks, to which, called in Portuguese 
acores, the islands owe their name. 
Pop. 256,615. 

AZ'TECS, a race of people who settled 
in Mexico early in the 14th century, 
ultimately extended their dominion 
over a large territory, and were still ex¬ 
tending their supremacy at the time of 
the arrival of the Spaniards, by whom 
they were speedily subjugated. Their 
most celebrated ruler was Montezuma, 
who was reigning when the Spaniards 
arrived, about the middle of the 15th 
century. It is inferred that consider¬ 
able numbers of them lived in large com¬ 
munal residences, and that land was held 
and cultivated upon the communal 
principle. Slavery and polygamy were 
both legitimate, but the children of 
slaves were regarded as free. Although 
ignorant of the horse, ox, etc., they had 
a considerable knowledge of agriculture, 
maize and the agave being the chief 
produce. Silver, lead, tin, and copper 
were obtained from mines, and gold from 
the surface and river beds, but iron was 
unknown to them, their tools being of 
bronze and obsidian. In metal-work, 
feather-work, weaving, and pottery, 
they possessed a high degree of skill. 
To record events they used an unsolved 
hieroglyphic writing, and their lunar 
calendars were of unusual accuracy. 
Two special deities claimed their rever¬ 
ence: Hintzilopochtli, the god of war, 
propitiated with human sacrifices; and 
Quetzalcoatl, the beneficent god of light 
and air, with whom at first the Aztecs 
were disposed to identify Cortez. Their 
temples, with large terraced pyramidal 
bases, were in the charge of an exceed¬ 
ingly large priesthood, with whom lay 
the education of the young. As a civil¬ 
ization of apparently independent origin, 
yet closely resembling in many features 
the archaic oriental civilizations, the 
Aztec civilization is of the first interest, 
but in most accounts of it a large specu¬ 
lative element has to be discounted. 


B is the second letter and the first 
consonant in the English and most 
other alphabets. It is a mute and 
labial, pronounced solely by the lips, 
and is distinguished from p by being 
sonant, that is, produced by the utter¬ 
ance of voice as distinguished from 
breath. 

B, in music, the seventh note of the 
model diatonic scale or scale of C. It is 
called the leading note, as there is always 
a feeling of suspense when it is sounded 
until the key-note is heard. 

BA'AL, BEL, a Hebrew and general 
Semitic word, which originally appears 


B 

to have been generic, signifying simply 
lord, and to have been applied to many 
different divinities, or, with qualifying 
epithets, to the same divinity regarded 
in different aspects and as exercising 
different functions. Thus in Hos. ii. 16 
it is applied to Jehovah himself, while 
Baal-berith (the Covenant-lord) was the 
god of the Shechemites, and Baal-zebub 
(the Fly-god) the idol of the Philistines 
at Ekron. 

BABBITT, Isaac, an American in¬ 
ventor, born in Massachusetts in 1799, 
died 1862. He invented the amalgam 
known as Babbitt metal, for which con¬ 


gress gave him a grant of $20,000 and a 
gold medal. 

BABBITT-METAL, a soft metal result¬ 
ing from alloying together certain pro¬ 
portions of copper, tin, and zinc or 
antimony, used with the view of as 
far as possible _ obviating friction in 
the bearings of journals, cranks, axles, 
etc., invented by Isaac Babbitt (1799- 
1862), a goldsmith of Taunton, Massa¬ 
chusetts. 

BABCOCK, James Francis, an Ameri¬ 
can chemist, born in Boston in 1844, 
died there in 1897. His principal dis¬ 
tinction, aside from his teaching career. 







BABCOCK 


BABYROUSSA 


was his invention of a useful fire-ex¬ 
tinguisher. 

BABCOCK, Stephen Moulton, an 
American chemist, born in New York in 
1843 He invented the Babcock milk- 
tester, which he did not patent, so that 
its benefits would be free to the public 
In 1893 he was made professor of agri¬ 
cultural chemistry in the University of 
Wisconsin. 

BA'BEL, TOWER OF, according to the 
11th chapter of Genesis, a structure in 
the Plain of Shinar, Mesopotamia, com¬ 
menced by the descendants of Noah sub¬ 
sequent to the deluge, but which was not 
allowed to proceed to completion. It 
has commonly been identified with the 
great temple of Belus or Bel that was 
one of the chief edifices in Babylon, and 
the huge mound called Birs Nimrud is 
generally regarded as its site, though 
another mound, which to this day beam 
the name of Babil, has been assigned by 
some as its site. Babel means literally 
“gate of God.” The meaning “con¬ 
fusion” assigned to it in the Bible really 
belongs to a word of similar form. See 
Babylon. 

BABOON', a common name applied to 
a division of old-world apes and mon¬ 
keys. They have elongated abrupt 
muzzles like a dog, strong tusks or ca¬ 
nine teeth, usually short tails, cheek- 



Baboon mother and infant. 


pouches, small deep eyes with large 
eyebrows, and naked callosities on the 
buttocks. Their hind and fore feet are 
well proportioned, so that they run 
easily on all fours, but they do not 
maintain themselves in an upright 
posture with facility. They are gen¬ 
erally of the size of a moderately large 
dog, but the largest, the mandrill, is, 
when erect, nearly of the height of a 
man. They are almost all African, ugly, 
sullen, fierce, lascivious, and gregarious, 
defending themselves by throwing 
stones, dirt, etc. They live on fruits and 
roots, eggs and insects. 

BAB'YLON, the capital of Babylonia, 
on both sides of the Euphrates, one of 
the largest and most splendid cities of 
the ancient world, now a scene of ruins, 
and earth-mounds containing them. 
Babylon was a royal city sixteen hundred 
years before the Christian era; but the 
old city was almost entirely destroyed 
in 683 b.c. A new city was built by 
Nebuchadnezzar nearly a century later. 
This was in the form of a square, each 


side 15 miles long, with walls of such 
immense height and thickness as to con¬ 
stitute one of the wonders of the world. 
It contained splendid edifices, large 
gardens and pleasure-grounds, especially 
the “hanging-gardens,” a sort of lofty 
terraced structure supporting earth 
enough for trees to grow, and the cele¬ 
brated tower of Babel or temple of Belus, 
rising by stages to the height of 625 feet. 
After the city Was taken by Cyrus in 
538 b.c., and Babylonia made a Persian 
province, it began to decline, and had 
suffered severely by the time of Alex¬ 
ander the Great. He intended to restore 
it, but was prevented by his death, 
which took place here in 323 b.c., from 
which time its decay was rapid. In¬ 
teresting discoveries have been made on 
its site in recent times, more especially of 
numerous and valuable inscriptions in 
the cuneiform or arrow-head character. 
The modern town of Hillah is believed to 
represent the ancient city, and the plain 
here for miles round is studded with 
vast mounds of earth and brick and 
imposing ruins. The greatest mound is 
Birs Nimrud, about 6 miles from Hillah. 
It rises nearly 200 feet, is crowned by a 
ruined tower, and is commonly believed 
to be the remains of the ancient temple 
of Belus. Another great ruin-mound, 
called Mujellibeh, has also been assigned 
as its site. 

BABYLONIA, an old Asiatic empire 
occupying the region watered by the 
lower course of the Euphrates and the 
Tigris, and by their combined stream. 
The inhabitants, though usually desig¬ 
nated Babylonians, were sometimes 
called Chaldeans, and it is thought that 
the latter name represents a superior 
caste who at a comparatively late period 
gained influence in the country. At 
the earliest period of which we have 
record the whole valley of the Tigris 
and Euphrates was inhabited by tribes 
of Turanian or Tatar origin. Along 
with these, however, there early existed 
an intrusive Semitic element, which 
gradually increased in number till at 
the time the Babylonians and Assyrians 
(the latter being a kindred people) be¬ 
came known to the western historians 
they were essentially Semitic peoples. 
The great city Babylon (which see), 
or Babel, was the capital of Babylonia, 
which was called by the Hebrews 
Shinar. The country was, as it still is, 
exceedingly fertile, and must have 
anciently supported a dense population. 
The chief cities, besides Babylon, were 
Ur, Calneh, Erech, and Sippara. Baby¬ 
lonia and Assyria were often spoken of 
together as Assyria. 

The discovery and interpretation of 
the cuneiform inscriptions have enabled 
the history of Babylonia to be carried 
back to about 4000 b.c., at which period 
the inhabitants had attained a consider¬ 
able degree of civilization, and the 
country was ruled by a number of kings 
or princes each in his own city. About 
2700 b.c. Babylonia came under the rule 
of a single monarch. Latterly it had 
serious wars with neighboring nations, 
and for several hundred years previous 
to 2000 b.c. Babylonia was subject to 
the neighboring Elam. It then regained 
its independence, and for a thousand 
year; it was the foremost state of west¬ 


ern Asia in power, as well as in science, 
art, and civilization. The rise of the 
Assyrian empire brought about the 
decline of Babylonia, which latterly 
was under Assyrian domination, though 
with intervals of independence. Tig- 
lath-Pileser II. of Assyria (745-727) 
made himself master of Babylonia; but 
the conquest of the country had to be 
repeated by his successor, Sargon, who 
expelled the Babylonian king, Merodach- 
baladan, and all but finally subdued the 
country, the complete subjugation being 
effected by Sennacherib. After some 
sixty years the second or later Baby¬ 
lonian empire arose under Nabopolassar, 
who, joining the Medes against the 
Assyrians, freed Babylon from the 
superiority of the latter power, 625 
b.c. The new empire was at its height 
of power and glory under Nabopolassar’s 
son, Nebuchadnezzar (604-561), who 
subjected Jerusalem, Tyre, Phoenicia, 
and even Egpyt, and carried his domin¬ 
ion to the shores of the Mediterranean 
and northward to the Armenian moun¬ 
tains. The capital, Babylon, was rebuilt 
by him, and then formed one of the 
greatest and most magnificent cities 
the World has ever seen. He was suc¬ 
ceeded by his son Evil-merodach, but 
the dynasty soon came to an end, the 
last king being Nabonetus or Nabona- 
dius, who came to the throne in b.c. 
555, and made his son, Belshazzar, 
co-ruler with him. Babylon was taken 
by Cyrus the Persian monarch in 53S, 
and the second Babylonian empire 
came to an end, Babylonia being incor¬ 
porated in the Persian empire. Its 
subsequent history was similar to that 
of Assyria. 

BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY, a term 
usually applied to the deportation of the 
two tribes of the kingdom of Judah to 
Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar, 585 b.c. 
The duration of this captivity is usually 
reckoned seventy years, though strictly 
speaking it lasted only fifty-six years. 
A great part of the ten tribes of Israel 
had been previously^, taken captive to 
Assyria. 

BABYROUSSA (bab-i-rus'a), a species 
of wild hog, a native of the Indian 
Archipelago. From the outside of the 
upper jaw spring two teeth 12 inches 
long, curving upward and backward 



Babyroussa. 


like horns, and almost touching the 
forehead. The tusks of the lower jaw 
also appear externally, though they 
are not so long as those of the upper 
jaw. Along the back are some weak 
bristles, and on the rest of the body 
only a sort of wool. These animals 
live in herds, feed on herbage, are 








BACCARAT 


BACON 


sometimes tamed, and their flesh is well 
flavored. 

BAC'CARAT, a gambling game of 
French origin, played by any number 
of players, or rather betters, and a 
banker. The latter deals two cards to 
each player and two to himself, and 
covers the stakes of each with an equal 
sum. The cards are then examined, and 
according to the scores made the players 
take their own stake and the banker’s, 
or the latter takes all or a certain num¬ 
ber of the stakes. 

BACCHANA'LIA, feasts in honor of 
Bacchus, characterized by licentious¬ 
ness and revelry, and celebrated in 
ancient Athens. In the processions 
were bands of Bacchantes of both 
sexes, who, inspired by real or feigned 
intoxication, wandered about rioting 
and dancing. They were clothed in 
fawn-skins, crowned with ivy, and bore 
in their hands thyrsi, that is spears 
entwined with ivy, or having a pine- 
cone stuck on the point. These feasts 
passed from the Greeks to the Romans, 
who celebrated them with still greater 
dissoluteness till the senate abolished 
them b.c. 187. 

BACCHUS (bak'us), the god of wine, 
son of Zeus (Jupiter) and SfimSle. He 
first taught the cultivation of the vine 
and the preparation of wine. To spread 
the knowledge of his invention he 
traveled over various countries and 
received in every quarter divine honors. 
Drawn by lions (some say panthers, 
tigers, or lynxes), he began his march, 
which resembled a triumphal procession 
Those who opposed him were severely 
unished, but on those who received him 
ospitably he bestowed rewards. His 
love was shared by several; but Ariadne, 
whom he found deserted upon Naxos, 
alone was elevated to the dignity of a 
wife, and became a sharer of his im¬ 
mortality. 

BACH (b&ii), Johann Sebastian, one 
of the greatest of German musicians, was 
born in 1685, at Eisenach; died in 1750, 
at Leipzig. Being the son of a musician 
he was early trained in the art, and soon 
distinguished himself. In 1703 he was 
engaged as a player at the court of 
Weimar, and subsequently he was 
musical director to the Duke of Anhalt- 
Kothen, and latterly held an appoint¬ 
ment at Leipzig. He paid a visit to 
Potsdam on the invitation of Frederick 
the Great. As a player on the harpsi¬ 
chord and organ he had no equal among 
his contemporaries; but it was not till 
a century after his death that his great¬ 
ness as a composer was fully recognized. 
His compositions breathe an original 
inspiration, and are largely of the 
religious kind. They include pieces, 
vocal and instrumental, for the organ, 
piano, stringed and keyed instruments; 
church cantatas, oratorios, masses, pas¬ 
sion music, etc. 

BACHELOR, a term applied an¬ 
ciently to a person in the first or pro¬ 
bationary stage of knighthood who has 
not yet raised his standard in the field. 
It also denotes a person who has taken 
the first degree in the liberal arts and 
sciences, or in divinity, law, or medi¬ 
cine, at a college or university; or a man 
of any age who has not been married. 


BACHELOR’S DEGREE, an academic 
degree given at the end of the first stage 
of collegiate education, preliminary to 
the master’s or doctor’s degree. A.B. 
is the abbreviation of bachelor of arts, 
S.B. of bachelor of science, Ph.B. of 
bachelor of philosophy, LL.B. of bache¬ 
lor of laws, D.B. of bachelor of divinity, 
Litt.B. of bachelor of letters, and so on. 

BACHELOR’S BUTTONS, the double¬ 
flowering buttercup, with white or 
yellow blossoms, common in gardens. 

BACIL'LUS, the name applied to cer¬ 
tain minute rod-like miscroscopic organ¬ 
isms (Bacteria) which often appear in 
utrefactions, and one of which is be- 
eved to hold a constant causative 
relation to tubercule in the lung, and to 
be present in all cases of phthisis. 
Others are alleged to be connected with 
anthrax, typhoid fever, erysipelas, etc. 
See Bacteria. 

BACKGAM'MON, a game played by 
two persons upon a table or board made 
for the purpose, with pieces or men, dice- 
boxes, and dice. The table is in two 
parts, on which are twenty-four black 
and white spaces called points. Each 
player has fifteen men of different colors 
for the purpose of distinction. The 
movements of the men are made in ac¬ 
cordance with the numbers turned up 
by the dice. 

BACON, Delia Salter, an American 
author and a conspicuous contributor 
to the literature in which is discussed 
the probability that Sir Francis Bacon 
was the author of Shakespeare’s plays. 
She was born in Ohio in 1811 and died 
in London in 1859. She published 
several stories, and in 1857 the Philos¬ 
ophy of the Plays of Shakespeare 
Unfolded, for which Nathaniel Haw¬ 
thorne wrote the preface. 

BACON, Francis, Baron of Verulam, 
Viscount St. Albans, and Lord High 
Chancellor of England; was born at 
London in 1561, died at Highgate in 



Francis Bacon. 


1626. He was educated at Trinity 
College, Cambridge, and in 1575 was 
admitted to Gray’s Inn. In 1584 he 
became member of parliament for Mel- 
combe Regis, and soon after drew up a 
Letter of Advice to Queen Elizabeth, an 
able political memoir. In 1586 he was 


member for Taunton, in 1589 for Liver¬ 
pool. A year or two after he gained the 
Earl of Essex as a friend and patron. 
Bacon’s talents and his connection with 
the lord-treasurer Burleigh, who had 
married his mother’s sister, and his son 
Sir Robert Cecil, first secretary of state, 
seemed to promise him the highest pro¬ 
motion; but he had displeased the 
queen, and when he applied for the 
attorney-generalship, and next for the 
solicitor-generalship (1595), he was un¬ 
successful. Essex endeavored to in¬ 
demnify him by the donation of an 
estate in land. Bacon, however, for¬ 
got his obligations to his benefactor,, 
and not only abandoned him as soon as 
he had fallen into disgrace, but without 
being obliged took part against him on 
his trial, in 1601, and was active in ob¬ 
taining his conviction. He had been 
chosen member for the county of Middle¬ 
sex in 1593, and for Southampton in 
1597, and had long been a queen’s 
counsel. The reign of James I. was 
more favorable to his interest. He 
was assiduous in courting the king’s 
favor, and James, who was ambitious 
of being considered a patron of letters, 
conferred upon him in 1603 the order of 
knighthood. In 1604 he was appointed 
king’s counsel; in 1606 he married; in 
1607 he became solicitor-general, and 
six years after attorney-general. In 
1617 he was made lord-keeper of the 
seals; in 1618 Lord High Chancellor of 
England and Baron Verulam. In this 
year he lent his influence to bring a 
verdict of guilty against Raleigh. In 
1621 he was made Viscount St. Albans. 
Soon after this his reputation received 
a fatal blow. A new parliament was 
formed in 1621, and the lord-chancellor 
was accused before the house of bribery, 
corruption, and other malpractices. It 
is difficult to ascertain the full extent 
of his guilt; but he seems to have been 
unable to justify himself, and handed in 
a “confession and humble submission,” 
throwing himself on the mercy of the 
Peers. In 1597 he published his cele¬ 
brated Essays, which immediately be¬ 
came very popular, were successively 
enlarged and extended, and translated 
into Latin, French, and Italian. The 
treatise on the Advancement of Learn¬ 
ing appeared in 1605; The Wisdom of 
the Ancients in 1609; his great philo¬ 
sophical work, the Novum Organum, in 
1620; and the De Augmentis Scientia- 
rum, a much enlarged edition of the 
Advancement, in 1623. His New At¬ 
lantis was written about 1614-17; Life 
of Henry VII. about 1621. Bacon was 
great as a moralist, a historian, a writer 
on politics, and a rhetorician; but it 
is as the father of tho inductive method 
in science, as the powerful exponent of 
the principle that facts must be observed 
and collected before theorizing, that he 
occupies the grand position he holds 
among the world’s great ones. 

BACON, Nathaniel, an American 
colonist of Virginia. He was a remote 
cousin of Sir Francis Bacon, and 
educated for the law. He took part in 
the Indian wars of 1675-6, and was 
carried off by dysentery in the midst 
of political strife. He was born in 1648. 

BACON, Roger, an English monk, and 
one of the most profound and original 












































































































































































































































































































* 
















































































































BACTERIA 



•n,*» V» 


]. Typhus bacilli. 2. Gono coccus. 3. Recurrent spirilli. 4. Strepto coccus. 5. Diphtheria bacilli. 
6. Pneumococcus. 7. Comma bacilli. 8. Malaria plasmodii. 9. Anthrax bacillus. 10. Influenza bacilli. 
11. Leprosy bacillus. 12. Pus coccus. 13. Tubercle bacillus. 14. Bacterium coli. 








BACTERIA 


BAGGAGE 


thinkers of his day, was bom about 1214, 
near Ilchester, Somersetshire; died at 
Oxford in 1294. His most important 
work is his Opus Majus, where he dis¬ 
cusses the relation of philosophy to 
religion, and then treats of language, 
metaphysics, optics, and experimental 
science. He was undoubtedly the 
earliest philosophical experimentalist in 
Britain; he made signal advances in 
optics; was an excellent chemist; and 
in all probability discovered gunpowder. 
He was intimately acquainted with 
geography and astronomy, as appears 
by his discovery of the errors of the 
calendar, and their causes, and by his 
proposals for correcting them, in which 
ne approached very near to truth. 

BACTE'RIA, minute vegetable organ¬ 
isms, a few species of which are produc¬ 
tive of disease when introduced into the 
animal organism. The vast majority of 
bacteria are harmless and many of them 




A 










41 





A. 1. single bacilli; 2. bacilli, forming 
threads and developing spores. The bright 
oval body in the center of each bacillus is a 
spore. B. 1. ordinary form without spores; 
2, with spores; 3. free spores; 4. a mass of 
spores. (After Klein.) 


are useful to the human economy. 
Poisonous bacteria are called “patho¬ 
genic,” or disease-producing; the innoc¬ 
uous ones are called “non-pathogenic.” 
“Microbes,” “disease germs,” “micro¬ 
organisms,” or simply “germs” are 
other names for bacteria. Bacteria 
abound everywhere. Millions of them 
exist in a glassful of ordinary drinking 
water. They stream through the pur¬ 
est kind of air and are drawn in and 
cast out with every breath. The at¬ 
mosphere of cities especially is crowded 
with them, and it is a growing belief 
that all diseases are caused by their 
presence and multiplication in the body. 
Experiments, however, give the hope 
that most of these diseases will be 
conquered, as bacteriology develops 
methods of immuning the human body 
to the multiplication of these organisms 
in the blood and other tissues. (See 
Antitoxin.) Bacteria are classified as 
bacilli, spirilli, and cocci. These names 
are used because they describe the 
shape of the different bacteria to which 
they are applied. Bacillus means a 
little rod, and bacilli are rod-shaped. 
Spirillum means a spiral, and spirilli 
are spiral-like, while coccus means a 
berry, and cocci are little round bodies. 
These three main divisions are sub¬ 
divided into numerous species. The 
average size of bacteria is so small as 
to surpass comprehension. For ex¬ 
ample, 2000 of them in a row, side by 
side, would hardly stretch across the 
head of a> pin. Pneumonia is caused 
by a coccus, tuberculosis by a bacillus, 
and bacteriology has positively proved 
that various other diseases are produced 
by these germs. 

BADAKSHAN', a territory of central 
Asia, tributary to the Ameer of Afghan¬ 
istan. It has the Oxus on the north, 


and the Hindu Kush on the south) and 
has lofty mountains and fertile valleys; 
the chief town is Faizabad. The inhab¬ 
itants profess Mohammedanism. Pop. 
100,000. 

BADEN (ba'den), Grand-duchy of, 
one-of the more important states of the 
German Empire, situated in the s.w. of 
Germany, to the west of Wurtemberg. 
It is divided into four districts, Con¬ 
stance, Freiburg, Karlsruhe, and Manm 
heim; has an area of 5824 sq. miles, 
and a pop. of 1,866,584. It is moun¬ 
tainous, being traversed to a consider¬ 
able extent by the lofty plateau of the 
Schwarzwald or Black Forest, which 
attains its highest point in the Feldberg 
(4904 feet). The nucleus of this plateau 
consists of gneiss and granite. * In the 
north it sinks down toward the Olden- 
wald, which is, however, of different 
geological structure, being composed 
for the most part of red sandstone. The 
whole of Baden, except a small portion 
in the s.e., in which the Danube takes 
its rise, belongs to the basin of the 
Rhine, which bounds it on the south 
and west. Numerous tributaries of the 
Rhine intersect it, the chief being the 
Neckar. Lakes are numerous, and 
include a considerable part of the Lake 
of Constance. The climate varies 
much. The hilly parts, especially in 
the east, are cold and have a long winter, 
while the valley of the Rhine enjoys 
the finest climate of Germany. The 
principal minerals worked are coal, 
salt, iron, zinc, and nickel. The number 
of mineral springs is remarkably great, 
and of these not a few are of great 
celebrity. The vegetation is peculiarly 
rich, and there are magnificent forests. 
The cereals comprise wheat, oats, barley, 
and rye. Potatoes, hemp, tobacco, 
wine, and sugar-beet are largely pro¬ 
duced. Several of the wines, both white 
and red, rank in the first class. Baden 
has long been famous for its fruits also. 
Of the total area 42 per cent is under 
cultivation, 37 per cent under forest, 
and 17 per cent under meadows and 
pastures. The farms are mostly quite 
small. The manufactures are impor¬ 
tant. Among them are textiles, tobacco, 
and cigars, _ chemicals, machinery, pot¬ 
tery ware, jewelry (especially at Pforz¬ 
heim), wooden clocks, confined chiefly 
to the districts of the Black Forest, 
musical boxes and other musical toys. 
The capital is Carlsruhe, about 5 miles 
from the Rhine; the other chief towns 
are Mannheim, Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 
with a Roman Catholic university; 
Baden, and Heidelberg. Baden has 
warm mineral springs, which were 
known and used in the time of the Ro¬ 
mans. Heidelberg has a university 
(Protestant), founded in 1386, the oldest 
in the present German Empire. The 
railways have a length of 850 miles, and 
are nearly all state property. In the 
time of the Roman Empire southern 
Baden belonged to the Roman province 
of Rhaetia. Under the old German 
Empire it was a margraviate, which in 
1533 was divided into Baden-Baden 
and Baden-Durlach, but reunited in 
1771. The title of grand-duke was 
conferred by Napolean in 1806, and in 
the same year Baden was extended to 
its present limits. The executive power 


is vested in the grand-duke, the legis¬ 
lative in the house of legislature, con¬ 
sisting of an upper and a lower chamber 

BADEN (or Baden-Baden, to dis¬ 
tinguish it from other towns of the same 
name), a town and watering-place, 
Grand-duchy of Baden, 18 miles s.s.w. 
Carlsruhe, built in the form of an amphi¬ 
theater on a spur of the Black Forest, 
overhanging a valley, through which 
runs a little stream Oosbach. Baden 
has been celebrated from the remotest 
antiquity for its thermal baths; and it 
used also to be celebrated for its gaming 
saloons. Pop. 15,731. 

BADGER (baj'er), a plantigrade, car¬ 
nivorous mammal, allied both to the 
bears and to the weasels, of a clumsy 
make, with short thick legs, and long 
claws on the fore-feet. The common 
badger is as large as a middling-sized 



Badger 


dog, but much lower on the legs, with 
a flatter and broader body, very thick 
tough hide, and long coarse hair. It 
inhabits the north of Europe and Asia, 
burrows, is indolent and sleepy, feeds 
by night on vegetables, small quad¬ 
rupeds, etc. Its flesh may be eaten, and 
its hair is used for artists’ brushes in 
painting. The American badger be¬ 
longs to a separate genus. 

BAFFIN BAY, on the n.e. of North 
America between Greenland and the 
islands that lie on the n. of the conti¬ 
nent; discovered by Baffin in 1616. 

BAGDAD', capital of a Turkish pa- 
shalic of the same name (70,000 sq. 
miles, 1,300,000 inhabitants), in the 
southern part of Mesopotamia. The 
greater part of it lies on the eastern bank 
of the Tigris, which is crossed by a 
bridge of boats; old Bagdad, the resi¬ 
dence of the caliphs (now in ruins), was 
on the western bank of the river. 
Manufactures: leather, silks, cottons, 
woolens, carpets, etc. Steamers ply 
on the river between Bagdad and Bas- 
sorah, and the town exports wheat, 
dates, galls, gum, mohair, carpets, etc., 
to Europe. Bagdad is inhabited by 
Turks, Arabs, Persians, Armenians, 
Jews, etc., and a small number of Euro¬ 
peans. Estimated pop. over 100,000. 
Bagdad was founded in 762, by the 
Caliph Almansur, and raised to a high 
degree of splendor in the 9th century 
by Harun A1 Rashid. It is the scene of 
a number of the tales of the “Arabian 
Nights.” 


BAGGAGE, goods carried by a trav¬ 
eler while on the road. In the United 
States the term is used in a restricted 
sense to designate certain necessary 
articles to be used by the person travel¬ 
ing. Railroads as a rule limit the 
weight of the baggage to be carried 








BAGGAGE 


BAILIFF 


free The carrier is liable for actual 
baggage, but not for merchandise 
carried by the passenger. If the carrier, 
knowing the nature of the merchandise, 
however, accepts them, he becomes 
liable for their loss through negligence 
of his own. 


in number, besides keys and rocks 
innumerable. The principal islands are 
Grand Bahama, Great and Little Abaco, 
Andros Islands, New Providence, Eleu- 
thera, San Salvador,. Great Exuma, 
Watling Island, Long Island, Crooked 
Island, Acklin Island, Mariguana Island, 








Bagdad, from the south. 


BAGGAGE, Military, all the goods 
carried by an army except those which 
are attached to the persons of the fight¬ 
ing men, such as guns and ammunition. 
But arms and ammunition carried in 
bulk are military baggage. All officers 
are allowed a certain weight of bag¬ 
gage. 

BAGHELKAND, a tract of country 
in central India, occupied by a collec¬ 
tion of native states (Rewah being the 
chief), under the governor-general’s 
agent for central India; area, 11,323 sq. 
miles; pop. 1,737,095. 

BAGIRMI (ba-gir'me) or BAGHER- 
MI, a Mohammedan negro state in cen¬ 
tral Africa, situated between Bornu and 
Waday, to the south of Lake Tchad. 
It is mostly a plain; has an area of about 
56,000 sq miles, and about 1,500,000 
inhabitants 

BAGPIPE, a musical wind-instrument 
of very great antiquity, having been 
used among the ancient Greeks, and 
being a favorite instrument over Europe 
generally in the 15th century. It still 
continues in use among the country 
people of Poland, Italy, the south of 
France, and in Scotland and Ireland. 
Though now often regarded as the 
national instrument of Scotland, espe¬ 
cially Celtic Scotland, it is only Scottish 
by adoption, being introduced into that 
country from England. It consists of 
a leathern bag, which receives the air 
from the mouth, or from bellows; and 
of pipes, into which the air is pressed 
from the bag by the performer’s elbow. 
In the common or Highland form one 
pipe (called the chanter) plays the 
melody; of the three others (called 
drones) two are in unison with the 
lowest A of the chanter, and the third 
and longest an octave lower, the sound 
being produced by means of reeds. 

BAHA'MA ISLANDS, or LUCAYOS, a 
group of islands in the West Indies, 
forming a colony belonging to Britain, 
lying n.e. of Cuba and s.e. of the coast 
of Florida, the Gulf-stream passing be¬ 
tween them and the mainland. They 
extend a distance of upward of 600 
miles, and are said to be twenty-nine 


Great Inagua. Of the whole group 
about twenty are inhabited, the most 
populous being New Providence, which 
contains the capital, Nassau, the largest 
being Andros, 100 miles long, 20 to 40 
broad. They are low and flat, and have 
in many parts extensive forests. Total 
area, 5400 sq. miles. The soil is a thin 
but rich vegetable mold, and the prin¬ 
cipal product is pineapples, which form 
the most important export. The islands 
are a favorite winter resort for those 
afflicted with pulmonary diseases. San 
Salvador, or Cat Island, is generally 
believed to be the same as Guanahani, 
the land first touched on by Columbus 
(October 12, 1492) on his first great 
voyage of discovery. Pop. 53,735, in¬ 
cluding 14,000 whites. 

BAHA'WALPUR, a town of India, 
capital of state of same name in the 
Punjab, 2 miles from the Sutlej’; sur¬ 
rounded by a mud wall and containing 


BAHIA (ba*e'a), a town of Brazil, on 

the Bay of All Saints, province of Bahia 
It consists of a lower town, which is 
little more than an irregular, narrow, 
and dirty street, stretching about 4 
miles along the shore; and an upper 
town, with which it is connected by a 
steep street, much better built. The 
harbor is one of the best in South 
America; and the trade, chiefly in sugar, 
cotton, coffee, tobacco, hides, piassava, 
and tapioca, is very extensive. Pop. 
162,000—Area of the province (or state), 
164,590 sq. miles; pop. 1,821,089. 



BAIKAL (bi'kal), a large fresh-water 
lake in eastern Siberia, 360 miles long, 
and about 50 in extreme breadth, 
interspersed with islands; in the line of 
the great Siberian Railway. It is sur¬ 
rounded by rugged and lofty mountains: 
contains seals, and many fish, particu¬ 
larly salmon, sturgeon, and pike. Its 
greatest depth is over 4000 feet. It 
receives the waters of the Upper Angara, 
Selenga, Barguzin, etc., and discharges 
its waters by the Lower Angara. It is 
frozen over in winter. 

BAIL, the person or persons who 
procure the release of a prisoner from 
custody by becoming surety for his 


appearance in court at the proper time - 
the extensive palace of the Nawab. I also, the security giver for the release 
Pop. 18,700.—The state has an area of of a prisoner from custody 



Entrance to Port Nassau, Bahama Islands. 


17,285 sq. miles, of which 10,000 is 
desert, the only cultivated lands lying 
along the Indus and Sutlej’. Pop. 
650,042. 


BAILIFF, a civil officer or functionary, 
subordinate to some one else. There are 
several kinds of bailiffs, whose offices 
widely differ, but all agree in this, that 















































BAILLY 


BAKU 


the keeping or protection of something 
belongs to them. 

BAILLY (ba-ye), Jean Sylvain, 
French astronomer and statesman, born 
at Paris, 1736. After some youthful 
essays in verse he was induced by 
Lacaille to devote himself to astronomy, 
and on the death of the latter in 1753, 
being admitted to the Academy of 
Sciences, he published a reduction of 
Lacaille’s observations on the zodiacal 
stars. In 1784 the French Academy 
elected him a member. The revolution 
drew him into public life. Paris chose 
him, May 12, 1789, first deputy of the 
tiers-6tat, and in the assembly itself 
he was made first president, a post 
occupied by him on June 20, 1789, in 
the session of the Tennis Court, when 
the deputies swore never to separate 
till they had given France a new consti¬ 
tution. As mayor of Paris his modera¬ 
tion and impartial enforcement of the 
law failed to commend themselves to 
the people, and his forcible suppression 
of mob violence, July 17, 1791, aroused 



Jean Sylvain Bailly. 


a storm which led to his resignation and 
retreat to Nantes. In 1793 he at¬ 
tempted to join Laplace at Melun, but 
was recognized and sent to Paris, where 
he was condemned by the revolutionary 
tribunal, and executed on Nov. 12th. 

BAINBRIDGE, William, an American 
naval officer, born in Princeton, N. J., 
in 1744, died in 1833. He became 
lieutenant in the navy in 1798, was 
captured by the French near Guada- 
loupe, and caused the passage of an act 
against French subjects captured at 
sea. He served in the war against 
Tripoli and captured the Moorish ship 
Meshboha in 1803, was himself taken by 
the Tripolitans on having run aground, 
and held prisoner until the end of the 
war. He took part in the war of 1812 
and captured the British frigate Java. 
In 1815 he commanded the squadron 
sent against Algiers and on his return 
founded the school for naval officers at 
Boston. His last years were spent in 
command of the navy yards at Phil¬ 
adelphia and Charlestown. 

BAIRD, Sir David, a distinguished 
British commander, was born in Edin¬ 
burghshire in 1757, and entered the 
army in 1772. He distinguished him¬ 
self as a captain in the war against Hyder 
Ali. was wounded and taken prisoner, 
and confined in the fortress of Serin- 
gapatam lor nearly four years. He 
received a colonelcy in 1795, went 


in 1797 to the Cape of Good Hope 
as brigadier-general, and in 1798, on 
his appointment as maj'or-general, 
returned to India. In 1799 he com¬ 
manded the storming party at the 



assault of Seringapatam. Being ap¬ 
pointed in 1800 to command an expedi¬ 
tion to Egypt, he landed at Kosseir in 
June, 1801, crossed the desert, and, 
embarking on the Nile, descended to 
Cairo, and thence to Alexandria, which 
he reached a few days before it sur¬ 
rendered to General Hutchinson. With 
the rank of lieutenant-general he com¬ 
manded an expedition in 1805 to the 
Cape of Good Hope, and in 1806, after 
defeating the Dutch, he received the 
surrender of the colony. He com¬ 
manded a division at the seige of Copen- 



Sir David Baird. 


hagen, and after a short period of service 
in Ireland sailed with 10,000 men for 
Corunna, where he formed a j'unction 
with Sir John Moore. He commanded 
the first division of Moore’s army, and 
in the battle of Corunna lost his left 
arm. By the death of Sir John Moore 
Sir David succeeded to the chief com¬ 
mand, receiving for the fourth time the 
thanks of parliament, and a baronetcy. 
In 1814 he was made a general. He 
died in 1829. 


BAIRD, Spencer Fullerton, American 
naturalist, born 1823, died 1887. He 
was long assistant secretary, and 
latterly secretary, of the Smithsonian 
Institution, and was also chief govern¬ 
ment commissioner of fish and fisheries. 
He wrote much on natural history, his 
chief works being The Birds of N. 
America (in conjunction with John 
Cassin); The Mammals of N. America; 
Review of American Birds in the Smith¬ 
sonian Institution; and (with Messrs. 
Brewer and Ridgeway) History of N. 
American Birds. 

BAK'ARGANJ, a maritime district 
and town in Bengal; chief rivers, 
Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Meghna. 
Area, 3649 sq. miles; pop. 2,153,965.— 
The town now lies in ruins. Pop. 7060. 

BAKER, Sir Samuel White, a dis¬ 
tinguished English traveler, born in 
1821. He resided some years in Ceylon; 
in 1861 began his African travels, which 
lasted several years, in the Upper Nile 
regions, and resulted, among other dis¬ 
coveries, in that of Albert Nyanza lake 
in 1864, and of the exit of the White 
Nile from it. In Africa he encountered 
Speke and Grant after their discovery 
of the Victoria Nyanza. On his return 
home he was received with great honor 
and was knighted. In 1869 he returned 
to Africa as head of an expedition sent 
by the Khedive of Egypt to annex and 
open up to trade a large part of the 
newly explored country, being raised to 
the dignity of pasha. He returned in 
1873, having finished his work, and was 
succeeded by the celebrated Gordon. 
His writings include The Rifle and the 
Hound in Ceylon; Eight Years’ Wander¬ 
ings in Ceylon; The Albert Nyanza, Etc.; 
The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia; 
Ismailia: a Narrative of the Expedition 
to Central Africa; Cyprus as I Saw It in 
1879; also, Cast Up by the Sea, a story 
published in 1869. He died Dec. 30, 
1893. 

BAKHUISEN. See Backhuysen. 

BAKING, a term used in various 
senses. For the baking of bread, see 
Bread. A common application of the 
term is to a mode of cooking food in a 
close oven, baking in this case being 
opposed to roasting or broiling, in which 
an open fire is used. The oven should 
not be too close, but ought to be properly 
ventilated. Baking is also applied to 
the hardening of earthenware or porce¬ 
lain by fire. 

BAKING POWDER, a mixture of 
bicarbonate of soda and tartaric acid, 
usually with some flour added. The 
water of the dough causes the liberation 
of carbonic acid, which makes the bread, 
“rise.” 

BAKU (ba-ko'), a Russian port on the 
western shore of the Caspian, occupying 
part of the peninsula of Apsheron. The 
naphtha or petroleum springs of Baku 
have long been known; and the Field 
of Fire, so called from emitting inflam¬ 
mable gases, has long been a place of 
pilgrimage with the Guebres or Fire- 
worshipers. Recently, from the devel¬ 
opment of the petroleum industry, 
Baku has greatly increased, and is now 
a large and flourishing town. About 
400 oil-wells are in operation, producing 
immense quantities of petroleum, much 
of w r hich is led direct in pipes from the 








BAKUNIN 


BALFE 


■Wells to the refineries in Baku, and it is 
intended to lay a pipe for its conveyance 
oil the way to the Black Sea at Batoum, 
which is already connected with Baku 
by railway. Some of the wells have had 
6uch an outflow of oil as to be un¬ 
manageable, and the Baku petroleum 
now competes successfully with any 
other in the markets of the world. 
Baku is the station of the Caspian fleet, 
is strongly fortified, and has a large 
shipping trade. Pop. 112,253. 

BAKU'NIN, Michael, Russian social¬ 
ist, the founder of Nihilism, born 1814 
of rich and noble family, entered the 
army, but threw up his commission 
after two years’ service, and studied 
philosophy at Moscow. Having adopted 
Hegel’s system as the basis of a new 
revolution, he went in 1841 to Berlin, 
and thence to Dresden, Geneva, and 
Paris, as the propagandist of anarchism. 
His extreme views, however, led to a 
quarrel with Marx and the Inter¬ 
national; and, having fallen into dis¬ 
repute with his own party in Russia, 
he died suddenly and almost alone at 
Berne, in 1878. 

BALAAM (ba'lam), a heathen seer, 
invited by Balak, king of Moab, to curse 
the Israelites, but compelled by miracle 
to bless them instead (Numbers xxii.- 
xxiv.). In another account he is repre¬ 
sented as aiding in the perversion of the 
Israelites to the worship of Baal, and 
as being, therefore, slain in the Midi- 
anitish war (Numbers xxxi.j Joshua 
xiii.). 

BALAKLAVA (bA-la-kla'va), a small 
seaport in the Crimea, 8 miles s.s.e. of 
Sevastopol, consisting for the most part 
of houses perched upon heights, with 


BAL'ANCE, an instrument employed 
for determining the quantity of any 
substance equal to a given weight. 

BALANCE OF POWER, a political 
principle which first came to be recog¬ 
nized in modern Europe in the 16th 
century, though it appears to have been 
also acted on by the Greeks in ancient 
times, in preserving the relations be¬ 
tween their different states. The object 
in maintaining the balance of power is 
to secure the general independence of 
nations as a whole, by preventing the 
aggressive attempts of individual states 
to extend their territory and sway at 
the expense of weaker countries. 

BALANCE OF TRADE, the difference 
between the stated money values of the 
exports and imports of a country. The 
balance is erroneously said to be “in 
favor” of a country when the value of 
the exports is in excess of that of the 
imports and “against it” when the im¬ 
ports are in excess of the exports. The 
phrases date from the days of the mer¬ 
cantile system, the characteristic doc¬ 
trine of which alleged the desirability 
of regulating commerce with a view to 
amassing treasure by exporting produce 
largely, importing little merchandise in 
return, and receiving the balance in 
bullion. 

BALBO'A, Vasco Nufiez de, one of the 
early Spanish adventurers in the New 
World; born 1475. Having dissipated 
his fortune, he went to America, and 
was at Darien with the expedition of 
Francisco de Enciso in 1510. An insur¬ 
rection placed him at the head of the 
colony, but rumors of a western ocean 
and of the wealth of Peru led him to 
cross the isthmus. On Sept. 25, 1513, 
he saw for the first time the Pacific, and 



Balaklava harbor. 


an old Genoese castle on an almost in¬ 
accessible elevation. The harbor has a 
very narrow entrance, and though deep, 
is not capacious. In the Crimean war 
it was captured by the British, and a 
heroically fought battle took place here 
(Oct. 25, 1854), ending in the repulse 
of the Russians by the British. The 
“charge of the Light Brigade” was at 
this battle. 


after annexing it to Spain, and acquir¬ 
ing information about Peru, returned 
to Darien. Here he found himself sup¬ 
planted by a new governor, Pedrarias 
Davila, with much consequent griev¬ 
ance on the one side, and much jealousy 
on the other. Balboa submitted, how¬ 
ever, ^ and in the following year was 
appointed viceroy of the South Sea. 
Davila was apparently reconciled to 


him, and gave him his daughter in 
marriage, but shortly after, in 1517, 
had him beheaded on a charge of intent 
to rebel. Pizarro, who afterward com¬ 
pleted the discovery of Peru, served 
under Balboa. 

BAL'CONY, in architecture, is a gal¬ 
lery projecting from the outer wall of 
a building, supported by columns or 
brackets, and surrounded by a balus¬ 
trade. Balconies were not used in 
Greek and Roman buildings, and in the 
East the roof of the house has for cen-, 
turies served similar purposes on a larger 
scale. Balconies properly so styled 
came into fashion in Italy in the middle 
ages, and were apparently introduced 
into Britain in the 16th century. 

BALDNESS, loss of the hair, com¬ 
plete or partial, usually the latter, and 
due to various causes. Most commonly 
it results as one of the changes belonging 
to old age, due to wasting of the skin, 
hair sacs, etc. It may occur as a result 
of some acute disease, or at an unusually 
early age, without any such cause. In 
both the latter cases it is due to defec¬ 
tive nourishment of the hair, owing to 
lessened circulation of the blood in the 
scalp. The best treatment for prevent¬ 
ing loss of hair seems to consist in such 
measures as bathing the head with cold 
water and drying it by vigorous rubbing 
with a rough towel and brushing it well 
with a hard brush. Various stimulating 
lotions are also recommended, especially 
those containing cantharides. But prob¬ 
ably in most cases senile baldness is 
unpreventable. When extreme scur- 
finess of the scalp accompanies loss of 
the hair an ointment that will clear away 
the scurf will prove beneficial. 

BALDWIN, Evelyn Briggs, an Ameri¬ 
can arctic explorer, born in Missouri in 
1862, was a teacher until 1892, when he 
was appointed observer of the U. States 
Weather Bureau. In 1893-4 he accom¬ 
panied Peary to North Greenland as 
meteorologist, and also went in the same 
capacity with Wellman in 1898-9. 

BALE (bal). See Basel. 

BALEARIC ISLANDS, a group of five 
islands southeast of Spain, including 
Majorca, Minorca, Iviza, and Formen- 
tera. The popular derivation of the 
ancient name Baleares has reference 
to the repute of the inhabitants for 
their skill in slinging, in which they 
distinguished themselves both in the 
army of Hannibal and under the Ro¬ 
mans, by whom the islands were an¬ 
nexed in 123 b.c. After being taken 
by the Vandals, under Genseric, and in 
the 8th century by the Moors, they 
were taken by James I., King of Arra- 
gon, 1220-34, and constituted a king¬ 
dom, which in 1375 was united to Spain. 
The islands now form a Spanish prov¬ 
ince, with an area of 1860 square miles, 
and 300,473 inhabitants. See separate 
articles 

BALFE (balf), Michael William, com¬ 
poser, was born in Dublin 15th May, 
1808. In his seventh year he performed 
in public on the violin, and at sixteen 
took the part of the Wicked Huntsman 
in Der Freischutz at Drury Lane. In 
1825^he went to Italy, wrote the music 
for a ballet La Peyrouse for the Scala at 
Milan, and in the following year 6ang 
at the TheHtre-Italien, Paris, with 

























































































































































































































BALFOUR 


BALL-COCK 


modern success. He returned to Italy, 
and at Palermo was given his first opera, 
I Rivali (1829). For five years he con¬ 
tinued singing and composing operas for 
the Italian stage. In 1835 he went to 
England, and composed a number of 
operas, among others The Bohemian 
Girl (1843), Rose of Castile (1857), 
Satanella (1858), and the Talisman 
(first performed in 1874). He died Oct. 
20, 1870. His operas are melodious and 
many of the airs are excellent. 

BAL'FOUR, Right Hon. Arthur 
James, LL.D., F.R.S., etc., son of Mr. 
Balfour of Whittinghame, Haddington¬ 
shire, was born July 15, 1848, and edu¬ 
cated at Eton and Trinity College, Cam¬ 
bridge. He acted as private secretary 
to his uncle, the Marquis of Salisbury, 
at the Foreign Office during 1878-80, 
and since 1885 has been a distinguished 
member of the Conservative party. He 
showed much ability as Chief Secre¬ 
tary for Ireland during Lord Salisbury’s 
administration in 1887-91. He was 
leader of the House of Commons and 
first lord of the treasury in 1891-92, and 
again from 1895. On the retirement of 
Lord Salisbury in 1902 he became prime 
minister. He has published a Defence 
of Philosophic Doubt (1879), Essays and 
Addresses (1893), and The Foundations 
of Belief (1895). 

BALFROOSH', or BARFURUSH', a 
town, Persia, province of Mazanderan, 
about twelve miles from the Caspian, a 
great emporium of the trade between 
Persia and Russia. Pop. estimated 
from 50,000 to 100,000. 

BA'LI, an island of the Indian Archi¬ 
pelago east of Java, belonging to Hol¬ 
land; greatest length, 85, greatest 
breadth, 55 miles'; area, about 2260 sq. 
miles. It consists chiefly erf a series of 
volcanic mountains, of which the lofti¬ 
est, Agoong (ll,326jfeet), became active 
in 1843 after a long period of quiescence. 
Principal products, rice, cocoa, coffee, 
indigo, cotton, etc. The people are akin 
to those of Java and are mostly Brah¬ 
mans in religion. It is divided into 
eight provinces under native rajahs, 
and forms one colony with Lombok, the 
united pop. being 1,363,000, of whom 
about 500,000 belong to Bali. 

BALTOL, or BALLIOL, John de, of 
Barnard Castle, Northumberland, father 
of king John Baliol, a great English 
baron in the reign of Henry III. In 
1263 he laid the foundation of Balliol 
College, Oxford, which was completed 
by his widow Devorguila or Devorgilla. 
She was daughter and co-heiress of Allan 
of Galloway, a great baron of Scotland, 
by Margaret, eldest daughter of David, 
Earl of Huntingdon, brother of William 
the Lion. It was on the strength of this 
genealogy that his son John Baliol be¬ 
came temporary King of Scotland. He 
died 1269. 

BALTOL, or BALLIOL, John, King of 
Scotland; born about 1249, died 1315. 
On the death of Margaret, the Maiden 
of Norway and grandchild of Alexander 
III., Baliol claimed the vacant throne by 
virtue of his descent from David, Earl of 
Huntingdon, brother of William the 
Lion, King of Scotland. Robert Bruce 
(grandfather of the king) opposed Baliol; 
but Edward I.’s decision was in favor of 
Baliol, who did homage to him for the 


kingdom, Nov. 20, 1292. Irritated by 
Edward’s harsh exercise of authority, 
Baliol concluded a treaty with France, 
then at war with England; but after 
the defeat at Dunbar he surrendered 
his crown into the hands of the English 
monarch. He was sent with his son to 
the Tower, but by the intercession of 
the pope in 1297, obtained liberty to re¬ 
tire to his Norman estates, where he 
died.—His son, Edward, in 1332 landed 
in Fife with an armed force, and having 
defeated a large army under the regent 
Mar (who was killed) got himself crowned 
king,'but was driven out in three months. 

BAL'KAN, a rugged chain of moun¬ 
tains extending from Cape Emineh, on 
the Black Sea, in Eastern Roumelia, 
westward to the borders of Servia, 
though the name is sometimes used to 
include the whole mountain system 
from the Black Sea to the Adriatic, the 
region south of Austria and Russia, or 
south of the Danube and Save, forming 
the Balkan Peninsula. The range, 
which is over 200 miles in length, forms 
the water-shed between the streams 
flowing northward into the Danube and 
those flowing southward to the Aegean, 
the chief of the latter being the Maritza. 
The average height is not more than 
5000 feet, but the highest point, Tchat- 
al-dagh, is 8340 feet. As a political 
boundary it divides Bulgaria from East¬ 
ern Rumelia. 

BALKAN FREE STATES, Bulgaria, 
Eastern Roumelia, Rumania, and Ser¬ 
via. 

BALKH (balk or biil/i), a city in the 
north of Afghanistan, in Afghan Turkes¬ 
tan, at one time the emporium of the 
trade between India/China, and west¬ 
ern Asia. It was long the center of 
Zoroastrianism, and was also an impor¬ 
tant Buddhist center. In 1220 it was 
sacked by Genghis Khan, and again by 
Timur in the 14th century. The re¬ 
mains of the ancient city extend for 
miles. The town is now merely a village, 
but a new town has risen up an hour’s 
journey north of the old, the residence 
of the Afghan governor, with a pop. of 
about 20,000. — The district, which 
formed a portion of ancient Bactria, lies 
between the Oxus and the Hindu-Kush, 
with Badakshan to the east and the 
desert to the west. In the vicinity of the 
Oxus, where there are facilities for 
irrigation, the soil is rich and productive, 
and there are many populous villages. 

BAL'KIS, the Arabian name of the 
Queen of Sheba who visited Solomon. 
She is the central figure of innumerable 
Eastern legends and tales. 

BALL, a spherical implement origi¬ 
nally of war, later of sports and games 
which are the degenerated forms of war. 
The ball was freely used by the Romans 
and Greeks, and playing with a ball 
dates farther back than history. Tennis, 
racquet, football, baseball, golf, in 
short all games using a ball, have an 
origin so old as to be lost in antiquity. 
The term ball is often used to designate 
projectiles from firearms generally. 

BALL, Thomas, an American sculp¬ 
tor, born in 1819 at Charlestown, Mass. 
He made busts of Jenny Lind, of Daniel 
Webster (1852), and a life-sized figure of 
the latter. He is the sculptor of the 
Washington statue at Boston, of the 


statue of Webster in Central Park, N. Y., 
and of the group “Emancipation” at 
Washington. 

BAL'LAD, a term loosely applied to 
various poetic forms of the song type, 
but in its most definite sense a poem in 
which a short narrative is subjected to 
simple lyrical treatment. The ballad is 
probably one of the earliest forms of 
rhythmic poetic expression, constituting 
a species of epic in miniature, out of 
which by fusion and remolding larger 
epics were sometimes shaped. As in the 
folk-tales, so in the ballads of different 
nations, the resemblances are sufficiently 
numerous and close to point to the con¬ 
clusion that they have often had their 
first origin in the same primitive folk¬ 
lore or popular tales. But in any case, 
excepting a few modern literary ballads 
of a subtler kind, they have been the 
popular expression of the broad human 
emotions clustering about some strong¬ 
ly outlined incidents of war, love, crime, 
superstition, or death. 

BALLADE (bal-ad'), the earlier and 
modern French spelling of ballad, but 
now limited in its use to a distinct verse- 
form introduced into English literature 
of late years from the French and chiefly 
used by writers of vers-de-soci6t6. It 
consists of three stanzas of eight lines 
each, with an envoy or closing stanza 
of four lines. The rhymes, which are 
not more than three, follow each other 
in the stanzas thus: a, b, a, b; b, c, b, c, 
and in the envoy, b, c, d, c, and the 
same line serves as a refrain to each of 
the stanzas and to the envoy. There are 
other varieties, but this may be regarded 
as the strictest, according to the prec¬ 
edent of Villon and Marot. 

BALLARAT', or BALLAARAT, an 
Australian town in Victoria, chief center 
of the gold-mining industry of the 
colony, and next in importance to Mel¬ 
bourne, from which it is distant w.n.w. 
about sixty miles direct. Gold was first 
discovered in 1851, and the extraor¬ 
dinary richness of the field soon 
attracted hosts of miners. The surface 
diggings having been exhausted the 
precious metal is now got from greater 
depths, and there are mines as deep as 
some coal-pits, the gold being obtained 
by crushing the auriferous quartz. Pop. 
about 43,000. 

BAL'LAST, a term applied (1) to 
heavy matter, as stone, sand, iron, or 
water placed in the bottom of a ship or 
other vessel to sink it in the water to 
such a depth as to enable it to carry 
sufficient sail without oversetting. (2) 
The sand placed in bags in the car of a 
balloon to steady it and to enable the 
aeronaut to lighten the balloon by 
throwing part of it out. (3) The ma¬ 
terial used to fill up the space between 
the rails on a railway in order to make 
it firm and solid. 

BALL-COCK, a kind of self-acting 
stop-cock opened and shut by means of 
a hollow sphere or ball of metal attached 
to the end of a lever connected with the 
cock. Such cocks are often employed 
to regulate the supply of water to cis¬ 
terns. The ball floats on the water in 
the cistern by its buoyancy, and rises 
and sinks as the water rises and sinks, 
shutting off the water in the one case 
and letting it on in the other. 







BALLET 


BALTIMORE 


BALLET (bal'a), a species of dance 
usually forming an interlude in theatri¬ 
cal performances, but principally con¬ 
fined to opera. Its object is to repre¬ 
sent, by mimic movements and dances, 
actions, characters, sentiments, pas¬ 
sions, and feelings, in which several 
dancers perform together. The ballet 
is an invention of modern times, though 
pantomimic dances were not unknown 
to the ancients. The dances frequently 
introduced into operas seldom deserve 
the name ballet, as they usually do not 
represent any action, but are destined 
only to give the dancers an opportunity 
of showing their skill, and the modern 
ballet in general, from an artistic point 
of view, is a very low-class entertain¬ 
ment. 


a, 




Fig. 1. 


Fig. 1, Cistern with ball-cock attached. 

Fig. 2, Internal structure of cock. 

Valve shown open so as to admit water. 
b, Arm of lever, which being raised 
shuts the valve. 


BALLISTIC PENDULUM, an appa¬ 
ratus for ascertaining the velocity of 
military projectiles, and consequently 
the force of fired gunpowder. A piece of 
ordnance is fired against bags of sand 
supported in a strong case or frame sus¬ 
pended so as to swing like a pendulum. 
The arc through which it vibrates is 
shown by an index, and the amount of 
vibration forms a measure of the force 
or velocity of the ball. 

BALLOON'. See Airship. 

BAL'LOT, Voting by, signifies liter¬ 
ally voting by means of little balls 
(called by the French ballottes), usually 
of different colors, which are put into a 
box in such a manner as to enable the 
voter, if he chooses, to conceal for whom 
or for what he gives his suffrage. The 
method is adopted by most clubs in the 
election of their members—a white ball 
indicating assent, a black ball dissent. 
Hence, when an applicant is rejected, he 
is said to be blackballed. The term vot¬ 
ing by ballot is also applied in a general 
way to any method of secret voting, as, 
for instance, when a person gives his 
vote by means of a ticket bearing the 
name of the candidate whom he wishes 
to support. In this sense vote by ballot 
is the mode adopted in electing the mem¬ 
bers of legislative assemblies in most 
countries, as well as the members of 
various other bodies. 

BALM _ (bam), a plant formerly in 
great repute for its medicinal virtues. 
A native of the south of Europe. It is a 
herbaceous perennial, with an erect 
branching stem about 2 feet high. The 
leaves arise with the flower-stems from a 


thick joint at the extremity of the stalk. 
The flowers are whitish; they are pro¬ 
duced in a round terminal umbel, and 
appear in June. The stems and leaves 
are slightly stimulating and tonic. They 
contain an essential oil of a yellowish 
color and with a fragrant smell, called 
oil of balm. 

BALM OF GILEAD, the exudation of 
a tree, a native of Arabia Felix. The 
leaves of the former tree yield when 
bruised a strong aromatic scent; and the 



Balm of Gilead. 


balm of Gilead of the shops, or balsam of 
Mecca or of Syria, is obtained from it by 
making an incision in its trunk. It has 
a yellowish or greenish color, a warm, 
bitterish, aromatic taste, and an acidu¬ 
lous fragrant smell. It is valued as an 
odoriferous unguent and cosmetic by the 
Turks. It is frequently adulterated for 
market.—The balm of Gilead fir, which 

E reduces a turpentine called Canada 
alsam, is the Abies balsamif6ra, a 
North American species, whose range 
is from Virginia to Canada. 

BALSAM, an aromatic, resinous sub¬ 
stance, flowing spontaneously or by 
incision from certain plants. A great 
variety of substances pass under this 
name. But in chemistry the term is 
confined to such vegetable juices as 
consist of resins mixed with volatile oils, 
and yield the volatile oil on distillation. 
The resins are produced from the oils 
by oxidation. A balsam is thus inter¬ 
mediate between a volatile oil and a 
resin. It is soluble in alcohol and ether, 
and capable of yielding benzoic acid. 
The balsams are either liquid or more 
or less solid; as, for example, the balm 
of Gilead, and the balsams of copaiba, 
Peru, and Tolu. Benzoin, dragon’s- 
blood, and storax are not true balsams, 
though sometimes called so. The bal¬ 
sams are used in perfumery, medicine, 
and the arts. 

BALTIC PROVINCES, a term com¬ 
monly given to the Russian govern¬ 
ments of Courland, Livonia, and Es- 
thonia. 

BALTIC SEA, an inland sea or large 
gulf connected with the North Sea, 
washing the coasts of Denmark, Ger¬ 
many, Russia, and Sweden; nearly 900 
miles long, extending to 200 broad; 
superficial extent, together with the 
Gulfs of Bothnia and Finland, 171,743 
sq. miles. Its greatest depth is 126 
fathoms; mean, 44 fathoms. 

BALTIMORE, the sixth most popu¬ 
lous city of the United States, the chief 
city of Maryland. It has an area of 


31.5 sq. miles, and is situated on the 
Patapsco river, at the head of naviga¬ 
tion 14 miles from Chesapeake Bay. 
The city is divided into two parts by a 
small stream called Jones’ Falls, which 
separates the business and manufactur¬ 
ing from the residence portion of the 
town. The names of Monumental City, 
or City of Monuments, which Baltimore 
bears, is not derived from the number 
of its public monuments, but from the 
early date at which Washington Monu¬ 
ment, in Mount Vernon Place—a 
marble shaft rising 164 feet, surmounted 
by a heroic figure of Washington—and 
Battle Monument, in Monument Square, 
were erected. 

The city is one of the foremost edu¬ 
cational influences of the country. A 
graded system of public schools pro¬ 
vides free instruction in kindergarten, 
primary, secondary, collegiate, and 
normal studies, and in manual training. 

Baltimore is the seat of the Johns 
Hopkins University, opened for in¬ 
struction in 1876, and distinguished 
for its graduate courses. The institu¬ 
tion owes its foundation to the benef¬ 
icence of a Baltimore merchant, who 
left a large fortune for the endowment 
of a university and a hospital. Among 
the professional schools are the law 



and medical departments of the Uni¬ 
versity of Maryland, College of Physi¬ 
cians and Surgeons, Baltimore Medi¬ 
cal College, Baltimore University, 
Woman’s Medical College, Maryland 
College of Pharmacy, and Baltimore 
College of Dental Surgery. The last 
named, founded in 1839, is the oldest 
dental college in the world. The Pea¬ 
body institute, endowed by George Pea- 






























BALTIMORE 


BAMBOO 


body, who laid the foundation of his 
great fortune in Baltimore and enter¬ 
tained a strong friendship for its peo¬ 
ple, contains a valuable library of 
143,000 volumes, an interesting art gal¬ 
lery, and a well-organized conservatory 
of music. 

Natural situation, favorable trade 
connections, and unusual harbor facili¬ 
ties constitute Baltimore’s chief com¬ 
mercial advantages. Regular com¬ 
munication between Baltimore and 
foreign ports is afforded by the North 
German Lloyd to Bremen, the Neptune 
Line to Rotterdam, the Atlantic Trans¬ 
port Line to London, and a number of 
other lines offering frequent service. The 
city is the largest corn exporting port 
in the United States. Other important 
articles of local export are wheat, flour, 
cotton, tobacco, copper, and coal. Im¬ 
porting activity centers about iron ore, 
bananas, pineapples, cocoanuts, sugar, 
and general merchandise. 

The manufacturing enterprises of 
Baltimore are most varied, scarcely 
a single important industry being 
unrepresented. It is the largest manu¬ 
facturing center in the United States for 
ready-made clothing, shirts, fertilizers, 
straw goods, cotton duck, fruit canning, 
and oyster packing, while in other 
important fields its operations are of 
absolutely greater magnitude. 

The twelfth census (1900) of the 
United States gives the total popula¬ 
tion of Baltimore as 508,957 ; 243,280 are 
males and 265,677 are females; 440,357 
are native born and 68,600 are foreign 
born. The total number of whites is 
429,218, and of colored 79,739. Of the 
whites 361,278 are native born, 67,940 
are foreign ; 236,053 of the native whites 
have native parents and 125,225 have 
foreign parents. The total illiterate 
population ten years and over is 29,148, 
of whom 12,111 are white and 17,037 are 
colored. Estimated by the mayor of 
the city Jan. 1, 1909, 650,000. 

Baltimore was founded July 14, 1729, 
and passed through the vicissitudes of 
the revolutionary war, that of 1812, 
and likewise of the civil war. It has 
several times been a sufferer from 
destructive fires, but has always re¬ 
covered without assistance from outside 
sources. 

BALTIMORE, George Calvert, 
Lord, born in Yorkshire about 1580; 
died in London, 1632. He was for 
some time secretary of state to James 
I., but this post he resigned in 1624 in 
consequence of having become a Roman 
Catholic. Notwithstanding this he re¬ 
tained the confidence of the king, who 
in 1625 raised him to the Irish peerage, 
his title being from Baltimore, a fishing 
village of Cork. He had previously ob¬ 
tained a grant of land in Newfoundland, 
but as this colony was much exposed 
to the attacks of the French, he left it 
and obtained another patent for Mary¬ 
land. He died before the charter was 
completed, and it was granted to his 
son Cecil, who deputed the governor¬ 
ship to his brother Leonard (1606-47). 

BALTIMORE BIRD, an American 
:>ird. It is a migratory bird, and is 
mown also by the names of “golden 
•obin,” “hang-bird,” and “fire-bird.” 
It is about 7 inches long; the head and 

P. E.—8 


upper parts are black; the under parts 
of a brilliant orange hue. It builds a 
pouch-like nest, very skilfully con¬ 
structed of threads deftly interwoven, 
suspended from a forked branch and 
shaded by overhanging leaves-. It feeds 
on insects, caterpillars, beetles, etc. Its 
song is a clear, mellow whistle. 

BALUCHISTAN (ba-lo'chi-stan), a 
country in Asia, the coast of which is 
continuous with the northwestern sea¬ 
board of India, bounded on the north 
by Afghanistan, on the west by Persia, 



Baluchis on the lookout. 


on the south by the Arabian Sea, and on 
the east by Sind. It has an area of about 
160,000 sq. miles, and a population esti¬ 
mated at 400,000. The general surface 
of the country is rugged and mountain¬ 
ous, with some extensive intervals of 
barren sandy deserts, and there is a 
general deficiency of water. The coun¬ 
try is almost entirely occupied by pas¬ 
toral tribes under semi-independent 
sirdars or chiefs. The Baluchis in 
general have tall figures, long visages, 
and prominent features; the Brahuis, 
on the contrary, have short, thick 
bodies, with round faces and flat linea¬ 
ments, with hair and beards frequently 
brown. Both races are zealous Moham¬ 
medans, hospitable, brave, and capable 
of enduring much fatigue. 

BAL’USTER, a small column or 
pilaster, of various forms and dimen¬ 
sions, often adorned with mouldings, 
used for balustrades. 

BALUSTRADE’, a range of balus¬ 
ters, together with the cornice or cop¬ 
ing which they support, used as a para¬ 
pet for bridges or the roofs of buildings, 
or as a mere termination to a structure; 
also serving as a fence or enclosure 
for altars, balconies, terraces, stair¬ 
cases, etc. 

BALUZE, (ba-liiz), Etienne, French 
historian and miscellaneous writer, 
born 1630, died 1718. For more than 
30 years he was librarian to M. de Col¬ 
bert, and was appointed professor of 
canon law in the royal college, but dis¬ 
pleasing Louis XIV. with his Histoire 


generale de la maison d’Auvergne, he 
was thrown into prison and his property 
confiscated. He recovered his liberty 
in 1713, but did not regain his position. 
He left some 1500 MSS. in the national 
library of Paris, besides 45 printed 
works, including Regum Francorum 
Capitularia, two vols. and Miscel¬ 
lanea, seven volumes. 

BALZAC (bal-zak), Honore de, a 
celebrated French novelist, was born 
at Tours in 1799, died 1850. Before 
completing his twenty-fourth year he 
had published a number of novels under 
various assumed names, but the success 
attending all was very indifferent; and 
it was not till 1829, by the publication 
of Le Dernier Chouan, a tale of La 
Vendee, and the first novel to which 
Balzac appended his name, that the 
attention of the public was diverted to 
the extraordinary genius of the author. 
A still greater popularity attended his 
Physiologie de Mariage, a work full of 
piquant and caustic observations on 
human nature. He wrote a large num¬ 
ber of novels, all marked by a singular 
knowledge of human nature and dis¬ 
tinct delineation of character, but apt 
to be marred by exaggeration. Among 
his best-known works are Scenes de la 
Vie de Province; Scenes de la Vie 
Parisienne; Le P6re Goriot; Eug6nie 
Grandet; and Le Medecin de Campagne. 
The publication of this last, in 1835, 
led to a correspondence between Balzac 
and the Countess Eveline de Hanska, 
a Polish lady whom, after about fifteen 
years, he visited and married. A col¬ 
lected edition of his works under the 
title La Comedie Humaine was published 
in 45 vols., Paris, 1856-59. 

BAMBA, a district of the Congo, 
west coast of Africa, lying to the south 
of the River Ambriz, It is thickly 
populated , and is rich in gold, silver, 
copper, salt, etc. 

BAMBAR'RA, a territory of western 
Africa, on the Upper Niger, first visited 
by Mungo Park, now in the French 
portion of the Soudan. The country 
is generally very fertile, producing 
wheat, rice, maize, yams, etc. The 
inhabitants are of negro or mixed race, 
and partly Mohammedans. Excellent 
cotton cloth is made. The chief town is 
Sego. Pop. estimated at. 2,000,000. 

BAMBINO, (bam-be-no; Ital., an in¬ 
fant), the figure of our Savior repre¬ 
sented as an infant in swaddling- 
clothes. The Santissimo Bambino in 
the church of Ara Cseli at Rome, a 
richly decorated figure carved in wood, 
is believed to have a miraculous virtue 
in curing diseases. Bambinos are set 
up for the adoration of the faithful in 
many places in Catholic countries. 

BAMBOO', the common name of 
arborescent grasses. There are many 
species, belonging to the warmer parts 
of Asia, Africa, and America, and grow¬ 
ing from a few feet to as much as 100, 
requiring much moisture to thrive 
properly. The best-known species is 
common in tropical and sub-tropical 
regions. From the creeping under¬ 
ground rhizome, which is long, thick, 
and jointed, spring several round 
jointed stalks, which send out from their 
joints several shoots, the stalks also 
being armed at their joints with one or 







BANANA 


BANGOR 


two sharp rigid spines. The oval leaves 
8 or 9 inches long, are placed on short 
footstalks. The flowers grow in large 
panicles from the joints of the stalk. 
Some stems grow to 8 or 10 inches in 
diameter, and are so hard and durable 



1, Bamboo, showing the mode of growth. 

2, Flowers, leaves, and stem on a larger scale. 

as to be used for building purnoses 
The smaller stalks are used for walking- 
sticks, flutes, etc.; and indeed the plant 
is used for innumerable purposes in the 
East Indies, China, and other Eastern 
countries. Cottages are almost wholly 
made of it; also, bridges, boxes, water* 
pipes, ladders, fences, bows and arrows, 
spears, baskets, mats, paper, masts for 
boats, etc. 

BANA'NA, a plant of the genus Musa. 
It is originally indigenous to the East 
Indies, and a herbaceous plant with an 
underground stem. The apparent stem, 
which is sometimes as high as 30 feet, 
is formed of the closely compacted 
sheaths of the leaves. The leaves are 
6 to 10 feet long and 1 or more broad, 
with a strong midrib, from which the 
veins are given off at right angles; they 
are used for thatch, basket-making, 
etc., besides yielding a useful fiber. 
The spikes of the flowers grow nearly 
4 feet long, in bunches, covered with 
purple-colored bracts. The fruit is 4 to 
10 or 12 inches long, and 1 inch or more 
in diameter; it grows in large bunches, 
weighing often from 40 to 80 lbs. The 
pulp is soft and of a luscious taste; when 
ripe it is eaten raw or fried in slices. 
The banana is cultivated in tropical 
and sub-tropical countries, and is an 
important article of food. Manila 
hemp is the product of a species of 
banana. 

BAN'CROFT, George, American his¬ 
torian, born near Worcester, Mass., 
1800, died 1891. He was educated at 
Harvard and in Germany, where he 
made the acquaintance of many literary 
men of note. In 1823 he published a 
translation of Heeren’s Politics of An¬ 
cient Greece, and a small volume of 
poems, and was also meditating and 
collecting materials for a history of the 
United States. Between 1834 and 1840 
three volumes of his history were pub¬ 
lished. In 1845 he was appointed secre¬ 
tary of the navy, and effected many 
reforms and improvements in that 


department. He was American am¬ 
bassador to Britain from 1846 to 1849, 
when the University of Oxford conferred 
on him the honorary degree of D.C.L. 
He took the opportunity while in 
Europe to perfect his collections on 
American history. He returned to 
New York in \849, and began to prepare 
for the press the fourth and fifth vol¬ 
umes of his history, which appeared in 
1852. The sixth appeared in 1854, the 
seventh in 1858, the eight soon after, 
but the ninth did not appear till 1866. 
From 1867 to 1874 he was minister 
plenipotentiary at the court of Berlin. 
The tenth and last volume of his great 
work appeared in 1874. An additional 
section appeared first as a separate work 
in 1882—History of the Formation of 
the Constitution of the U. States—and 
the whole came out in 6 vols. in 1884-5. 
He has also published many essays in 
the North American Review and other 
periodicals, a selection from which was 
published in 1855 under the title of 
Miscellanies. 

BANCROFT, Hubert Howe, an Ameri¬ 
can historian, born in Ohio in 1832. 
He embarked in business on the Pacific 
coast, became interested in its history, 
and decided to devote his life to that 
work. He made numerous expeditions, 
spending large sums of money in the 
work of investigation, and has published 
several volumes of the history of the 
Western States. He has also published 
histories of Mexico, Central America, 
British Columbia, and other western 
and southern parts of America. 

BAND, a number of musicians organ¬ 
ized for the production of marching or 
concert music. Mere drum and fife can 
hardly be dignified by the name band, 
which is usually confined to an organ¬ 
ization consisting of brass and reed 
instruments, drums, etc. The military 
band is the highest form of band, and 
takes its origin from the time of Louis 
XIV. All the courts of Europe had their 
bands, but the modern military or 
marine (naval) band is a recent develop¬ 
ment, and verges closely on the orches¬ 
tra. Its principal instruments are 
tubas, cornets, clarionets, trombones, 
saxophones, oboes, bass horns, snare, 
bass, and kettle drums, and tympani. 
The number of instruments is unlimited. 

BANDA, a town and district of India, 
in the United Provinces. The town 
stands on a plain on the right bank of 
the Ken river, 95 miles s.w. from 
Allahabad, and is a considerable cotton- 
mart. Pop. 22,565.—Area of district 
3060 sq. miles; pop. 705,832. 

BANDAGE, a surgical wrapper of 
some kind applied to a limb or other 
portion of the body to keep parts in posi¬ 
tion, exert a pressure, or for other pur¬ 
pose. To be able to apply a bandage 
suitably in the case of an accident is a 
highly useful accomplishment, which, 
through the teaching of ambulance 
surgery now so common, may be easily 
acquired. 

BANDA ISLANDS, a group belonging 
to Holland, Indian Archipelago, south 
of Ceram; Great Banda, the largest, be¬ 
ing 12 miles long by 2 broad. They are 
beautiful islands, of volcanic origin, 
yielding quantities of nutmeg. Goenong 
Api, or Fire Mountain, is a cone-shaped 


volcano which rises 2320 feet above th& 
sea. Pop. 6700. 

BAN'DICOOT, the largest known 
species of rat, attaining the weight of 2 
or 3 lbs., and the length, including the 
tail, of 24 to 30 inches. It is a native 
of India, and is very abundant in Cey¬ 
lon. Its flesh is said to be delicate and 
to resemble young pork, and is a favorite 
article of diet with the coolies. It is 
destructive to rice fields and gardens.— 
The name is also given to a family of 
Australian marsupials. The most com¬ 
mon species, the long-nosed bandicoot, 
measures about 1J feet from the tip of 
the snout to the origin of the tail, and 
in general appearance bears a consider¬ 
able resemblance to a large overgrown 
rat. 

BAN'DIT, originally an exile, ban¬ 
ished man, or outlaw, and hence, as per¬ 
sons outlawed frequently adopted the 
profession of brigand or highwayman, 
the word came to be synonymous with 
brigand, and is now applied to members 
of the organized gangs which infest 
some districts of Italy, Sicily, Spain, 
Greece, and Turkey. 

BAND OF HOPE, a name given to 
societies of young persons pledged to 
teetotalism. 

BANFF (bamf), county town of Banff¬ 
shire, Scotland, a seaport on the Moray 
Firth at the mouth of the Deveron. 
Pop. of pari, burgh, which includes Mac¬ 
duff, 7148; Banff portion, 3730.—The 
county has an area of 410,112 acres. 
In the south it is mountainous, but the 
northern part is comparatively low and 
fertile; principal rivers, the Spey and 
Deveron; principal mountains, Cairn¬ 
gorm (4095 feet) and Ben Macdhui (4296 
feet), on its southern boundary. Little 
wheat is raised, the principal crops being 
barley, oats, turnips, and potatoes. 
Fishing is an important industry; as is 
also the distilling of whisky. Serpen¬ 
tine abounds in several places, especially 
at Portsoy, where it is known as “Port¬ 
soy marble,” and Scotch topazes or 
cairngorm stones are found on the 
mountains in the south. Pop. 61,487. 

BANGALORE', a town of Hindustan, 
capital of Mysore, and giving its name 
to a considerable district in the east 'of 
Mysore state. There are manufactures 
of silks, cotton cloth, carpets, gold and 
silver lace, etc. Pop. 159,046.—The 
Bangalore district has an area of 2559 
square miles, of which more than half 
represent cultivable land. Pop. 802,994. 

BANGKOK', the capital of the King¬ 
dom of Siam, extending for several 
miles on both sides of the Menam, which 
falls into the Gulf of Siam about 15 
miles below. The trade, both inland 
and foreign, is very extensive, the ex¬ 
ports consisting chiefly of rice, sugar, 
silk, cotton, tobacco, pepper, sesame, 
ivory, aromatic wood, cabinet woods, 
tin, hides, etc.; and the imports con¬ 
sisting chiefly of cotton, woolen, and 
other goods. Pop. estimated at 500,- 
000, of whom about a half are Chinese. 

BAN'GOR, a port of the United 
States, in Maine, on the west side of 
Penobscot river, a flourishing and 
pleasantly situated town, and one of 
the largest lumber depots in the world. 
The river is navigable to the town for 
vessels of the largest size. Pop. 22,000 


























































CAPITAL OF BANKS: 


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BANGS 


BANK 


BANGS, John Kendrick,an American 
humorist and verse writer, born in New 
York in 1862. He has been editor of 
Harper’s Weekly, and has published 
several volumes of humor and verse, 
among them The Idiot, and Coffee and 
Repartee. 

BAN'JO, the favorite musical instru¬ 
ment of the negroes of the Southern 
States of America. It is six-stringed, 
has a body like a tambourine and a neck 
like a guitar, and is played by stopping 
the strings with the fingers of the left 
hand and twitching or striking them 
with the fingers of the right. The upper 
or octave string, however, is never 
stopped. 

BANK, primarily an establishment 
for the deposit, custody, and repay¬ 
ment on demand, of money, and ob¬ 
taining the bulk of its profits from the 
investment of sums thus derived and 
not in immediate demand. Banks are 
among the oldest institutions in the 
world. There is evidence of their exist¬ 
ence in Assyria thousands of years be¬ 
fore the Christian era, and banks were 
used in ancient Athens and Rome. 
Modern banking begins in 1587 with the 
famous bank of Venice, which had itself 
been preceded by private banks in the 
great Venetian republic. Other medie¬ 
val banks were the Bank of Amsterdam 
and the Bank of Hamburg. It was not 
until the 18th century that the dis¬ 
tinctly modern features of banking 
arose—the issue of notes not covered 
by coin and the granting of accounts 
on the mere credit of borrowers. Bank 
notes were known in China 1200 years 
ago, but the first European bank notes 
were those issued by the Bank of 
Sweden in 1661. In the 17th century 
the Bank of England arose and the bank 
note became substantially what it is 
today. 

Modern banks have three functions, 
deposits, discounts and issue. Primari¬ 
ly the bank was a safe place for the 
keeping of money, but its present 
function is the collection of small sums 
of capital which might otherwise be 
idle, and which are loaned to those who 
need capital and who can give sufficient 
security to justify the loan. Loans to 
the bank are called deposits; loans by 
the bank are called discounts. Banks 
of issue are those which issue bank 
notes which circulate as currency. In 
the United States the only banks of 
issue are those under the National 
Banking Law. 

The deposit and discount functions 
of the bank have made it the chief 
factor in the credit upon which nine 
tenths of the business of the world is 
said to be done. Most of the deposits 
are made in the bank in the form of 
checks which the bank charges itself 
with the responsibility of collecting. 
If these checks are drawn on the bank 
of deposit, the bank simply deducts the 
amount from the account of the 
drawer and credits it to the account of 
the depositor. If the check is drawn on 
another bank, payment is made 
through the clearing house which 
keeps account of the orders upon the 
various banks or in their favor, much 
in the same way as the bank does 
for individual depositors, and settle¬ 


ments of the actual balances be¬ 
tween the banks are made in cash or 
drafts. 

The interest paid by banks upon de¬ 
posits varies in proportion to the ex¬ 
tent of control of its funds that is 
surrendered by the depositors. In 
ordinary commercial banking no 
interest is paid upon deposits unless 
there is a large balance that is 
practically stationary. In savings banks 
where interest is paid all depositors, it 
is usual to require a notice of one 
month for withdrawal of funds, al¬ 
though this is not always insisted 
upon. While deposits for a speci¬ 
fied time, called time deposits, 
receive still greater rates of in¬ 
terest. The interest rates paid by the 
bank and the demand period of their 
deposits practically govern the charac¬ 
ter of the loans which they make, thus 
the commercial banks paying little or 
no interest, must loan their money 
only on easily negotiable paper or 
collateral, such as bonds or stock 
which is readily converted into cash. 
The savings bank not finding it neces¬ 
sary that all of its assets may be instantly 
converted into cash, finds it is possible 
to loan money upon mortgages. Bank 
loans are divided between time loans 
for a definite period of days and 
nights and call loans upon which 
payment can be demanded at will. 
While either form of loan can be made 
upon the personal credit of the bor¬ 
rower, this is exceptional and safe bank¬ 
ing disapproves of such loans except to 
persons of exceptional credit. Safe 
banking requires that the secui’ity 
shall be at the best, not only at the 
sacrifice of a possible higher rate of in¬ 
terest, but that an adequate reserve 
shall be maintained to meet the de¬ 
mand of the depositors in the case of a 
run, even though such run may be 
eminent. This reserve consists of 
either cash or assets easily convertable 
into cash, such as government bonds. 
Obviously the greater the reserve, the 
smaller the amount of the bank’s de¬ 
posit available for loans at interest, 
and hence the great temptation for 
the bankers to keep a reserve which 
will not be adequate in the event of a 
run. It is this failure to maintain a 
sufficient reserve which causes most of 
the failures of banks. The amount of 
this reserve except in the case of na¬ 
tional banks, is practically at the dis¬ 
cretion of the banker. The National 
Banking Laws require a minimum re¬ 
serve of 25 per cent of the amount of 
deposit in certain large cities named 
in the law, and 15 per cent of the de¬ 
posits in smaller cities. In New York, 
Chicago and St. Louis, the entire re¬ 
serve must be in currency. In the 
other principal cities, one-half of the 
reserve may be deposits in the three 
large cities named, but at least one- 
halt must be in currency. In the 
smaller cities, two-fifths of the reserve 
must be in cash, while the balance may 
be deposited in any of the reserve 
cities. 

Banks of issue are those which issue 
their own bank notes which pass as 
currency. The exercise of this func¬ 
tion is regulated in different nations, 


and in some, as France, there is a sin¬ 
gle bank possessing this power. In 
England and Germany the power is 
vested almost entirely in one certain 
bank which is gradually obtaining a 
practical monopoly. In these and 
most other countries the right of note 
issue is based upon the amount of cash 
and other assets held by the bank. 
Until the passing of the currency act of 
1908, the note issue of the United States 
was given to banks chartered under the 
federal laws only upon the security of 
government bonds, this provision hav¬ 
ing been made after the civil war in 
order to provide a means for the market¬ 
ing of the unusual amount of govern¬ 
ment bonds in existence at that time. 
The demand for a more elastic system 
of currency dependent upon the actual 
needs of business instead of upon the 
amount of money that the United States 
government owed, led to the 
passage of the Aldrich-Vreeland cur¬ 
rency act of 1908. This act pro¬ 
vided for the formation of Na¬ 
tional Currency Associations which 
should authorize their members under 
certain conditions to issue notes to 75 
per cent of the value of securities or com¬ 
mercial paper, or 90 per cent of the 
market value of state, city, town, coun¬ 
ty or other municipal bonds, but in no 
case shall circulated notes based on 
commercial paper, exceed 30 per cent 
of the unimpared capital and surplus 
of a bank. The notes, however, cannot 
be issued unless the Secretary of the 
Treasury shall deem it advisable. All 
of the banks in each National Currency 
Association are made responsible for 
the notes of their members. Besides 
these National Currency Associations, 
the right is given under certain condi¬ 
tions to banks to issue notes on bonds 
other than those of the United States, 
of a certain character after approval by 
the Secretary of the Treasury. In order 
to prevent an increase of circulation 
that is not justified by actual demands 
of business, it is provided that the ad¬ 
ditional circulation authorized by the 
law, shall pay for the first month, a tax 
at the rate of 5 per cent a year, upon 
the average amount of such notes in 
circulation as are based upon the de¬ 
posit of such authorized securities, 
and afterwards an additional tax of 
one per cent a year for each month 
until the tax of ten per cent a year is 
reached. 

Although banking operations on a 
considerable scale appear to have been 
conducted by the ancients, modern 
banking must be regarded as having 
had an independent origin in the re¬ 
viving civilization of the middle ages. 
In the 12th century almost the whole 
trade of Europe was in the hands of 
the Italian cities, and it was in these 
that the need of bankers was first felt. 
The earliest public bank, that of Yen- 
ice, established in 1171 and existing 
down to the dissolution of the repub¬ 
lic in 1797, was for some time a bank of 
deposit only, the government being 
responsible for the deposits, and the 
whole capital being in effect a public 
loan. In the early periods of the oper¬ 
ations of this bank deposits could not 
be withdrawn, but the depositor had a 





BANK 


BANSHEE 


credit at the bank to the amount de¬ 
posited, this credit being transfer¬ 
able to another person in place 
of money payment. Subsequently de¬ 
posits were allowed to be withdrawn, 
the original system proving inconven¬ 
ient outside the Venetian boundaries. 
It was, however, less from the Bank of 
Venice than from the Florentine bank¬ 
ers of the 13th and 14th centuries that 
modern banking specially dates, the 
magnitude of their operations being 
indicated by the fact that between 
1430 and 1433, 76 bankers of Florence 
issued on loan nearly 6,000,000 gold 
florins. 

The Bank of England, the most im¬ 
portant banking establishment in the 
world, was projected by William 
Paterson, who was afterwards the pro¬ 
moter of the disastrous Darien 
scheme. It was the first public bank 
in the United Kingdom, and was char¬ 
tered in 1694 by an act which, among 
other things, secured certain recom¬ 
penses to such persons as should ad¬ 
vance the sum of £1,500,000 towards 
carrying on the war against France. 
Subscribers to the loan became, under 
the act, stockholders, to the amount 
of their respective subscriptions, in the 
capital stock of a corporation, denom¬ 
inated the Governor and Company of the 
Bank of England. The company thus 
formed, advanced to the government 
£1,200,000 at an interest of 8 per cent— 
the government making an additional 
bonus or allowance to the bank of 
£4,000 annually for the management of 
this loan (which in fact, constituted 
the capital of the bank), and for set¬ 
tling the interest and making trans¬ 
fers, etc., among the various stockhold¬ 
ers. This bank, like that of Venice, was 
thus originally an engine of the gov¬ 
ernment, and not a mere commercial 
establishment. Its capital has been 
added to from time to time, the origi¬ 
nal capital of £1,200,000 having in¬ 
creased to £14,553,000 in 1816, since 
which no further augumentation has 
taken place. There exists, besides, 
however, a variable • rest ’ of over 
£3,000,000. 

Citizens of Philadelphia were orig¬ 
inators of the first bank organized in the 
United States, without charter, June 
17,1780. In 1781 Robert Morris, super¬ 
intendent of finance, introduced to Con¬ 
gress a plan for establishing the Bank 
of North America at Philadelphia; 
Dec. 31 aperpetual charter was granted 
to that institution. On Jan. 2, 1782, 
the bank opened for business. Feb. 7, 
1784, was incorporated the Massachu¬ 
setts Bank by the legislature of that 
state; this was followed March 21,1791, 
by the charter of the Bank of New 
York, which, however, had been doing 
business since 1784, under ‘ articles of 
association’ drawn up by Alexander 
Hamilton, a member of its original 
board of directors. All of the above, 
converted into national banks, are still 
in a prosperous condition. 

Savings banks began to attract atten¬ 
tion in the United States shortly after 
their inauguration in England, the 
first being organized in New York, 
1816, but the first one to go into prac¬ 
tical operation was in Philadelphia, of 


the same year, Boston was the first to 
have an incorporated savings bank, 
this being effected Dec. 13,1816, business 
being begun in 1817; the United States 
thus anticipated Britain in throwing 
about these banks the protection and 
sanction of law. From that time these 
examples have been rapidly followed. 
There is no uniform plan of organiza¬ 
tion. In some states there is a large 
number of incorporators who elect 
trustees and directors from among 
their members ; again other corporators 
are limited in number and are them¬ 
selves the trustees and managers. In 
the northeast trustees manage the 
savings banks for the depositors; else¬ 
where they are mostly under the 
control of corporations with capital 
stock. 

An important feature in connection 
with the banking system is that of the 
Clearing Home, w T hich, in the United 
States, was first put in operation in 
New York, Oct. 11, 1853. Since that 
time this plan has been adopted in 
every important money center and 
city. Each bank in its daily dealings 
receives large amounts of, and checks 
on, other banks; thus at the close of the 
day’s business each one has various 
sums due it by other banks ; it is like¬ 
wise the debtor of other banks who 
have received bills, checks and drafts 
drawn upon it. The settlement by 
means of the clearing house is simul¬ 
taneously and quickly effected. The 
banks now having no direct business 
with each other save through this 
medium, which enables them to settle 
with each other every day, and with 
but little trouble brings each officer 
into intimate relations with the others, 
enabling them by united action to 
strengthen and aid each other in times 
of panic and financial danger. 

Bank Guarantee: Law of Oklahoma 
making all banks liable for deposits in 
insolvent banks. Indorsed by Demo¬ 
cratic national platform of 1908. 

BANK BILLS, or BANK NOTES, 
paper money issued by banks, either 
with or without the protection of the 
state. Bank notes are promises to pay, 
but differ from ordinary notes in that 
they are payable on demand, never be¬ 
come overdue, and may be reissued 
when taken up. 

BANK HOLIDAYS, days on which 
banks close their doors. In the United 
States banks do not transact business 
on regular holidays. Certain holidays 
are not observed by banks, although 
the custom of closing banks on days of 
local festivities, etc., is a growing one 
in the United States. 

BANKRUPT, a person whom the law 
does or may take cognizance of as unable 
to pay his debts. Properly it is of 
narrower signification than insolvent, 
an insolvent person simply being unable 
to pay all his debts. Under the present 
bankruptcy acts in England and in the 
United States, proceedings in bank¬ 
ruptcy may be instituted by the debtor 
or by creditors. The former is called a 
voluntary, the latter an involuntary, 
proceeding. Each is begun by filing a 
petition. The debtor’s petition must 
state that he is unable to pay his debts, 
and is willing to surrender all of his 


property to the use of his creditors. 
Whether a person is liable to be ad¬ 
judged a bankrupt upon the petition of 
creditors does not depend upon his 
ability or inability to pay his debts, but 
upon his having committed an act of 
bankruptcy. Such at least is the Eng¬ 
lish doctrine; but it is modified to some 
extent in the United States. The 
United States Bankruptcy Statute of 
1898 enumerates five classes of acts of 
bankruptcy. First, conveying, trans¬ 
ferring, concealing, or removing, or per¬ 
mitting to be concealed or removed, 
any of his porperty with the intent to 
hinder, delay, or defraud any of his 
creditors. Second, transferring, while 
insolvent, any of his property with in¬ 
tent to prefer a creditor or creditors 
over others. Third, suffering, while in¬ 
solvent, any creditor to obtain a prefer¬ 
ence through legal proceedings, and not 
securing the vacating or discharge of 
such preference. Fourth, making a 
general assignment for the benefit of 
creditors. Fifth, admitting in writing 
his inability to pay his debts, and his 
willingness to be adjudged a bankrupt 
on that ground. After the debtor is 
adjudicated a bankrupt, a trustee is 
appointed by the creditors (subject to 
some supervision by the Board of Trade 
in England, by the bankruptcy court in 
this country), who becomes vested not 
only with all the property in possession 
of the debtor at the time when he was 
adjudged a bankrupt, but with all that 
he had transferred in violation of the 
statute or in fraud of creditors. It is 
quite important that the trustee’s title 
should relate back of the adjudication. 
Otherwise a failing debtor could always 
defeat one of the main purposes of the 
bankruptcy statute—that of securing 
a ratable division of all his estate 
among all his creditors—by turning over 
his property to one or more favored 
creditors. 

BANKS, Nathaniel Prentiss, an Amer¬ 
ican soldier, born in Massachusetts in 
1S16. He studied law, served as legis¬ 
lator of Massachusetts, and was chair¬ 
man of the state constitutional conven¬ 
tion. He was governor of Massachu¬ 
setts from 1857-9, and speaker of the 
House of Representatives of congress. 
He served as major-general of Union 
volunteers in the civil war, and suffered 
many defeats. In 1864 he retired from 
the army and was elected to congress, 
where he served almost continuously 
until 1877. He died in 1894. 

BAN'NER, a piece of drapery, usually 
bearing some warlike or heraldic device 
or national emblem, attached to the 
upper part of a pole or staff, and indic¬ 
ative of dignity, rank, or command. 

BANNS OF MATRIMONY, public 
notice of the intended celebration of a 
marriage given either by proclamation, 
viva voce, by a clergyman, session- 
clerk, or precentor in some religious 
assembly, or by posting up written 
notice in some public place. 

BANNU, a district in the northwest of 
Hindustan, traversed by the Indus; 
area, 3847 sq. miles; pop. 372,276, nearly 
half being Afghans. 

BANSHEE', BENSHI',a weird hag be¬ 
lieved in Ireland and some parts of 
Scotland to attach herself to a particu- 





BANTAM FOWL 


BARBER 


lar house, ana to appear or make her 
presence known by wailing before the 
death of one of the family. 

BAN'TAM FOWL, a small but spirited 
breed of domestic fowl, first brought 
from the East Indies, supposed to derive 
its name from Bantam in Java. Most 
of the subvarieties have feathered legs; 
but these are not to be preferred. In 
point of color the black and nankeen 
varieties take the palm. A well-bred 
bantam does not weigh more than a 
pound. 

BANTU (ban-tbO, the ethnological 
name of a group of African races below 
about 6° n. latitude, and including the 
Kaffirs, Zulus, Bechuanas, the tribes of 
the Loango, Congo, etc., but not the 
Hottentots. 

BANU. See Bannu. 

BAN'YAN, or BANTAN, a tree of 
India, of the fig genus. The most pecu- 
lar feature of this tree is its method of 
throwing out, from the horizontal 
branches, supports which take root as 
soon as they reach the ground, enlarge 
into trunks, and extending branches in 
their turn, soon cover a prodigious ex¬ 
tent of ground. A celebrated banyan- 
tree has been known to shelter 7000 



Banyan trees. 

men beneath its shade. The wood is 
soft and porous, and from its white 
glutinous juice bird-lime is sometimes 
prepared. Both j’uice and bark are re¬ 
garded by the Hindus as valuable 
medicines. 

BA'OBAB, or MONKEY-BREAD 

TREE is one of the largest of trees, its 
trunk sometimes attaining a diameter 
of 30 feet; and as the profusion of leaves 
and drooping boughs sometimes almost 
hides the stem, the whole forms a hem¬ 
ispherical mass of verdure 140 to 150 feet, 
in diameter and 60 to 70 feet high. It is a 
native of western Africa, and is found 
also in Abyssinia; it is cultivated in 
many of the warmer parts of the world. 
The roots are of extraordinary length, a 
tree 77 feet in girth having a tap-root 
110 feet in length. The leaves are deep 


green, divided into five unequal parts 
lanceolate in shape, and radiating from 
a common center. The flowers resem¬ 
ble the white poppy, having snowy 
petals and violet-colored stamens; and 



Baobab tree. 


the fruit, which is large and of an oblong 
shape, is said to taste like gingerbread, 
with a pleasant acid flavor. The wood 
is pale-colored, light, and soft. The tree 
is liable to be attacked by a fungus 
which, vegetating in the woody part, 
renders it soft and pith-like. 

BAP'TISM, a rite which is generally 
thought to have been usual with the 
Jews even before Christ, being admin¬ 
istered to proselytes. From this bap¬ 
tism, however, that of St. John the 
Baptist differed, because he baptized 
Jews also as a symbol of the necessity 
of perfect purification from sin. Christ 
himself never baptized, but directed his 
disciples to administer this rite to con¬ 
verts (Mat. xxviii. 19); and baptism, 
therefore, became a religious ceremony 
among Christians, taking rank as a 
sacrament with all sects which acknowl¬ 
edge sacraments. Since the Reforma¬ 
tion there have been various Protestant 
sects called Baptists, holding that bap¬ 
tism should be administered only by 
immersion, and to those who can make 
a personal profession of faith. The 
Roman and Greek Catholics consecrate 
the water of baptism, but Protestants 
do not. The act of baptism is accom¬ 
panied only with the formula that the 
person is baptized in the name of the 
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; but, 
among most Christians, it is preceded by 
a confession of faith made by the person 
to be baptized if an adult, and by his 
parents or sponsors if he be a child. 

BAP'TISTS, a Protestant sect, dis¬ 
tinguished by their opinions respecting 
the mode and subj'ects of baptism. With 
regard to the mode, they maintain the 
necessity of immersion, and with regard 
to the subjects, they consider that bap¬ 
tism ought not to be administered to 
children at all, nor to adults in general, 
but to those only who profess repent¬ 
ance and faith. The Baptists as a whole 
adopt the Independent or Congrega¬ 
tional form of church government, and 
their ecclesiastical assemblies are held 
for the purpose of mutual stimulus and 
intercourse, and not for the general 
government of the body, or for inter¬ 
ference with individual churches. 

BAR, in law, the railing that incloses 
the place which council occupy in courts 
of justice; hence the phrase, at the bar 
of the court, that is, in open court. 


Hence also persons duly admitted as 
pleaders or advocates before the courts 
are denominated barristers, and the 
whole body of such barristers or advo¬ 
cates are called the bar. The inclosed 
place or dock in which persons accused 
of crimes stand in court is also called the 
bar. 

BAR, in music, is a line drawn through 
the stave to mark the rhythm of small 
portions; the notes composing these are 
also called a bar. 

BARBA'DOES, or BARBADOS, the 

most eastern of the West India Islands, 
first mentioned in 1518, and occupied by 
the British in 1625. Length 21 miles, 
breadth 13; area, 106,470 acres or 166 
sq. miles; mostly under cultivation. It 
is more densely peopled than almost any 
spot in the world, the population in 1901 
being 195,588, or about 1200 to the 
square mile. The climate is very hot, 
though moderated by the constant 
trade-winds; and the island is subject 
to dreadful hurricanes. The surface is 
broken, now without forests, and with 
few streams; the highest point is 1145 
feet above the sea-level. There are few 
indigenous mammals or birds. The 
black lowland soil gives great returns of 
sugar in favorable seasons. The chief 
exports, besides sugar, are molasses and 
rum; imports: rice, salt meat, corn, 
butter, flour, etc. It is the head¬ 
quarters of the British forces in the 
West Indies. 

BARBARIAN, a name given by the 
Greeks, and afterward by the Romans, 
to every one who spoke an unintelligible 
language; and hence coming to connote 
the idea of rude, illiterate, uncivilized. 

BAR'BARY, a general name for the 
most northerly portion of Africa, ex¬ 
tending about 2600 miles from Egypt to 
the Atlantic, with a breadth varying 
from about 140 to 550 miles; comprising 
Morocco, Fez, Algeria, Tunis, and 
Tripoli (including Barca and Fezzan). 
The principal races are: the Berbers, 
the original inhabitants, from whom the 
country takes its name; the Arabs, who 
conquered an extensive portion of it 
during the times of the caliphs; the 
Bedouins, Jews, Turks, and the French 
colonists of Algeria, etc. The country, 
which was prosperous under the Cartha¬ 
ginians, was, next to Egypt, the richest 
of the Roman provinces, and the Italian 
states enriched themselves by their 
intercourse with it. In the 15th cen¬ 
tury, however, it became infested with 
adventurers who made the name of 
Barbary corsair a terror to commerce, a 
condition of things finally removed by 
the French occupation of Algeria. 

BARBARY APE, a species of ape, or 
tailless monkey, with greenish-brown 
hair, of the size of a large cat, remark¬ 
able for docility, also called the magot. 
It is common in Barbary and other parts 
of Africa, and some used to live formerly 
on Gilbraltar Rock, being the only 
European monkey, though probably 
not indigenous. It has been the “show¬ 
man’s ape” from time immemorial. 

BARBECUE, a word of West Indian 
origin, meaning a hog, or other large 
animal, roasted whole. 

BARBER, one whose occupation is to 
ehave or trim the beard, or to cut and 
dress hair. The practice of surgery wa3 













BARBERS’ ITCH 


BARK, PERUVIAN 


formerly a part of the craft, and by an 
act of Henry VIII. the Company of 
Barbers was incorporated with the 
Company of Surgeons—the company 
being then known as the Barber-sur¬ 
geons—with the limitation, however, 
that the surgeons were not to shave or 
practice “barbery,” and the barbers 
were to perform no higher surgical 
operat’on than blood-letting and tooth¬ 
drawing. This continued till the time 
of George II. The signs of the old pro¬ 
fession—the pole which the patient 
grasped, its spiral decoration in imita¬ 
tion of the bandage, and the basin to 
catch the blood—are still retained. 

BARBERS’ ITCH, a disease of the 
skin of the face caused by the infection 
of the hair follicles. It is due to a 
fungus, the growth of which produces 
ringworm. The disease yields readily 
to treatment. It is generally acquired 
from contact with the brush, lather, or 
hands of the barber, or the barber’s 
towel. 

BAR'BERRY, a genus of shrubs 
having bunches of small beautiful red 
berries, somewhat oval; serrated and 
pointed leaves; thorns, three together, 
upon the branches; and hanging clus¬ 
ters of yellow flowers. The berries near¬ 
ly approach the tamarind in respect of 
acidity, and when boiled with sugar 
make an agreeable preserve, rob, or 
jelly. They are also used as a dry sweet¬ 
meat, and in sugar-plums or comfits; are 
pickled with vinegar, and are used for 
the garnishing of dishes. The bark is 
said to have medicinal properties, and 
the inner bark and roots with alum 
yield a fine yellow dye. The shrub was 
originally a native of Eastern countries, 
but is now generally diffused in Europe, 
as also in North America. 

BAR'CA, a division of N. Africa, be¬ 
tween the Gulf of Sidra and Egypt, a 
vilayet of the Turkish Empire, capital 
Bengazi. It formed a portion of the 
ancient Cyrenaica, and from the time 
of the Ptolemies was known as Pen- 
tapolis from its five Greek cities. Next 
to Bengazi the seaport of Derna is the 
chief town. The pop. probably does 
not exceed 300,000. 

BARCELONA (bar-thel-o'na), one of 
the largest cities of Spain, chief town of 
the province of Barcelona, and formerly 
capital of the kingdom of Catalonia; 
finely situated on the northern portion 
of the Spanish Mediterranean coast. 
Barcelona was, until the 12th century, 
governed by its own counts, but was 
afterward united with Arragon. In 
1640, with the rest of Catalonia, it 
placed itself under the French crown; 
in 1652 it submitted again to the 
Spanish government; in 1697 it was 
taken by the French, but was restored 
to Spain at the Peace of Ryswick. Pop. 
509,589.—The province has an area of 
2968 sq. miles; pop. 902,970. 

BAR'CLAY. Rob ert, the celebrated 
apologist of the Quakers, born in 1648, 
Gordonstown, Moray, and educated 
at Paris, where he became a Roman 
Catholic. Recalled home by his father, 
he followed the example of the latter 
and became a Quaker. In his travels 
with William Penn and George Fox 
through England, Holland, and Ger¬ 
many, to spread the opinions of the 


Quakers, he was received everywhere 
with the highest respect. The last of 
his productions, On the Possibility and 
Necessity of an Inward and Immediate 
Revelation, was not published in Eng¬ 
land till 1686; from which time Bar¬ 
clay lived quietly with his family. He 
died, after a short illness, at his own 
house of Ury, Kincardineshire, in 1690. 
He was a friend of and had influence 
with James II. 

BAR'COO. See Cooper’s Creek. 

BARD, one of an order among the 
ancient Celtic tribes, whose occupation 
was to compose and sing verses in honor 
of the heroic achievements of princes 
and brave men, generally to the accom¬ 
paniment of the harp. Their verses 
also frequently embodied religious or 
ethical precepts, genealogies, laws, etc. 

BARD WAN', or BURDWAN', a divi¬ 
sion of Bengal, upon the Hugli, com¬ 
prising the six districts of Bardwan, 
Hugli, Howrah, Midnapur, Bankura, 
and Birbhum. Area, 13,956 sq. miles; 
pop. 7,688,818.—The district Bardwan 
has an area of 2697 sq. miles, and a pop. 
of 1,391,823. 

BAREBONE, or BARBONE, Praise- 
God, the name of a leather seller in 
Fleet Street, London, who obtained a 
kind of lead in the convention which 
Cromwell substituted for the Long 
Parliament, and which was thence 
nicknamed the Barebone Parliament. 
After its dissolution he disappears till 
1660, when he presented a petition to 
Parliament against the restoration of 
the monarchy. In 1661 he was com¬ 
mitted to the Tower for some time, but 
his subsequent history is unknown. 

BAREILLY (ba-ra'li), a town of Hin¬ 
dustan in the United Provinces, capital 
of a district of same name, on a pleasant 
and elevated site. On the outbreak of 
the Indian Mutiny the native garrison 
took possession of the place, but it was 
retaken by Lord Clyde in May, 1858. 
Pop. 131,208.—The district has an area 
of 1595 sq. miles; pop. 1,040,691. 

BARGAIN AND SALE, a legal term 
denoting the contract by which lands, 
tenements, etc., are transferred from 
one person to another. 

BARGE, a term similar in origin to 
barque, but generally used of a flat- 
bottomed boat of some kind, whether 
used for loading and unloading vessels, 
or as a canal-boat, or as an ornamental 
boat of state or pleasure. 

BARI (ba're), a seaport, S. Italy, on a 
small promontory of the Adriatic 
capital of the province Terra di Bari. 
It was a place of importance as early as 
the 3d century b.c., and has been thrice 
destroyed and rebuilt. Pop. about 
70,000.—The province has an area of 
2280 sq. miles, and is fertile in fruit, 
wine, oil, etc.; pop. 679,000. 

BARlL'LA, the commercial name for 
the impure carbonate and sulphate of 
soda imported from Spain and the 
Levant. It is the Spanish name of a 
plant, from the ashes of which and from 
those of others of the same genus the 
crude alkali is obtained. On the shores 
of the Mediterranean the seeds of the 
plants from which it is obtained are 
regularly sown near the sea, and these, 
when at a sufficient state of maturity, 
are pulled up, dried, and burned in 


bundles in oveflS or iri trehches. The 
ashes, while hot, are continually stirred 
with long poles, and the saline matter 
they contain forms, when cold, a solid 
mass, almost as hard as stone. To 
obtain the carbonate of soda it is only 
requisite to lixiviate the barilla in boil¬ 
ing water, and evaporate the solution. 
British barilla or kelp is a still more 
impure alkali obtained from burning 
seaweeds. Soda is now obtained for the 
most part from common salt. 

BARINGS (ba'ring), one of the greatest 
commercial houses in the world. Its 
founder was John Baring, a German 
who settled in a small business in Exe¬ 
ter, England, in the first half of the 18th 
century. Two of his sons, Francis and 
John, established in London, in 1770, 
a banking-house. 

In November, 1890, owing to the 
continued failures of the Argentine 
Republic to pay the interest due upon 
its debt, which had been guaranteed by 
the Barings, the firm was threatened 
with suspension, but was saved by the 
action of the Bank of England, which, 
in conjunction with the firm of Brown, 
Shipley & Co., advanced the sum of 
$65,000,000 to tide over the crisis. The 
house of the Barings has since been 
reorganized as a limited company for 
carrying on a regular banking Business, 
though on a less extensive scale than 
before. 

BAR'ITONE, or BAR'YTONE, a male 

voice, the compass of which partakes 
of those of the common bass and the 
tenor, but does not extend so far down¬ 
ward as the one, nor to an equal height 
with the other. Its best tones are from 
the lower A of the bass clef to the lower 
F in the treble.—Also, a person having 
a voice of such range. 

BA'RIUM, the metallic basis of baryta, 
which is an oxide of barium; it is only 
found in compounds, such as the com¬ 
mon sulphate and carbonate, and was 
isolated by Davy for the first time in 
1808. It is a yellow, malleable metal, 
which readily oxidizes, decomppses 
water, and fuses at a low temperature. 
Its nitrate and chlorate are used in 
pyrotechny. 

BARK, the exterior covering of the 
stems of exogenous plants. It is com¬ 
posed of cellular and vascular tissue, is 
separable from the wood, and is often 
regarded as consisting of four layers: 
1st, the epidermis or cuticle, which, 
however, is scarcely regarded as a part 
of the true bark; 2d, the epiphlceum, or 
outer cellular layer of the true bark or 
cortex; 3d, the mesophlceum or middle 
layer, also cellular; 4th, an inner vascu¬ 
lar layer, the fiber or endophlceum, 
commonly called bast. Endogenous 
plants have no true bark. Bark con¬ 
tains many valuable products, as gum, 
tannin, etc.; cork is a highly useful 
substance obtained from the epiphlceum j 
and the strength and flexibility of bast 
make it of considerable value. Bark 
used for tanning is obtained from oak, 
hemlock-spruce, species of acacia grow¬ 
ing in Australia, etc. Angostura bark, 
Peruvian or cinchona bark, cinnamon, 
cascarilla, etc., are useful barks. 

BARK, PERUVIAN, is the bark of 
various species of trees of the genus 
Cinchona, found in many parts of South 







BARKER 


BAROMETER 


America, but more particularly in Peru, 
and having medicinal properties. It 
was formerly called Jesuit’s bark, from 
its having been introduced into Europe 
by Jesuits. Its medicinal properties 
depend upon the presence of quinine, 
which is now extracted from the bark, 
imported, and prescribed in place of 
nauseous mouthfuls of bark. See Cin¬ 
chona. 

BARKER', Jacob, an American law¬ 
yer and financier, born in Maine in 1779, 
died in 1871. In the war of 1812 he 
secured a loan of $5,000,000 for the 

f overnment. In 1815 he founded the 
Exchange Bank of New York, and, 
having removed to New Orleans, he was 
elected to the United States senate by 
the state of Louisiana^at the close of the 
civil war, but, owing to the state not 
having been readmitted, he did not 
take his seat. He published a work on 
the civil war entitled The Rebellion 
(1866). 

BAR'LEY, the name of several cereal 
plants, yielding a grain used as food and 
also for making malt, from which are 

f jrepared beer, porter, and whisky. Bar- 
ey nas been known and cultivated from 
remote antiquity, and beer was made 
from it among the Egyptians. The 
species principally cultivated are two- 
rowed barley, four-rowed barley, and 
six-rowed, of which the small variety 
is the sacred barley of the ancients. 
The varieties of the four- and six-rowed 
species are generally coarser than those 
of the two-rowed, and adapted for a 
oorer soil and more exposed situation, 
ome of these are called bere or bigg. 
In Britain barley occupies about the 
same area as wheat, but in N. America 
the extent of it as a crop is compara¬ 
tively small, being in Canada, however, 
relatively greater than in tne United 
States, and the Canadian barley is of 
very high quality. Barley is better 
adapted for cold climates than any other 
grain, and some of the coarser varieties 
are cultivated where no other cereal can 
be grown. Pearl barley is the grain 
polished and rounded and deprived of 
husk and pellicle. Patent barley is the 
farina obtained by grinding pearl barley. 
Barley-water, a decoction of pearl 
barley, is used in medicine as possessing 
emollient, diluent, and expectorant 
qualities. 

BARLEY-SUGAR, pure sugar melted 
and allowed to solidify into an amor¬ 
phous mass without crystallizing. 

BAR'MEN, a German city on the 
Wupper, in the Prussian Rhine Prov¬ 
ince, government of Diisseldorf, and 
forming a continuation of the town of 
Elberfeld, in the valley of Barmen. 
Pop. 141,947. 

BAR'NABAS, the surname given by 
the apostles to Joses, a fellow-laborer 
of Paul, and, like him, ranked as an 
apostle. He is said to have founded at 
Antioch the first Christian community, 
to have been first bishop of Milan, and 
to have suffered martyrdom at Cyprus. 
His festival is held on the 11th of June. 

BARNABAS, Saint, Epistle of, an 
epistle in twenty-one chapters unani¬ 
mously ascribed to Barnabas by early 
Christian writers, but without any 
support of internal evidence. It was 
probably written between 119 and 126 


b.c., by one who was not a Jew, and 
under the influence of Alexandrian 
Judaistic thought. 

BAR'NACLE, the name of a family of 
marine crustaceous animals. They are 
enveloped by a mantle and shell, com¬ 
posed of five principal valves and several 
smaller pieces, joined together by a 
membrane attached to their circum¬ 
ference; and they are furnished with a 
long, flexible, fleshy stalk or peduncle, 
provided with muscles by which they 
attach themselves to ships’ bottoms, 
submerged timber, etc. They feed on 
small marine animals, brought within 
their reach by the water and secured by 
their tentacula. Some of the larger 
species are edible. According to an old 
fable these animals produced barnacle 
geese. 

BARNACLE GEESE, summer visit¬ 
ants of the northern seas, in size rather 
smaller than the common wild goose, 
and having the forehead and cheeks 
white, the upper body and neck black. 

BARNARD, Henry, an American 
educator, born in Connecticut in 1811, 
died in 1900. From 1837 to 1840 he 
was a member of the Connecticut legis¬ 
lature and interested himself in prison 
reform, meanwhile filling numerous 
educational positions. He was (1857- 
59) president of the University of 
Wisconsin, president of St. John’s 
College, Annapolis (1865-66), and first 
U. S. commissioner of education (1867- 
70). He published many works on the 
subject of education, and was the first 
to use the term “tainted money” with 
reference to college endowments. Dr. 
Barnard is often called the “father of 
American education.” 

BARNATO, Barnett, known as “Bar¬ 
ney Barnato, King of the Kaffirs,” an 
English-African diamond mine owner, 
promoter of the Kimberley mines. He 
was reputed to be the richest man in the 
world. He was born of Hebrew stock 
in London, and committed suicide at 
sea in 1897. 

BARNAVE (bar-nav), Antoine-Pierre- 
Joseph-Marie, a distinguished French 
revolutionist, who successfully main¬ 
tained against Mirabeau the right of the 
National Assembly as against that of 
the king to declare for peace or war, but 
afterward asserted the inviolability of 
the king’s person, was impeached, con¬ 
demned, and guillotined. Bom 1761, 
died 1793. 

BARNES, Alfred Smith, an American 
ublisher, endower of Barnes Hall at 
ornell, and publisher of numerous 
text-books and other educational pub¬ 
lications. He was born in Connecticut 
in 1817 and died in 1888. 

BARNUM, Phineas Taylor, a noted 
proprietor of museums and circus shows, 
famous the world over for his ingenuity 
in originating rare entertainments. He 
was born in Bethel, Conn., in 1810, and 
as a lad he edited a newspaper. At 
twenty-four he originated his first 
great sham show, in the person of a 
woman whom he advertised as the 
old nurse of George Washington. His 
first large venture was the Ameri¬ 
can Museum in New York, the chief 
feature of which was “General” Tom 
Thumb, the dwarf. In 1847 he im¬ 
ported Jenny Lind, and, after becom¬ 


ing bankrupt several times, through 

fire and other causes, he brought out 
his “Greatest Show on Earth,” a travel¬ 
ing circus and menagerie. He died 
in 1891. His motto “Wait for Barnum” 
became a household word. 

BARO'DA, a non-tributary state, but 
subordinate to the Indian government; 
situated in the north of the Bombay 
presidency. Area, 8226 sq. miles; pop. 
1,952,692.—Baroda, the capital, is the 
third city in the Bombay presidency. 
Pop. 103,790 (including troops in the 
adjoining cantonment). 

BAROM'ETER, an instrument for 
measuring the weight or pressure of the 
atmosphere, and thus determining 
changes in the weather, the height of 
mountains, and other phenomena. It 







M 



Marine Common upright 

barometer. barometer. 


had its origin about the middle of the 
17th century in an experiment of 
Torricelli, an Italian, who found that if 
a glass tube about 3 feet in length, open 
at one end only, and filled with mercury, 
were placed vertically with the open end 
in a cup of the same fluid metal, a 
portion of the mercury descended into 
the cup, leaving a column only about 
30 inches in height in the tube. He 
inferred, therefore, that the atmospheric 
pressure on the surface of the mercury 
in the cup forced it up the tube to the 
height of 30 inches, and that this was 
so because the weight of a column of 
air from the cup to the top of the atmos¬ 
phere was only equal to that of a column 
of mercury of the same base and 30 
inches high. Pascal confirmed the con¬ 
clusion in 1645; six years afterward it 
was found by Perrier that the height of 
the mercury in the Torricellian tube 
varied with the weather; and, in 1665, 
Boyle proposed to use the instrument 
to measure the height of mountains. 

The common or cistern barometer, 
which is a modification of the Tor¬ 
ricellian tube, consists of a glass tube 33 
inches in length and about one-third 
of an inch in diameter, hermetically 
sealed at the top, and having the lower 
end resting in a small vessel containing 
mercury, or bent upward and terminat¬ 
ing in a glass bulb partly occupied by the 
mercury and open to the atmosphere. 
The tube is first filled with purified 
mercury, and then inverted, and there 
is affixed to it a scale to mark the height 
of the mercurial column, which com- 


























BARON 


BARROWS 


paratively seldom rises above 31 or 
sinks below 28 inches. In general the 
rising of the mercury presages fair 
weather, and its falling the contrary, 
a great and sudden fall being the usual 
presage of a storm. The weather-points 


Siphon barometer. Wheel barometer. 

on the ordinary barometric scale are as 
follows: At 28 inches, stormy weather; 
28$, much rain or snow; 29, rain or 
snow; 29$, changeable; 30, fair or frost; 
30$, settled fair or frost; 31, very dry 
weather or hard frost. Certain attend¬ 
ant signs, however, have also to be 
noted: thus, when fair or foul weather 
follows almost immediately upon the 
rise or fall of the mercury, the change is 
usually of short duration; while, if the 
change of weather be delayed for some 
days after the variation in the mercury, 
it is usually of long continuance. The 
direction of the wind has also to be 
taken into account. 

The siphon barometer consists of a 
bent tube, generally of uniform bore, 
having two unequal legs, the longer 
closed, the shorter open. A sufficient 
quantity of mercury having been intro¬ 
duced to fill the longer leg, the instru¬ 
ment is set upright, and the mercury 
takes such a position that the difference 
of the levels in the two legs represents 
the pressure of the atmosphere. 

The wheel barometer is the one that 
is most commonly used for domestic 
urposes. It is far from being accurate, 
ut it is often preferred for ordinary use 
on account of the greater range of its 
scale, by which small differencs in the 
height of the column of mercury are 
more easily observed. It usually con¬ 
sists of a siphon barometer, having 
a float resting on the surface of the mer¬ 
cury in the open branch, a thread 
attached to the float passing over a 
pulley, and having a weight as a counter¬ 
poise to the float at its extremity. As 
the mercury rises and falls the thread 
and weight turn the pulley, which 
again moves the index of the dial. 

The mountain barometer is a portable 
mercurial barometer with a tripod sup¬ 
port and a long scale for measuring the 
altitude of mountains. 

In the aneroid barometer, as its name 
implies, no fluid is employed, the action 
being dependent upon the susceptibility 
to atmospheric pressure shown by a flat 
circular metallic chamber from which 
the air has been partially exhausted, 
and which has a flexible top and bottom 


of corrugated metal plate. By an in¬ 
genious arrangement of springs and 
levers the depression or elevation of the 
surface of the box is registered by an 
index on the dial, by which means it is 
also greatly magnified, being given in 
inches to correspond with the mercurial 
barometer. 

BAR'ON, originally, in the feudal sys¬ 
tem, the vassal or immediate tenant of 
any superior; but the term was after¬ 
ward restricted to the king’s barons, 
and again to the greater of these only, 
who attended the Great Council, or who, 
at a later date, were summoned by writ 
to Parliament. It was the second rank 
of nobility, until dukes and marquises 
were introduced and placed above the 
earls, and viscounts also set above the 
barons, who, therefore, now hold the 
lowest rank in the British peerage. The 
present barons are of three classes: (1) 
barons by prescription, whose ancestors 
have immemorially sat in the Upper 
House; (2) by patent; (3) by tenure, i.e. 
holding the title as annexed to land. 
The coronet is a plain gold circle with 
six balls or large pearls on its edge, the 
connected cap being of crimson velvet. 
—Baron and feme, a term used for 
husband and wife in the English law.— 
Baron of beef, two sirloins not cut 
^suiidsr. 

BAR'ONET, a hereditary dignity in 
Great Britain and Ireland, next in rank 
to the peerage, originally instituted by 
James I. in 1611. A baronet has the 
title of “Sir” prefixed to his Christian 
and surname, and his wife is “Lady” 
so-and-so. Baronets rank before all 
knights. 

BAR'RA, or BAR, a small kingdom 
in Africa, near the mouth of the Gambia. 
The Mandingoes, who form a consider¬ 
able part of the inhabitants, are Mo¬ 
hammedans and the most civilized peo¬ 
ple on the Gambia. Pop. 200,000. The 
coast here belongs to Britain. 

BARRAS (ba-ra), Paul Francois Jean 
Nicholas, Comte de, member of the 
French national convention and of the 
executive directory, born in Provence 
1755, died 1829. He took part in the 
attack upon the Bastille and upon the 
Tuileries, and voted for the death of 
Louis XVI. In the subsequent events 
he displeased Robespierre, and on this 
account joined the members of the com¬ 
mittee, who foresaw danger awaiting 
them, and being intrusted with the 
chief command of the forces of his party 
he made himself master of Robespierre. 
On Feb. 4,1795, he was elected president 
of the convention, and on Oct. 5, when 
the troops of the sections which favored 
the royal cause approached, Barras for 
a second time received the chief com¬ 
mand of the forces of the convention. 
On this occasion he employed General 
Bonaparte, for whom he procured the 
chief command of the army of the in¬ 
terior, and afterward the command of 
the army in Italy. From the events of 
the 18th Fructidor (Sept. 4, 1797) he 
governed absolutely until June 13th, 
1799, when Si6yes entered the directory, 
and in alliance with Bonaparte procured 
his downfall in the revolution of the 18th 
Brumaire (Nov. 9, 1799). He after¬ 
ward resided at Brussels, Marseilles, 
Rome, and Montpellier under sur¬ 


veillance, returning to Paris only after 
the restoration of the Bourbons. 

BARREL, a well-known variety of 
wooden vessel; but the term is also used 
as a definite measure and weight. A 
barrel of beer is 36 gals., of flour 196 lbs., 
of beef or pork 200 lbs. 

BARRETT, Lawrence, an American 
player, one of the most forceful and 
olished actors of the American stage, 
orn in New Jersey in 1838, died in 
1891. He made his debut at Detroit 
(1853) as Murad, in The French Spy. 
He subsequently appeared in the cities 
of the East, fought on the Union side in 
the civil war, and later became an asso¬ 
ciate of Edwin Booth. He was partner 
with John McCullough in the California 
Theater, San Francisco, and in 1875 
played Cassius (his best role) in company 
with Booth. His visit to England in 
1884 was entirely successful. On his 
return he and Booth joined forces and 
toured the country with splendid suc¬ 
cess in every aspect of their enterprise. 
His chief parts were Hamlet, Lear, 
Richelieu, and Shylock. 

BARRETT, Wilson, an English player, 
born in 1846. His first London appear¬ 
ance was in 1879, and soon afterward 
he became manager of the Court Thea¬ 
ter. He produced The Lights o’ London, 
The Silver King, and other plays, and 
his rendition of Hamlet, Othello, and 
other tragic parts has been regarded 
with high favor. Mr. Barrett visited 
America in 1886, 1888, 1889, 1893, and 
1897, and in 1898 Australia. 

BARREL-ORGAN, a musical instru¬ 
ment usually carried by street musicians, 
in which a barrel studded with pegs or 
staples, when turned round, opens a 
series of valves to admit air to a set of 
pipes, or acts upon wire strings like 
those of the piano, thus producing a 
fixed series of tunes. 

BARRIE, J. M., born in 1860, at 
Kirriemuir, Forfarshire; studied at 
Edinburgh University, graduating as 
M.A. in 1882. He was for a time con¬ 
nected with a Nottingham journal, and 
then removed to London, writing chiefly 
for the St. James’s Gazette. His first 
book, Better Dead, a satire on London 
life, appeared in 1887. It was folio wed 
in 1888 by the highly successful Auld 
Licht Idylls, and When a Man’s Single. 
In 1889 he published A Window in 
Thrums; in 1890 My Lady Nicotine; 
in 1891 The Little Minister; in 1896, 
Sentimental Tommy. 

BAR'RISTER, in England and Ire¬ 
land, a pleader or advocate who has 
been admitted to plead at the bar. In 
the United States the term counselor- 
at-law is the equivalent of the British 
barrister 

‘ BAR'ROW-IN-FUR'NESS, a seaport, 

pari, and county borough of Lancashire, 
in the district of Furness, opposite the 
island of Walney, a town that has in¬ 
creased from a fishing hamlet with 100 
inhabitants in 1848 to a town of 57,584 
inhabitants in 1901. Its prosperity is 
due to the mines of red hematite iron- 
ore which abounds in the district. 

BAR'ROWS, mounds of earth or 
stones raised to mark the resting-place 
of the dead, and distinguished, accord¬ 
ing to their shape, as long, bowl, bell, 
cone, broad barrows. The practice of 



















BARTHELMY-SAINT-HILAIRE 


BASALT 


barrow-burial is of unknown antiquity 
and almost universal, barrows being 
found all over Europe, in northern 
Africa, Asia Minor, Afghanistan, west¬ 
ern India, and in America. In the earli¬ 
est barrows the inclosed bodies were 
simply laid upon the ground, with stone 



Bowl barrow. Long barrow. Twin barrow. 

or bone implements and weapons beside 
them. In barrows of later date the re¬ 
mains are generally inclosed in a stone 
cist. Frequently cremation preceded 
the erection of the barrow, the ashes 
being inclosed in an urn or cist. A de¬ 
tailed description of an ancient barrow- 
burial is given in the Anglo-Saxon poem 
Beowulf. 

BARTHELMY-SAINT-HILAIRE (bar- 
tal-me-san-te-lar), Jules, French scholar 
and statesman, born 1805, died in 1895. 
He was professor of Greek and Latin 
philosophy in the College of France, but 
resigned the chair after the coup d’6tat 
of 1852 and refused to take the oath; 
was reappointed 1862; in 1869 was re¬ 
turned to the Corps L6gislatif; after the 
revolution was a member of the Nation¬ 
al Assembly; was elected senator for 
life in 1875. 

BARTHOLDI (b&r-tol'de), Auguste, 
French sculptor, born 1833; best known 
as the artist of the colossal statue of 
Liberty now overlooking the harbor of 
New York. Died 1904. 

BARTHOLOMEW, the apostle, is 
probably the same person as Nathanael, 
mentioned in the Gospel of St. John as 
an upright Israelite and one of the first 
disciples of Jesus. He is said to have 
taught Christianity in the south of 
Arabia, into which, according to Euse¬ 
bius, he carried the Gospel of St. Mat¬ 
thew in the Hebrew language; and to 
have suffered martyrdom. The ancient 
church had an apocryphal gospel bear¬ 
ing his name, of which nothing has been 
preserved. A festival is held to his 
memory on August 24th. 

BARTHOLOMEW’S DAY, St., a feast 
of the Christian Church, celebrated 
(August 24) in honor of St. Bartholo¬ 
mew. What is known as the Massacre 
of St. Bartholomew was the slaughter of 
the French Protestants, which began 
on August 24th, 1572, by secret orders 
from Charles IX., at the instigation of 
his mother, Catharine de Medici, and in 
which, according to Sully, 70,000 
Huguenots, including women and chil¬ 
dren, were murdered throughout the 


country. During the minority of 
Charles and the regency of his mother 
a long war raged in France between the 
Catholics and Huguenots, the leaders 
of the latter being the Prince of Cond6 
and Admiral Coligny. In 1570 over¬ 
tures were made by the court to the 
Huguenots, which resulted in a treaty 
of peace. This treaty blinded the chiefs 
of the Huguenots, particularly the Ad¬ 
miral Coligny, who was wearied with 
civil war. The king appeared to have 
entirely disengaged himself from the 
influence of the Guises and his mother; 
he invited Coligny to his court, and 
honored him as a father. The most 
artful means were employed to increase 
this delusion. The sister of the king 
was married to the Prince de B6arn 
(Aug. 18, 1572) in order to allure the 
most distinguished Huguenots to Paris. 
On Aug. 22 a shot from a window 
wounded the admiral. The king has¬ 
tened to visit him, and swore to punish 
the author of the villainy; but on the 
same day he was induced by his mother 
to believe that the admiral had designs 
on his life. “God’s death!” he ex¬ 
claimed; “kill the admiral; and not 
only him, but all the Huguenots; let 
none remain to disturb us.” The follow¬ 
ing night Catharine held the bloody 
council, which fixed the execution for 
the night of St. Bartholomew, August 
24, 1572. After the assassination of 
Coligny a bell from the tower of the 
royal palace at midnight gave to the 
assembled companies of burghers the 
signal for the general mas’sacre of the 
Huguenots. The Prince of Conde and 
the King of Navarre saved their lives by 
going to mass and pretending to em¬ 
brace the Catholic religion. By the 
king’s orders the massacre was extended 
throughout the whole kingdom; and the 
horrible slaughter continued for thirty 
days in almost all the provinces. 

BARTLETT, John, an American edi¬ 
tor, widely known from his compilation, 
Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. He 
was born at Plymouth, Mass., 1820, and 
has been for many years partner in the 
house of Little, Brown & Co., of Boston. 

BARTLETT, John Russell, an Ameri¬ 
can ethnologist and author, born at 
Providence, R. I., in 1805. In 1850-54 
he surveyed the boundary line between 
the United States and Mexico, and was 
secretary of state for Rhode Island 
(1855-72). He is the author of several 
works on ethnological subjects, and has 
published valuable lexicons and his¬ 
tories of American countries. He died 
in 1886. 

BARTLETT, Josiah, an American 
statesman, born at Amesbury, Mass., 
in 1729. He was a delegate to the 
continental congress in 1775, was chief 
justice of New Hampshire court of com¬ 
mon pleas (1779), justice of the state 
supreme court (1784), and chief justice 
(1778). He was the first governor of 
New Hampshire. He died in 1795. 

BARTLETT, Paul Wayland, an Amer¬ 
ican sculptor, born at New Haven, 
Conn., 1865. He is the sculptor of the 
McClellan statue in Philadelphia, of the 
Warren statue in Boston, and of the 
statue of Lafayette presented to France 
by the school children of the United 
States. 


BARTON, Clara, president of the 
American Red Cross Society and its 
founder. She was born in Massachusetts 
in 1830, entered the hospital service 
in the civil war, and did much good 
work. She was visiting Europe at the 
outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war, 
and served in the hospital service of the 
German army. She was decorated 
with the Iron Cross of Germany and the 
Gold Cross of Baden. Miss Barton 
represented the United States Red 
Cross Society in several international 
meetings, did relief work in America 
in 1896, and in the late Spanish war and 
the Anglo-Boer war in Africa. She has 
published two histories of the Red Cross 
movement. 

BARTRAM, John, an American bota¬ 
nist, born in Pennsylvania in 1699. He 
became distinguished as a botanist 
early in life and was a correspondent of 
Linn6, who praised him as the greatest 
natural botanist in the world. His 
works were printed in the Transactions 
of the Philosophical Society, and also 
in the form of books. He died in 1777. 

BARTRAM, William, son of John 
Bartram, and, like his father, a botanist 
of distinction. He was born in Pennsyl¬ 
vania in 1739 and died in 1823. He 
published a list of American birds, in 
addition to his botanical studies. 

BARY'TA, oxide of barium, called also 
heavy earth, from its being the heaviest 
of the earths. It is generally found in 
combination with sulphuric and car¬ 
bonic acids, forming sulphate and car¬ 
bonate of baryta, the former of which 
is called heavy-spar. Baryta is a gray 
powder, has a sharp, caustic, alkaline 
taste, and a strong affinity for water, and 
forms a hydrate with that element. 
It forms white salts with the acids, all 
of which are poisonous except the sul- 
hate. Several mixtures of sulphate of 
aryta and white-lead are manufac¬ 
tured, and are used as white pigments, 
or it may be used alone. Carbonate of 
baryta, which in the natural state is 
known as witherite, is also used as the 
base of certain colors. The nitrate is 
used in pyrotechny, in the preparation 
of green fireworks. 

BASALT (ba-salt'), a well-known 
igneous rock occurring in the ancient 
trap and the recent volcanic series of 
rocks, but more abundantly in the 
former. It is a fine-grained heavy 
crystalline rock, consisting of felspar, 
augite, and magnetic iron, and some¬ 
times contains a little olivine. Basalt is 
amorphous, columnar, tabular, or globu¬ 
lar. The columnar form is straight or 
curved, perpendicular or inclined, some¬ 
times nearly horizontal; the diameter 
of the columns from 3 to 18 inches, 
sometimes with transverse semispherical 
joints, in which the convex part of one 
is inserted in the concavity of another; 
and the height from 5 feet to 150. The 
forms of the columns generally are 
pentagonal, hexagonal, or octagonal. 
When decomposed it is found also in 
round masses, either spherical or com¬ 
pressed and lenticular. These rounded 
masses are sometimes composed of con¬ 
centric layers, with a nucleus, and some¬ 
times of prisms radiating from a center. 
Fingal’s Cave, in the island of Staffa, 
furnishes a remarkable instance of basal- 







BASE 


BASE OF OPERATIONS 


tic columns. The pillars of the Giant’s 
Causeway, Ireland, composed of this 
stone, and exposed to the roughest sea 
for ages, have their angles as perfect as 



Basalt—Lot’s wife, St. Helena. 


those at a distance from the waves. 
Basalt often assumes curious and fan¬ 
tastic forms, as for example Lot’s wife 
near the south coast of St. Helena. 

BASE, in architecture, that part of a 
column which is between the top of the 
pedestal and the bottom of the shaft; 
where there is no pedestal, the part be¬ 
tween the bottom of the column and the 
pavement. The term is also applied to 
the lower projecting part of the wall of 
a room, consisting of a plinth and its 
moldings. 

BASE'BALL, the national field game 
of the United States, a development of 

«E«Tne 

U*T • RIGHT 

* • 



A A, ground reserved for batsman, umpire, and 
catcher ; B B. for captain and assistant: C 0. 
players' benches; D. bat-rack. toe‘visiting 1 
players t E, for home players. 

the old English game of “rounders.” 
It is played by two teams of 9 men 
each, with an elastic ball about 9 inches 
in circumference. The field consists 
of a level ground, part of which is laid 
out in a “diamond,” 90 feet square, 



with bases, or goals, at each corner. 
One is called the home base, the others 
from right to left of home are called first, 
second, and third bases. The three last 
named bases are guarded by the first, 
second, and third basemen. A player 
called the shortstop guards the space 
between second and third bases. These 
four are the infield. The outfield con¬ 
sists of three players, right, center, and 
left, placed at some distance from the 
bases. The pitcher stands 55 feet from 
the home base and delivers the ball over 
that base to the catcher, who stands 
just behind the base. This is the make¬ 
up of the team “in the field.” The 
men of the team that has the “innings” 
come to bat one after another. The 
batsman tries to hit the ball and to 
reach first base before the ball can be 
“fielded” to first base, or before one of 
the opposing team can touch him with 
it. If the ball reaches the first baseman 
and is held by him, or if the batsman 
is touched before reaching the first 
base, he is retired from the play and 


when touched with the ball in the hands 
of a fielder while between bases; when, 
if forced to run to any base, the ball is 
held by a fielder on that base before the 
runner reaches it; and when hit by a 
batted ball. 

When three men are out the side is 
out and the team in the field becomes 
batsmen. The object of the base- 
runner is to reach in succession first, 
second, third and home base without 
being “put out.” He then “scores a 
run.” Nine innings constitute a game 
and the side having most runs at the 
end of the ninth inning is the winner. 

Baseball is played in the United 
States by several large professional 
leagues and innumerable small amateur 
leagues, associations, and clubs. Several 
millions of dollars are invested in the 
business. 

BASEL (ba'zl), a canton and city of 
Switzerland. The canton borders on 
Alsace and Baden, has an area of 176 
sq. miles, and a population of 180,697, 
nearly all speaking German. It is 


Basel, from above the town; 


is “out” of the game, and another 
batsman takes his place. If the bats¬ 
man knocks the ball into the air and it 
is caught and held before touching the 
ground; or if the batsman strikes three 
times at the ball and misses it, the ball 
being caught by the catcher on the last 
missed strike; or if the striker doesn’t try 
to hit the ball when the ball is judged 
to have been delivered over the home 
base according to rule, the striker is out. 

The batsman becomes a base-runner 
after three strikes are called; when he 
makes a fair hit, the ball traveling 
between the above-mentioned lines 
until after it passes first or third base; 
after four balls have been called by the 
umpire, a “ball” being a pitched ball 
which is not touched by the bat and 
which passes outside the limits required 
for a strike; if he is hit by the ball, 
unless he has made no effort to avoid it; 
after the umpire calls a “balk”; and if 
prevented from striking by the inter¬ 
ference of the catcher. In the last four 
cases he cannot be put out before 
reaching first base. He is put out when 
his third strike is held by the catcher; 
when a ball hit by him is caught by a 
^fielder before it touches the ground; 


divided into two half-cantons, Basel 
city and Basel country. At Basel was 
signed the treaty of peace between 
France and Prussia, April 5, and that 
between France and Spain, July 22, 
1795. Pop. (with suburbs), 111,009. 

BASE'MENT, the lowest story of a 
dwelling-house or other building. The 
basement in America is usually lower 
than the level of the ground, the first 
story being higher than the ground 
level. In medieval Europe all great 
houses were built with a basement, 
called in England the “ground floor.” 
This was level with the ground and 
was used for servants quarters, offices, 
etc. 

BASE OF OPERATIONS, the place in 
which an army keeps its main stores and 
supplies when in war, and from which 
the campaign is carried on against an 
enemy. The invaders of a country 
often find the maintenance of a base of 
operations a serious matter, for properly 
to guard it requires large numbers of 
men. Lines leading from the base must 
also be guarded; and these necessities 
make it more or less easy for a small 
number of men to defeat and drive out 
a large invading army. 





















BASHI-BAZOOKS 


BASSWOOD 


BASHI-BAZOOKS', irregular troops 
in the Turkish army. They are mostly 
Asiatics, and have had to be disarmed 
several times by the regular troops on 
account of the barbarities by which they 
have rendered themselves infamous. 

BASH'KIRS, a tribe of Finnish or of 
Tatar origin, inhabiting the Russian 
goverments of Ufa, Orenburg, Perm, 
and Samara. They are rude and war¬ 
like and partially nomadic. They num¬ 
ber about 500,000. 

BASIC SLAG, the slag or refuse matter 
which is got in making basic steel, and 
which from the phosphate of lime it 
contains is a valuable fertilizer. 

BASIC STEEL. See Steel. 

BASIL, St., called the Great, one of the 
Greek fathers, was born in 329, and 
made in 370 Bishop of Caesarea in Cap¬ 
padocia, where he died in 379. He was 
distinguished by his efforts for the regu¬ 
lation of clerical discipline, and, above 
all, his endeavors for the promotion of 
monastic life. The Greek Church honors 
him as one of its most illustrious saints, 
and celebrates his festival January 1. 
The vows of obedience, chastity, and 
poverty framed by St. Basil are essen¬ 
tially the rules of all the orders of Chris¬ 
tendom. 

BASIL'ICA, originally the name ap¬ 
plied by the Romans to their public 
nails, either of justice, of exchange, or 
other business. The plan of the basilica 
was usually a rectangle divided into 
aisles by rows of columns, the middle 
aisle being the widest, with a semi¬ 
circular apse at the end, in which the 
tribunal was placed. The ground-plan 
of these buildings was generally followed 
in the early Christian churches, which, 
therefore, long retained the name of 
basilica, and it is still applied to some 
of the churches in Rome by way of 
distinction, and sometimes to other 
churches built in imitation of the Roman 
basilicas • 

BASILICA'TA, also called POTENZA, 
an Italian province, extending north 
from the Gulf of Taranto, and corre¬ 
sponding pretty closely with the ancient 
Lucania. Area, 4122 sq. miles; pop. 
524,485. 

BAS'ILISK, a fabulous creature for¬ 
merly believed to exist, and variously 
regarded as a kind of serpent, lizard, or 
dragon, and sometimes identified with 
the cockatrice. It inhabited the deserts 
of Africa, and its breath and even its 
look was fatal. 

BA'SIN, in physical geography, the 
whole tract of country drained by a 
river andj its tributaries. The line di¬ 
viding one river basin from another is 
the water-shed; and by tracing the vari¬ 
ous water-sheds we divide each country 
into its constituent basins. The basin 
of a loch or sea consists of the basins 
of all the rivers which run into it.—In 
gMlogy a basin is any dipping or dis¬ 
position of strata toward a common 
axis or center, due to upheaval and sub¬ 
sidence. 

BASKET, a vessel or utensil of wick¬ 
erwork, made of interwoven osiers or 
willows, rushes, twigs, grasses, etc. The 
process of basket-making is very simple, 
and appears to be well known among 
the very rudest peoples. The ancient 


Britons excelled in the art, and their 
baskets were highly prized in Rome. 

BASKET-BALL, a game played with 
an inflated bladder 30 inches in circum¬ 
ference and weighing about 20 ounces. 
Goals, consisting of nets, are placed at 
either end of the field, and are suspended 
from metal rings. The teams consist of 
five players each—left and right guard, 
center, and right forward—and the ob¬ 
ject is to put the ball in the opposing 
team’s goal-basket. The ball must be 
thrown or batted with the hands. No 
tackling, kicking, pushing, etc., are 
allowed. The penalty is a free throw 
at 15 feet for the basket by the opposing 
team. A goal thus made counts one 
point; a goal from the field, 15. The 
game was invented by James Naismith, 
of Plainfield, Mass. 

BASKING-SHARK, a species of shark, 
so named from its habit of basking in 
the sun at the'surface of the water. It 
reaches the length of 40 feet, and its 
liver yields a large quantity of oil. It 
frequents the northern seas, and is 
known also as the sail-fish or sun-fish. 

BASQUES (b^sks), or BISCAYANS, a 
remarkable race of people dwelling part¬ 
ly in the southwest corner of France, but 
mostly in the north of Spain adjacent to 
the Pyrenees. They are probably de¬ 
scendants of the ancient Iberi, who oc¬ 
cupied Spain before the Celts. They 
preserve their ancient language, former 
manners, and national dances, and make 
admirable soldiers, especially in guerrilla 
warfare. Their language is highly 
polysynthetic, and no connection be¬ 
tween it and any other language has 
as yet been made out. There are four 
principal dialects, which are not only 
distinguished by their pronunciation 
and grammatical structure, but differ 
even in their vocabularies. The Bas¬ 
ques, who number about 600,000, oc¬ 
cupy in Spain the provinces of Biscay, 
Guipuzcoa, and Al&va; in France parts 
of the departments of the Upper and 
Lower Pyrenees, Ariege, and Upper 
Garonne. 

BAS-RELIEF (ba're-lef or bas're-lef), 
BASS-RELIEF, low-relief, a mode of 
sculpturing figures on a flat surface, the 
figures having a very slight relief or pro- 



Bas-relief, from the Elgin Marbles. 


jection from the surface. It is distin¬ 
guished from haut-relief, or high-relief, 
in which the figures stand sometimes 
almost entirely free from the ground. 
Bas-relief work has been described as 
“sculptured painting” from the capabil¬ 
ity of disposing of groups of figures and 
exhibiting minor adjuncts, as in a 
painting. , 


BASS (bas), in music, the lowest part 
in the harmony of a musical composi¬ 
tion, whether vocal or instrumental. 
According to some it is the fundamental 
or most important part, while others 
regard the melody or highest part in 
that light. Next to the melody, the 
bass part is the most striking, the freest 
and boldest in its movements, and rich¬ 
est in effect. 

BASS (bas), the name of a number of 
fishes of the perch family, distinguished 
from the true perches by having the 
tongue covered by small teeth and 
the preoperculum smooth. The only 
British species, called sea-dace, and 
from its voracity sea-wolf, resembles 
somewhat the salmon in shape, and is 
much esteemed for the table, weighing 
about 15 lbs. Striped bass, an American 
species, weighing from 25 to 30 lbs., is 
much used for food, and is also known as 
rock-fish. Two species of black bass, 
American fresh-water fishes, are excel¬ 
lent as food and give fine sport to the 
angler. The former is often called the 
large-mouthed black bass, from the size 
of its mouth. Both make nests and take 
great care of their eggs and young. 

BASS (bas) DRUM, a musical instru¬ 
ment of percussion. It has a cylindrical 
body of wood, over both ends of which a 
membrane is stretched tightly by means 
of hoops. The bass drum is played by 
beating either one or both heads with 
sticks having soft, padded knobs at 
their ends. See Drum. 

BASSEIN (bas-san'), a town in Lower 
Burmah, province of Pegu, on both 
banks of the Bassein river, one of the 
mouths of the Irrawaddy, and navigable 
for the largest ships. Pop. 31,864.—Bas¬ 
sein District has an area of 6848 sq. 
miles and a pop. of 475,002. 

BAS'SETT, James, an American mis¬ 
sionary, born in 1834, near Hamilton, 
Ont. In 1871 he became a missionary 
for the Presbyterian Board and traveled 
widely throughout Europe, spending 
many years in Turkey and Persia. He 
is believed to have been the first Ameri¬ 
can to penetrate as far east as the tomb 
of Harun-al-Rashid at Meshed, eastern 
Khorassan. He founded the mission in 
eastern and central Persia, and did 
much to effect the appointment of a 
United States legation to Persia. 

BASSOON', a musical wind-instru - 
ment of the reed order, blown with a bent 
metal mouthpiece, and holed and keyed 
like the clarinet. Its compass compre¬ 
hends three octaves rising from B flat 
below the bass-staff. 

BASS'ORA, or BASRAH, a city in 
Astiatic Turkey, on the west bank of 
the Shat-el-Arab (the united stream of 
the Tigris and Euphrates), about 50 
miles from its mouth, and nearly 300 
southeast of Bagdad. Thirty years ago 
the inhabitants were estimated at 5000; 
they are now about 40,000; but in the 
18th century they were said to num¬ 
ber 150,000. The ruins of the ancient 
and more famous Bassora—founded 
by Caliph Omar in 636, at one time 
a center of Arabic literature and learning 
and regarded as “the Athens of the 
East”—lie about 9 miles southwest of 
the modern town. 

BASSWOOD, BASS, the American 
lime-tree or linden, common in North 










BASTARD 


BATES 


America, yielding a light, soft tim* 
ber. 

BASTARD, a child begotten and born 
out of wedlock; an illegitimate child. 
By the civil and canon laws, and by the 
law of Scotland (as well as of some of 
the United States), a bastard becomes 
legitimate by the intermarriage of the 

( jarents at any future time. But by the 
aws of England a child, to be legitimate, 
must at least be born after the lawful 
marriage; it does not require that the 
child shall be begotten in wedlock, but 
it is indispensable that it should be born 
after marriage, no matter how short the 
time, the law presuming it to be the 
child of the husband. The only incapac¬ 
ity of a bastard is that he cannot be 
heir or next of kin to any one save his 
own issue. In England the maintenance 
of a bastard in the first instance devolves 
on the mother, while in Scotland it is a 
joint burden upon both parents. The 
mother is entitled to the custody of the 
child in preference to the father, and 
the father may be required to support 
the child. 

BASTILLE (b&s-tel'), a French name 
for any strong castle provided with 
towers, but as a proper name the state 
rison and citadel of Paris, which was 
uilt about 1370 by Charles V. It was 


the Bastille commenced. Not a vestige 
of it exists, but its site is marked by a 
column in the Place de la Bastille. 

BASTINA'DO, an Eastern method of 
corporal punishment, consisting of blows 
upon the soles of the feet, applied with a 
stick. 

BASUTOLAND, a native province 
and British South African possession, 
inclosed between Orange River Colony, 
Natal, Griqualand East, and Cape 
Colony. The Basutos belong chiefly to 
the great stem of the Bechuanas, and 
have made greater advances in civiliza¬ 
tion than perhaps any other South Afri¬ 
can race. Basutoland has an area of 
about 10,300 sq. miles, much of it cov¬ 
ered with grass, and there is but little 
wood. The climate is pleasant. The 
natives keep cattle, sheep, and horses, 
culitvate the ground, and export grain. 
It is divided into four districts, each 
presided over by a magistrate. Pop. 
(Europ.), 578; (native), 250,000. 

BAT, one of the group of wing-handed, 
flying mammals, having the fore-limb 
peculiarly modified so as to serve for 
flight. Bats are animals of the twilight 
and darkness, and are common in 
temperate and warm regions, but are 
most numerous and largest in the 
tropics. All European bats are small, 



The Bastille, as in time of Louis XV. 


ultimately used chiefly for the confine¬ 
ment of persons of rank who had fallen 
victims to the intrigues of the court or 
the caprice of the government. The 
capture of the Bastille by the Parisian 
mob, 14th July, 1789, was the opening 
act of the revolution. On that date the 
Bastille was surrounded by a tumultuous 
mob, who first attempted to negotiate 
with the governor Delaunay, but, when 
these negotiations failed, began to at¬ 
tack the fortress. For several hours the 
mob continued their siege without being 
able to effect anything more than an 
entrance into the outer court of the 
Bastille; but at last the arrival of some 
of the Royal Guard with a few pieces of 
artillery forced the governor to let down 
the second drawbridge and admit the 
populace. The governor was seized, 
but on the way to the hotel de ville he 
was torn from his captors and put to 
death. The next day the destruction of 


and have a mouse-like skin. The body 
of the largest British species is less than 
that of a mouse, but its wings stretch 
about 15 inches. During the day it re¬ 
mains in caverns, in the crevices of 
ruins, hollow trees, and such-like lurk¬ 
ing-places, and flits out at evening in 
search of food, which consists of insects. 
Several species of the same genus are 
common in North America. Many bats 
are remarkable for having a singular 
nasal cutaneous appendage, bearing in 
some cases a fancied resemblance to a 
horseshoe. Bats may be conveniently 
divided into two sections: the insec¬ 
tivorous or carnivorous, comprising all 
European and most African and Ameri¬ 
can species; and the fruit-eating, be¬ 
longing to tropical Asia and Australia, 
with several African forms. An Aus¬ 
tralian fruit - eating bat, commonly 
known as the kalong or flying-fox, is 
the largest of all the bats; it does much 


mischief in orchards. At least two 
species of South American bats are 
known to suck the blood of other mam¬ 
mals, and thence are called “vampire- 
bats.” As winter approaches, in cold 



Great horseshoe hat. 


climates bats seek shelter in caverns, 
vaults, ruinous and deserted buildings, 
and similar retreats, where they cling 
together in large clusters, hanging head 
downward by the feet; and remain in 
a torpid condition until the returning 
spring recalls them to active exertions. 
Bats generally bring forth two young, 
which, while suckling, remain closely 
attached to the mother’s teats, which 
are two, situated upon the chest. The 
parent shows a strong degree of attach¬ 
ment for her offspring, and, when they 
are captured, will follow them, and even 
submit to captivity herself rather than 
forsake her charge. 

BATA'VIA, a city and seaport of 
Java, on the north coast of the island, 
the capital of all the Dutch East Indies. 
Its inhabitants are chiefly Malay, with 
a considerable admixture of Chinese and 
a small number of Europeans. Pop. 
115,600. 

BATAVIANS, an old German nation 
which inhabited a part of the present 
Holland, especially the island called 
Batavia, formed by that branch of the 
Rhine which empties itself into the sea 
near Leyden, together with the Waal 
and the Meuse. Tacitus asserts them 
to have been a branch of the Catti. 
They were subdued by Germanicus, and 
were granted special privileges for their 
faithful services to the Romans, but 
revolted under Vespasian. They were, 
however, again subjected by Trajan and 
Adrian, and at the end of the 3d cen¬ 
tury the Salian Franks obtained pos¬ 
session of the island of Batavia. 

BATEMAN, Kate Josephine, an Amer¬ 
ican actress, born in Baltimore, 1842, 
and appeared at twenty as Juliet, Julia, 
Pauline, Lady Macbeth, and other tragic 
roles. She visited England in 1863, 
married George Crowe, retired until 
1868, and reappeared as Medea in 1872. 
In 1875 Miss Bateman appeared with 
Irving in Macbeth. 

BATES, Arlo, an American author 
and poet, born in Maine in 1850. He 
has been editor of the Boston Courier 
and professor of English in the Massa¬ 
chusetts Institute of Technology. He 
has published The Pagans, The Wheel 
of Fire, The Philistines, The Puritans, 
and Love in a Cloud. His poems ap¬ 
peared in 1886, 1887, and 1891. 

BATES, Blanche, an American ac¬ 
tress, born at Portland, Oregon, 1873. 
She made her first appearance in San 
Francisco. She has played leading 
parts in The Senator, The Charity Ball, 
A Doll’s House, The Great Ruby, The 





















BATES 


BATTLEMENT 


Three Musketeers, and Under Two 
Flags. 

BATES, Charlotte Fiske, an American 
author, born in New York in 1838. She 
has published several volumes of poetry 
(1879, 1881, and 1882). She married 
(1891) M. Adolphe Roge. 

BATH (bath), a city of England in 
Somersetshire, on the Avon, which is 
navigable for barges from Bristol. Bath 
is remarkable for its medicinal waters, 
the four principal springs yielding no 
less than 184,000 gallons of water a day; 
and the baths are both elegant and 
commodious. The temperature of the 
springs varies from 109° to 117° Fah¬ 
renheit. They contain carbonic acid, 
chloride of sodium and of magnesium, 
sulphate of soda, carbonate and sulphate 
of lime, etc. Pop. 52,75i. 

BATH, a town in Maine, on the west 
side and at the head of the winter navi¬ 
gation of the Kennebec, 12 miles from 
the sea. Chief industries: ship-build¬ 
ing and allied crafts. Pop. 10,477. 

BATH, the immersion of the body in 
water, or an apparatus for this purpose. 
The use of the bath as an institution, 
apart from occasional immersion in 
rivers or the sea, is, as might be antic¬ 
ipated, an exceedingly old custom. 
Homer mentions the bath as one of the 
first refreshments offered to a guest; 
thus, when Ulysses enters the palace of 
Circe, a bath is prepared for him, and 
he is anointed after it with costly per¬ 
fumes. No representation, however, of 
a bath as we understand it is given upon 
the Greek vases, bathers being repre¬ 
sented either simply washing at an ele¬ 
vated basin, or having water poured 
over them from above. In later times, 
rooms, both public and private, were 
built expressly for bathing, the public 
baths of the Greeks being mostly con¬ 
nected with the gymnasia. Apparently, 
by an inversion of the later practice, it 
was customary in the Homeric epoch to 
take first a cold and then a hot bath; 
but the Lacedemonians substituted the 
hot-air sudorific bath, as less enervating 
than warm water, and in Athens at the 
time of Demosthenes and Socrates the 
warm bath was considered by the more 
rigorous as an effeminate custom. With 
respect to modern baths, that commonly 
in use in Russia consists of a single hall, 
built of wood, in the midst of which is a 
powerful metal oven, covered with 
heated stones, and surrounded with 
broad benches, on which the bathers 
take their places. Cold water is then 
poured upon the heated stones, and a 
thick, hot steam rises, which causes the 
sweat to issue from the whole body. 
The bather is then gently whipped with 
wet birch rods, rubbed with soap, 
and washed w’ith luke-warm and cold 
water; of the latter, some pailfuls are 
poured over his head; or else he 
leaps, immediately after this sweating- 
bath, into a river or pond, or rolls in the 
snow. The Turks, by their religion, are 
obliged to make repeated ablutions 
daily, and for this purpose there is, in 
every city, a public bath connected 
with a mosque. A favorite bath among 
them, however, is a modification of the 
hot-air sudorific-bath of the ancients 
introduced under the name of “Turkish” 


into other than Mohammedan countries. 
A regular accompaniment of this bath, 
when properly given, is the operation 
known as “kneading,” generally per¬ 
formed at the close of the sweating 
rocess, after the final rubbing of the 
ather with soap, and consisting in a 
systematic pressing and squeezing of the 
whole body, stretching the limbs, and 
manipulating all the joints as well as 
the fleshy and muscular parts. 

Public free baths have been opened 
in several cities of the United States 
with reasonable success. Public baths 
(for the payment of a fee) are operated 
in all the cities of America, and some of 
them are superior to the best establish¬ 
ments in Europe. The Sutro baths at 
the Cliff House in San Francisco, which 
were not damaged by the recent earth¬ 
quake, are the finest baths in the world, 
surpassing in size and luxury the 
greatest of the ancient Roman baths. 
Balt water is let in directly from the 
Pacific Ocean and a huge amphitheater 
seating several thousand spectators 
surrounds the pools. The most famous 
bathing springs in America are those at 
Hot Springs, Ark., and Mount Clemens, 
Mich., which are regarded as a cure for 
rheumatism and other diseases. 

BA'THOS, a Greek word meaning 
depth, now used to signify a ludicrous 
sinking from the elevated to the mean 
in writing or speech. First used in this 
sense by Pope. 

BATHYB'IUS, the name given by 
Huxley to what was regarded as masses 
of animal matter found covering the sea- 
bottom at great depths, and in such 
abundance as to form in some places 
deposits of 30 feet or more in thickness. 
It has been described as a tenacious, 
viscid, slimy substance, exhibiting under 
the microscope a network of granular, 
mucilaginous matter, which expands 
and contracts spontaneously, and thus 
forms an organism of the utmost sim¬ 
plicity corresponding in every respect 
to protoplasm. But the existence of 
such a substance has been a matter of 
dispute among scientists. 

BA'TON, a short staff or truncheon, 
in some cases used as an official badge, 
as that of a field-marshal. The conduc¬ 
tor of an orchestra has a baton for the 
purpose of directing the performers as 
to time, etc. 

BAT'ON ROUGE (rozh;, the capital 
of Louisiana, on the left bank of the 
Mississippi, with an arsenal, barracks, 
military hospital, state-house, state 
university, etc. On Aug. 5, 1862, the 
Confederates under General Brecken- 
ridge suffered a severe defeat before it. 
Pop. 12,000. 

BATRACHIANS (ba-tra'ki-anz), the 
fourth order in Cuvier’s arrangement 
of the class Reptilia, comprising frogs, 
toads, newts, salamanders, and sirens. 
The term is now often employed as 
synonymous with amphibia, but is more 
usually restricted to the order Anura 
or tailless amphibia. 

BATTAL'ION, the tactical unit of 
command in infantry, supposed to be of 
the maximum strength to be efficiently 
handled by one officer. 

BATTERING-RAM, an engine for 
battering down the walls of besieged 
places. The ancients employed two 


different engines of this kind—one sus¬ 
pended in a frame, the other movable 
on wheels or rollers. They consisted of 
a beam or spar with a massive metal 
head, and were set in motion either by 
a direct application of manual force or 



Battering-ram. 


by means of cords passing over pulleys. 
Some are said to have been 120 feet or 
more in length, and to have been worked 
by 100 men. One is described as being 
180 feet long, and having a head weigh¬ 
ing 1£ tons. They were generally 
covered with a roof or screen for the 
protection of the workers. 

BAT'TERSEA, a municipal borough 
of London, in Surrey. Pop. in 1901, 
168,896. 

BAT'TERY, as a military term, (1) 
any number of guns grouped in position 
for action; (2) any work constructed as 
a position for such guns; (3) the tactical 
unit of field-artillery, more properly 
described as a field-battery. 

BATTERY, in physics, a combination 
of several jars or metallic plates, to in¬ 
crease the effect of electricity and gal¬ 
vanism. 

BATTERY, in criminal law, an assault 
by beating or wounding another. The 
least touching or meddling with the 
erson of another against his will may 
e held to constitute a battery. 

BATTERY, The, a small park at the 
extreme southern point of Manhattan 
(New York City), which was formerly 
in Dutch times a fortified place. In 
early New York the Battery was the 
most aristocratic residence portion of 
the city. 

BATTLE-AX, a weapon much used 
in war in the early part of the middle 
ages among knights. It is a weapon 
which affords hardly any guard, and 
the heavier the blow given with it the 
more the fighter is exposed; but its use 
was to some extent necessitated by the 
resistance of iron armor to all but 
heavy blows. In England and Scotland 
the battle-ax was much employed, the 
Lochaber-ax remaining a formidable 
implement of destruction in the hands 
of the Highlanders to a recent period. 

BATTLE CREEK, a town in Michigan, 
at the j'unction of the Kalamazoo and 
Battle Creek, with a college, and manu¬ 
factures of agricultural implements, 
health foods, etc. Pop. 20,000. 

BAT'TLEMENT, a notched or in¬ 
dented parapet of a fortification, formed 
by a series of raised parts called cops or 
merlons, separated by openings called 
crenelles or embrasures, the soldier 
sheltering himself behind the merlon 
while he fires through the embrasure. 
Battlements were originally military, 
but were afterward used freely in 
ecclesiastical and civil buildings by way 
of ornament, on parapets, cornices, 
tabernacle work, etc. 








BAUXITE 


BAYONET 


BAUXITE (bak'sit), a clay found at 
Baux, near Arles in France, and ex¬ 
ported from the north of Ireland, con¬ 
taining a large proportion of alumina, 
and used as a lining for furnaces that 
have to support an intense heat, and 
as a source of aluminium. 

BAVA'RIA, a kingdom in the south 
of Germany, the second largest state 
of the empire, composed of two isolated 
portions, the larger comprising about 
eleven-twelfths of the monarchy, having 
the Austrian territories on the east, and 
Wtirtemberg, Baden, etc., on the west, 
while the smaller portion, the Pfalz or 
Palatinate, is separated from the other 
by Wtirtemberg and Baden, and lies 
west of the Rhine; total area, 29,657 
sq. miles. The main political divisions 
are: Upper Bavaria (pop. 1,319,985; 
chief town, Munich, the capital of the 
kingdom, pop. 499,959); Lower Bavaria 
(677,973); Palatinate (830,948); Upper 
Palatinate and Regensburg (555,204); 
Upper Franconia (607,308); Middle 
Franconia (814,294); Lower Franconia 
and Aschaffenburg (650,624); Schwaben 
and Neuburg (712,056); total 6,168,392. 

As regards soil Bavaria is one of the 
most fertile countries in Germany, pro¬ 
ducing the various cereals in abundance, 
the best hops in Germany, fruit, wine, 
tobacco, etc., and having extensive 
forests. Lower Franconia (the Main 
valley) and the Palatinate are the great 
vine-growing districts. The celebrated 
Steinwein and Leistenwein are the 
produce of the slopes of the Steinberg 
and Marienberg at Wurzburg (on the 
Main). The forests of Bavaria, chiefly 
fir and pine, yield a large revenue; much 
timber being annually exported, to¬ 
gether with potash, tar, turpentine, 
etc. The principal mineral products are 
salt, coal, and iron, some of the mining 
works belonging to the state. The 
minerals worked include copper, quick¬ 
silver, manganese, cobalt, porcelain 
clay, alabaster, graphite. Large num¬ 
bers of horses and cattle are reared, as 
also sheep and swine. The manufac¬ 
tures are individually mostly on a small 
scale. The principal articles manu¬ 
factured are linens, woolens, cottons, 
leather, paper, glass, earthen and iron 
ware, jewelry, etc. The optical and 
mathematical instruments made are 
excellent. A most important branch of 
industry is the brewing of beer, for 
which there are upward of 7000 estab¬ 
lishments, producing over 260 millions 
of gallons a year. 

Education is in a less satisfactory 
condition than in most German states. 
There are about 7000 elementary schools, 
on which attendance is compulsory up 
to fourteen years of age. There are 
three universities, two of which (Munich 
and Wurzburg) are Roman Catholic, 
and one (Erlangen) Protestant. In art 
Bavaria is best known as the home of 
the Niirnberg school, founded about the 
middle of the 16th century by Albert 
Diirer. Hans Holbein is also claimed 
as a Bavarian; and to these have to be 
added the eminent sculptors Kraft and 
Vischer, both born about the middle of 
the 15th century. The restoration of 
the reputation of Bavaria in art was 
chiefly the work of Ludwig I., under 
whom the capital became one of the 


most prominent seats of the fine arts in 

Europe. 

The Bavarian crown is hereditary in 
the male line. The executive is in the 
hands of the king. The legislature 
consists of two chambers. 

The Bavarians take their name from 
the Boii, a Celtic tribe whose territory 
was occupied by a confederation of 
Germanic tribes, called after their pred¬ 
ecessors Boiarii. These were made 
tributary first to the Ostrogoths, and 
then to the Franks; and on the death of 
Charlemagne his successors governed 
the country by lieutenants with the 
title of margrave, afterward converted 
(in 921) into that of duke. In 1070 
Bavaria passed to the family of the 
Guelphs, and in 1180 by imperial grant 
to Otho, count of Wittelsbach, founder 
of the still reigning dynasty. In 1623 
the reigning duke was made one of the 
electors of the empire. Elector Maxi¬ 
milian II. joined in the war of the 
Spanish succession on the side of France, 
and this led, after the battle of Blenheim, 
1704, to the loss of his dominions for 
the next ten years. His son, Charles 
Albert, likewise lost his dominions for 
a time to Austria, but they were all re¬ 
covered again by Charles’s son, Maxi¬ 
milian III. (1745). In the wars follow¬ 
ing the French revolution Bavaria was 
in a difficult position between France 
and Austria, but latterly joined Napo¬ 
leon, from whom its elector Maximilian 
IV. received the title of king (1805), a 
title afterward confirmed by the 
treaties of 1814 and 1815. King Maxi¬ 
milian I. was succeeded by his son, 
Ludwig (or Louis) I., under whom 
various circumstances helped to quicken 
a desire for political change. Reform 
being refused, tumults arose in 1848, 
and Ludwig resigned in favor of his son, 
Maximilian II., under whom certain 
modifications of the constitution were 
carried out. At his death in 1864 he 
was succeeded by Ludwig II. In the 
war of 1866 Bavaria sided with Austria, 
and was compelled to cede a small 
portion of its territory to Prussia, and 
to pay a war indemnity of $12,500,000. 
Soon after Bavaria entered into an 
alliance with Prussia, and in 1867 joined 
the Zollverein. In the Franco-German 
war of 1870-71 the Bavarians took a 
prominent part, and it was at the re¬ 
quest of the King of Bavaria, on behalf 
of all the other princes and the senates 
of the free cities of Germany, that the 
King of Prussia agreed to accept the 
title of Emperor of Germany. Since 
Jan., 1871, Bavaria has been a part of 
the German Empire, and is represented 
in the Bundesrath by six, and in the 
Reichstag by forty-eight members. 
The eccentricity early displayed by 
Ludwig II. developed to such an extent 
that in June, 1886, he was placed under 
control, and a regency established under 
Prince Liutpold (Leopold). The change 
was almost immediately followed by 
the suicide of the king, and as Prince 
Otto, the brother and heir of the late 
king, was insane, the regency was con¬ 
tinued. 

BAY, in geography, an indentation of 
some size into the shore of a sea or lake, 
generally said to be one with a wider 
entrance than a gulf. 


BAYARD, Thomas Francis, an Ameri¬ 
can diplomat and statesman, born in 
Wilmington, Del., 1828, died 1898. He 
was early engaged in commerce, but 
later studied law, and began practice in 
1851. In 1869 he became U. S. senator, 
and represented Delaware in the senate 
until he became secretary of state in 
Cleveland’s first cabinet. He was sev¬ 
eral times an unsuccessful candidate for 
nomination to the presidency in demo¬ 
cratic national conventions, and was 
appointed ambassador to England by 
Cleveland in 1893, serving until 1897. 
He was given the degree of Doctor of 
Civil Law by both Oxford and Cam¬ 
bridge Universities. 

BAYARD (b&-yar), Pierre du Terrail, 
Seigneur de, the Chevalier sans peur et 
sans reproche (knight without fear and 
without reproach), born in 1476 in Castle 
Bayard, near Grenoble, in southern 
France. At the age of eighteen he 
accompanied Charles VIII. to Italy, and 
in the battle at Verona took a standard. 
When Francis I. ascended the throne he 
sent Bayard into Dauphine to open a 
passage over the Alps and through Pied¬ 
mont. Prosper Colonna lay in wait for 
him, but was made prisoner by Bayard, 
who immediately after further dis¬ 
tinguished himself in the battle of 
Marignano. After his defense of M6z- 
ieres against the invading army of 
Charles V. he was saluted in Paris as the 
savior of his country, receiving the 
honor paid to a prince of the blood. 
His presence reduced the revolted 
Genoese to obedience, but failed to pre¬ 
vent the expulsion of the French after 
the capture of Lodi. In the retreat the 
safety of the army was committed to 
Bayard, who, however, was mortally 
wounded by a stone from a blunderbuss 
in protecting the passage of the Sesia. 
He kissed the cross of his sword, con¬ 
fessed to his squire, and died, April 30, 
1524. He was buried in a church of the 
Minorites, near Grenoble. 

BAY CITY, a city in Michigan on the 
e. side of Saginaw river, near its mouth 
in Saginaw Bay, Lake Huron. Chief 
articles of trade, lumber and salt. Pop. 
30,000. 

BAYEUX TAPESTRY, so called be¬ 
cause it was originally found in the 
cathedral of Bayeux, in the public 
library of which town it is still pre¬ 
served. It is supposed to have been 
worked by Matilda, queen of William 
the Conqueror, and to have been pre¬ 
sented by Odo, bishop of Bayeux, the 
half-brother of William, to the church 
in which it was found. It is 214 feet in 
length and 20 inches in breadth, and is 
divided into seventy-two compart¬ 
ments, the subject of each scene being 
indicated by a Latin inscription These 
scenes give a pictorial history of the in¬ 
vasion and conquest of England by the 
Normans, beginning with Harold’s visit 
to the Norman court, and ending with 
his death at Hastings. 

BAYNES (banz), Thomas Spencer, 
LL.D., born at Wellington, Somerset, 
in 1823, died suddenly in London, 1887. 
In 1873 he became editor of the ninth 
edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. 

BAY'ONET, a straight, sharp-pointed 
weapon, generally triangular, intended 
to be fixed upon the muzzle of a rifle or 





BAYONNE CITY 


BEACON SFIELD 





musket, which is thus transformed into 
a thrusting weapon: probably invented 
about 1640, in Bayonne. About 1690 
the bayonet began to be fastened by 
means of a socket to the outside of the 
barrel, instead of being inserted as for¬ 
merly in the inside. A variety of the 
bayonet, called the sword-bayonet, is 
bow pretty widely used in European 
armies, especially for the short rifles of 
the light infantry, the carbines of the 
artillery, etc. 


German war, when he capitulated at 
Metz, after a seven weeks’ siege, with 
an army of 175,000 men. For this act 
he was tried by court-martial in 1871, 
found guilty of treason, and condemned 
to death. This sentence was commuted 
to twenty years’ seclusion in the Isle St. 
Marguerite, from which he escaped and 
retired to Spain. 

BAZAR', or BAZAAR', in the East an 
exchange, market-place, or place where 
goods are exposed for sale, usually con¬ 


BEACON (be'kon), an object visible 
to some distance, and serving to notify 
the presence of danger: commonly 
applied to a fire-signal set on a height to 
spread the news of hostile invasion or 
other great event; and also applied to a 
mark or object of some kind placed con¬ 
spicuously on a coast or over a rock or 
shoal at sea for the guidance of vessels, 
often an iron structure of considerable 
height. 

BEACONSFIELD, Benjamin Disraeli, 
Earl of, an eminent English statesman 
and novelist, of Jewish extraction; 
eldest son of Isaac D’lsraeli, author of 
the Curiosities of Literature; born in 
London in 1804, died there in 1881, 
buried at Hughenden. In 1826 he pub¬ 
lished Vivian Grey, his first novel; and 
subsequently traveled for some time, 
visiting Italy, Greece, Turkey, and 
Syria, and gaining experiences which 
were afterward reproduced in his books. 
His travels and impressions are em¬ 
bodied in a volume of letters addressed 
to his sister and his father. In 1837 he 
gained an entrance to the House of 
Commons, being elected for Maidstone. 
His first speech in the house was treated 
with ridicule; but he finished with the 
prophetic declaration that the time 


Lord Beaconsfield. 

would come when they would hear him. 
During his first years in parliament he 
was a supporter of Peel; but when Peel 
pledged himself to abolish the corn-laws 
Disraeli became the leader of the pro¬ 
tectionists. Having acquired the manor 
of Hughenden in Buckinghamshire, he 
was in 1847 elected for this county, and 
he retained his seat till raised to the 
peerage nearly thiry years later. His 
first appointment to office was in 1852, 
when he became chancellor of the ex¬ 
chequer under Lord Derby. The fol¬ 
lowing year, however, the ministry was 
defeated. He remained out of office 
till 1858, when he again became chan¬ 
cellor of the exchequer, and brought in 
a reform bill which wrecked the govern¬ 
ment. During the time the Palmer¬ 
ston government was in office Mr. 
Disraeli led the opposition in the lower 
house with conspicuous ability and 
courage. In 1866 the Liberals resigned, 
and Derby and Disraeli came into power, 
the latter being again chancellor of the 
exchequer. They immediately brought 
in, and carried, after a violent and bitter 
struggle, a Reform Bill on the basis of 
household suffrage. In 1868 he became 

S remier on the resignation of Lord 
>erby, but his tenure of office was short* 


The coronation of Harold—Men wonder at the star—Harold on the throne. 


The battle of Hastings—Portion of the Bayeux tapestry. 
BAYEUX TAPESTRY. 


BAYONNE CITY, a city in Hudson 
Co., New' Jersey. Pop. 32,722. 

BAYOU (ba-yo'), in the S. States, a 
stream which flows from a lake or other 
stream: frequently used as synonymous 
with creek or tidal channel. 

BAY RUM, a spirit obtained by dis¬ 
tilling the leaves of Myrica acris, or 
other West Indian trees of the same 
genus. It is used for toilet purposes, 
and as a liniment in rheumatic affec¬ 
tions. 

BAY-SALT, a general term for coarse¬ 
grained salt, but properly applied to 
salt obtained by spontaneous or natural 
evaporation of sea-water in large 
shallow tanks or bays. 

BAY-WINDOW, a window forming a 
recess or bay in a room, projecting out- 
W'ard, and rising from the ground or 
basement on a plan rectangular, semi- 
octagonal, or semi-hexagonal, but al¬ 
ways straight-sided. The term is, how¬ 
ever, also often employed to designate 
a bow-window, which more properly 
forms the segment of a circle, and an 
oriel-wundow, which is supported on a 
kind of bracket, and is usually on the 
first floor. 

BAZAINE (bi-zan), Francis Achille, 
French general, b. 1811, d. 1888. He 
served in Algeria, in Spain against the 
Carlists, in the Crimean war, and joined 
the Mexican expedition as general of 
division in 1862, and in 1864 was made 
a marshal of France. He commanded 
the third army corps in the Franco- 


sisting of small shops or stalls in a nar¬ 
row street or series of streets. These 
bazar-streets are frequently shaded by 
a light material laid from roof to roof, 
and sometimes are arched over. Marts 
for the sale of miscellaneous articles, 
chiefly fancy goods, are now to be found 


The great bazar, Constantinople, 
in most European cities bearing the 
name of bazars. The term bazar is also 
applied to a sale of miscellaneous 
articles, mostly of fancy work, and con¬ 
tributed gratuitously, in furtherance of 
some charitable or other purpose. 



















































BEAD 


BEARING 


In 1874 he again became prime-minister 
with a strong Conservative majority, 
and he remained in power for six years. 
This period was marked by his elevation 
to the peerage in 1876 as Earl of Beacons- 
field, and by the prominent part he 
took in regard to the Eastern question 
and the conclusion of the Treaty of 
Berlin in 1878. In 1880 parliament was 
rather suddenly dissolved, and, the new 
parliament showing an overwhelming 
Liberal majority, he resigned office, 
though he still retained the leadership 
of his party. Within a few months of 
his death the publication of a novel 
called Endymion (his last, Lothair, had 
been published ten years before) showed 
that his intellect was still vigorous. 

BEAD (bed), originally a prayer; 
then a small perforated ball of gold, 
pearl, amber, glass, or the like, to be- 
strung on a thread, and used in a rosary 
by Roman Catholics in numbering their 
prayers, one bead being passed at the 
end of each ejaculation or short prayer. 

BEAD-SNAKE, a beautiful snake of 
North America, inhabiting cultivated 
grounds, especially plantations of the 
sweet-potato, and burrowing in the 
ground. It is finely marked with yellow, 
carmine, and black. Though it pos¬ 
sesses poison-fangs it never seems to use 
them. 

BEAGLE (be'gl), a small hound, for¬ 
merly kept to hunt hares, now almost 
superseded by the harrier, which some¬ 
times is called by its name. The beagle 
is smaller than the harrier, compactly 
built, smooth-haired, and with pendu¬ 
lous ears. The smallest of them are 
little larger than the lap-dog. 

BEAM, a long straight and strong 
piece of wood, iron, or steel, especially 
when holding an important place in 
some structure, and serving for support 
or consolidation; often equivalent to 
girder. In a balance it is the part from 
the ends of which the scales are sus¬ 
pended. In a loom it is a cylindrical 
piece of wood on which weavers wind 
the warp before weaving; also, the 
cylinder on which the cloth is rolled as it 
is woven. In a ship one of the strong 
transverse pieces stretching across from 
one side to the other to support the 
decks and retain the sides at their 

roper distance; hence a ship is said to 
e “on her beam ends” when lying over 
on her side. 

BEAN, a name given to several kinds 
of leguminous seeds and the plants 
producing them. The common bean 
is cultivated both in fields and gardens 
as food for man and beast. Beans are 
very nutritious, containing 36 per cent 
of starch and 23 per cent of nitrogenous 
matter called legumin, analogous to the 
casein in cheese. The bean is an annual 
from 2 to 4 feet high. The flowers are 
beautiful and fragrant. The kidney- 
bean, French bean, or haricot is a well- 
known culinary vegetable. There are 
two principal varieties, annual dwarfs 
and runners. The scarlet-runner bean, 
a native of Mexico, is cultivated on 
account of its long rough pods and its 
scarlet flowers. 

BEAR, the name of several large 
carnivorous mammals. The teeth are 
forty-two in number, as in the dog, but 
there is no carnassial or sectorial tooth, 
and the molars have a more tubercular 


character than in other carnivores. 
The eyes have a nictitating membrane, 
the nose is prominent and mobile, and 
the tail very short. The true bears are 
about ten in number, natives chiefly 
of Europe, Asia, and N. America. They 
generally lie dormant injtheir den during 



Brown bear. 

the winter months. The brow T n or 
black bear is a native of almost all the 
northern parts of Europe and Asia, 
and was at one time common in the 
British islands. It feeds on fruits, 
roots, honey, ants, and, in case of need, 
on mammals. It sometimes reaches 
the length of 7 feet, the largest speci- 



Grizzly bear. 


mens being found farthest to the north. 
It lives solitarily. The American black 
bear, with black shining hair, is ranly 
above 5 feet in length. It is a great 
climber, is less dangerous than the brown 
bear, and is hunted for its fur and flesh. 
It is very amusing in captivity. The 
grizzly bear is an inhabitant of the 



Polar bear. 


Rocky Mountains; it is a ferocious 
animal, sometimes 9 feet in length, and i 
has a bulky and unwieldy form, but 
is nevertheless capable of great rapidity 
of motion. The extinct cave-bear 
seems to have been closely akin to the 
grizzly. The Siberian bear is perhaps 


a variety of the brown bear. The polar 
or white bear is an animal possessed of 
great strength and fierceness. It lives 
in the polar regions, frequents the sea, 
feeds on fish, seals, etc., and usually is 
7 to 8 feet in length. The Malayan or 
coconut palm bear is perhaps the 
smallest of the bears. It inhabits 
Cochin-China, Nepaul, the Sunda Is¬ 
lands, etc., lives exclusively on vegetable 
food, and is an expert climber. It is 
called also sun-bear and bruang. The 
Indian black bear or sloth-bear of 
India and Ceylon is reputed to be a 
fierce and dangerous animal. 

BEAR, Great and Little, the popular 
name of two constellations in the north¬ 
ern hemisphere. The Great Bear (Ursa 
Major) is situated near the pole. It is 
remarkable for its well-known seven 
stars, by two of w r hich, called the Point¬ 
ers, the pole-star is always readily 
found. The Little Bear (Ursa Minor) is 
the constellation which contains the 
pole-star. This constellation has seven 
stars placed together in a manner re¬ 
sembling those in the Great Bear. 

BEAR-BAITING, the sport of baiting 
bears with dogs, formerly one of the 
established amusements, not only of the 
common people, but of the nobility and 
even royalty itself. The places where 
bears were publicly baited were called 
bear-gardens. 

BEARD, the hair round the chin, on 
the cheeks, and the upper lip, which is 
a distinction of the male sex and of man¬ 
hood. It differs from the hair on the 
head by its greater hardness and its 
form. Some nations have hardly any, 
others a great profusion. The latter 
generally consider it as a great orna¬ 
ment; the former pluck it out; as, for 
instance, the American Indians. The 
beard has often been considered as a 
mark of the sage and the priest. Moses 
forbade the Jews to shave their beards. 
With the ancient Germans the cutting 
off another’s beard was a high offense. 
Even now the beard is regarded as a 
mark of great dignity among many 
nations in the East, as the Turks. Alex¬ 
ander the Great introduced shaving 
among the Greeks, by ordering his 
soldiers to wear no beards; among the 
Romans it was introduced in b.c. 296. 
The custom of shaving is said to have 
come into use in modern times during 
the reigns of Louis XIII. and XIV. of 
France, both of whom ascended the 
throne without a beard. Till then 
fashion had given divers forms of mous¬ 
taches and beards. It is only in com¬ 
paratively recent times that beards and 
moustaches have again become common. 

BEARD, George Miller, an American 
physician, born in Connecticut in 1839. 
He is known for several works dealing 
with the nervous system. Died 1883. 

BEARD, James Henry, an American 
artist, born at Buffalo in 1814. He 
painted portraits of Clay, J. Q. Adams, 
William Henry Harrison, President 
Taylor, and others, and a number of 
pictures, among which are The Long 
Bill, Out All Night, and The Land 
I Speculator. He died in 1893. 

BEARING, the direction or point of 
the compass in which an object is seen, 
or the situation of one object in regard 
to another, with reference to the points 
of the compass. Thus, if from a certain 








BEAR’S-GREASE 


BEAVER 


situation an object is seen in the direc¬ 
tion of northeast, the bearing of the 
object is said to be n.e. from the situa¬ 
tion.—To take bearings, to ascertain 
•on what point of the compass objects 
lie. 

BEAR’S-GREASE, the fat of bears 
esteemed as of great efficacy in nourish¬ 
ing and promoting the growth of hair. 
The ungents sold under this name, 
however, are in a great measure made 
of hog’s lard or veal fat, or a mixture of 
both, scented and slightly colored. 

BEARDSLEY, Aubrey, a British 
artist who gained reputation about 1892 
by his fantastic studies in highly con¬ 
trasted black and white. He was born 
in 1S74 and died in 1898. 

BEAT, in music, the beating or pulsa¬ 
tion resulting from the joint vibrations 
of two sounds of the same strength, and 
all but in unison. Also a short shake or 
transient grace-note struck immediately 
before the note it is intended to orna¬ 
ment. 

BEATIFICATION, in the Roman 
Catholic Church, an act by which the 

E ope declares a person beatified or 
lessed after his death. It is the first 
step to canonization, that is, the raising 
one to the honor and dignity of a saint. 
No person can be beatified till fifty years 
after his or her death. All certificates or 
attestations of virtues and miracles, the 
necessary qualifications for saintship, 
are examined by the congregation of 
Rites. This examination often con¬ 
tinues for several years; after which his 
holiness decrees the beatification, and 
the corpse and relics of the future 
saint are exposed to the veneration of 
all good Christians. 

BEATRICE PORTINARI (ba-a-tre'- 
cha por-te-na're), the poetical idol of 
Dante; born about 1266, died 1290; 
the daughter of a wealthy citizen of 
Florence, and wife of Simone de Bardi. 
She was but eight years of age, and 
Dante nine, when he met her first at the 
house of her father. He altogether saw 
her only once or twice, and she probably 
knew little of him. The story of his love 
is recounted in the Vita Nuova, which 
was mostly written after her death. 

BEAUFORT SCALE, a measure of 
the velocity of the wind, taking its 
name from Admiral Beaufort, who intro¬ 
duced it into the British Navy. The 
following table indicates the value, in 
miles per hour, of the terms used in the 
scale: 


Designation of Wind. 

Approximate 

Wind Velocity 
in Miles per 
Hour. 

Calm.. 

3 or less 

Light air... . 

8 ‘ 


Light breeze... 

IS • 


Gentle “ .. 

18 ‘ 


Moderate “ . 

23 ‘ 


Fresh “ . 

28 ‘ 


Strong “ .. . 

34 • 


Moderate gale. 

40 1 


Fresh “ . 

48 * 


Strong “ . 

50 ‘ 


Whole “ 

65 ‘ 


Storm “ . 

75 ‘ 


Hurricane “ . 

60 4 



BEAUHARNAIS (bo-ar-na), Alexan¬ 
dre, Viscount, was born in 1760 in 
Martinique. He married Josephine 
Tascher de la Pagerie, who was after¬ 
ward the wife of Napoleon. At the 
P. E.—9 


breaking out of the French revolution 
he was chosen a member of the National 
Assembly, of which he was for some 
time president. In 1792 he was general 
of the army of the Rhine. He was 
falsely accused of having promoted the 
surrender of Mainz, and was sentenced 
to death July 23, 1794. 

BEAUHARNAIS, Eugene de, Duke of 
Leuchtenberg, Prince of Eichstadt, and 
Viceroy of Italy during the reign of 
Napoleon, was born 1781, died at Mu¬ 
nich 1824. He was the son of Alexandre 
Beauharnais and Josephine, afterward 
wife of Napoleon and Empress of France. 
He accompanied Napoleon to Egypt in 
1798; rose rapidly in the army; was ap¬ 
pointed viceroy of Italy in 1805; and 
married a daughter of the King of 
Bavaria in 1806. To him and to Ney 
France was mainly indebted for the 
preservation of the remains of her army 
during the retreat from Moscow. After 
the battle of Liitzen of May 2, 1813, 
where, by surrounding the right wing 
of the enemy, he decided the fate of the 
day, he went to Italy, which he de¬ 
fended against the Austrians until the 
deposition of Napoleon. After the fall 
of Napoleon he concluded an armistice, 
by which he delivered Lombardy and 
all Upper Italy to the Austrians. He 
then went immediately to Paris, and 
thence to his father-in-law at Munich, 
where he afterward resided.—His sister 
Hortense Eugenie, Queen of Holland, 
was born in 1783, died in 1837. She 
became Queen of Holland by marrying 
Louis Bonaparte, and after Louis’s 
abdication of the throne she lived apart 
from him. She wrote several excellent 
songs, and composed some deservedly 
popular airs. Napoleon III. was her 
third and youngest son. 

BEAUMARCHAIS (bo-mar-sha), 
Pierre Augustin Caron de, a French 
wit and dramatist, was born at Paris 
in 1732, died 1799. He early gave 
striking proofs of his mechanical and 
also of his musical talents; attained 
proficiency as a player on the guitar 
and harp, and was appointed harp- 
master to the daughters of Louis XV. 
In the meantime he occupied himself 
with literature, and published two 
dramas—Eugenie in 1767 and Les Deux 
Amis in 1770. He first really dis¬ 
tinguished himself by his Memoires 
(Paris, 1774), or statements in connec¬ 
tion with a lawsuit, which by their wit, 
satire, and liveliness entertained all 
France. The Barber of Seville (1775) 
and the Marriage of Figaro (1784) have 
given him a permanent reputation. 

BEAUMONT (bo'mont), Francis, and 
FLETCHER, John, two eminent English 
dramatic writers, contemporaries of 
Shakespeare, and the most famous of 
literary partners. The former was born 
at Grace-Dieu, in Leicestershire, in 
1584; died in 1616, and was buried in 
Westminster Abbey. — John Fletcher 
was bom at Rye, Sussex, in 1579. He 
died in London of the plague, August, 
1625, and was buried at St. Saviour’s, 
Southwark. The friendship of Beaumont 
and Fletcher, like their literary partner¬ 
ship, was singularly close; they lived in 
the same house, and are said to have 
even had their clothes in common. The 
works that pass under their names con¬ 


sist of over fifty plays, a masque, and 
some minor poems. It is believed that 
all the minor poems except one were 
written by Beaumont. After the death 
of Beaumont, Fletcher continued to 
write plays alone or with other drama¬ 
tists. It is now difficult, if not indeed 
impossible, to determine with certainty 
the respective shares of the two poets 
in the plays passing under their names. 

BEAUMONT, William, an American 
surgeon, born in Connecticut in 1785, 
died 1853. He was the first to publish 
the digestive power of the stomach 
through observations made on the 
stomach of Alexis St. Martin, an open¬ 
ing into which had been made by a 
bullet wound which never healed. 
Beaumont’s observations, even yet, 
are regarded as authoritative. 

BEAUREGARD (bo're-gard), Peter 
Gustavus Toutant, a general of the Con¬ 
federate troops in the American civil 
war; born in 1818 near New Orleans. 
He studied at the military academy, 



P. G. T. Beauregard. 


West Point, and left it as artillery 
lieutenant in 1838. He served in the 
Mexican war, and on the outbreak of 
the civil war joined the Confederates. 
He commanded at the bombardment of 
Fort Sumter, gained the battle of Bull 
Run, lost that of Shiloh, assisted in the 
defense of Charleston, and aided Lee in 
that of Richmond. He was regarded 
as one of the greatest if not the greatest 
of Confederate generals. He died in 1893. 

BEAVER, a rodent quadruped, about 
2 feet in length exclusive of the tail, at 
one time common in the northern 
regions of both hemispheres, but now 
found in considerable numbers only in 
North America, living in colonies, but 
occurring solitary in central Europe and 
Asia. It has short ears, a blunt nose, 
small fore-feet, large webbed hind-feet, 
with a flat ovate tail covered with scales 
on its upper surface. It is valued for its 
fur, which used to be largely employed 
in the manufacture of hats, but for 
which silk is now for the most part sub¬ 
stituted, and for an odoriferous secre¬ 
tion named castor, at one time in high 
repute, and still largely used in some 
parts of the wor cl as an anti-spasmodic 
medicine. The food of the beaver con¬ 
sists of the bark of trees, leaves, roots, 
and berries. Their favorite haunts are 
rivers and lakes which are bordered by 
forests. In winter they live in houses, 
which are 3 to 4 feet high, are built on 
the water’s edge, and being substantial 
























BEAVER FALLS 


BEE 


structures with the entrance under 
water afford them protection from 
wolves and other wild animals. These 
dwellings are called beaver “lodges,” 
and accommodate a single family. They 
also live in burrows. They can gnaw 



Beaver. 


through large trees with their strong 
teeth, this being done partly to obtain 
food, partly to get materials for houses 
or dam-building. When they find a 
stream not sufficiently deep for their 
purpose they throw across it a dam 
constructed with great ingenuity of wood, 
stones, and mud. 

BEAVER FALLS, a town in Beaver 
Co., Pennsylvania, 31 miles northwest of 
Pittsburg; on the Beaver river, near its 
confluence with the Ohio, and on rail¬ 
roads of the Pennsylvania and Erie 
systems. Pop. 12,000. 

BEBEL, Ferdinand August, a German 
socialist, born at Cologne in 1840. In 
1867 he, as a turner, joined in the labor 
agitation, and was one of the founders 
of the social democratic party in 1869. 
He was imprisoned (1872) for treason 
against the Kingdom of Saxony and of 
Rse majesti against the emperor. Since 
1871 he has been a member of the Ger¬ 
man Reichstag. He has written several 
widely known works on socialism. 

BECHUANAS, BETCHUANAS (bech- 
wan'az), a widely spread race of people 
inhabiting the central region of South 
Africa north of Cape Colony. They be¬ 
long to the great Kaffir stem, and are 
divided into tribal sections. They live 
chiefly by husbandry and cattle rearing, 
and they work with some skill in iron, 
copper, ivory, and skins. They were 
led to seek British protection owing to 
the encroachments of the Boers. The 
southern portion of their territory was 
first placed under British protection in 
1885, and subsequently the whole 
Bechuana country up to the Zambesi 
was annexed. In 1895 the southern 
portion (then a crown colony) was 
united to the Cape Colony ; the remain¬ 
der is still a protectorate partly under 
the rule of native chiefs. The area is 
about 386,000 sq. miles. Bechuanaland 
lies between the Transvaal and Matabele- 
land on the east and the German terri¬ 
tory on the west. It is generally speak¬ 
ing flat or only slightly undulating, and 
is essentially a grass country, all the 
grasses being of a substantial and nutri¬ 
tious quality which stands well against 
drought. Surface water is scarce, but 
there is abundance underground which 
yet may be turned to account. Some 
parts are wooded and well watered. 
Gold, coal, and copper have been 
found. 

BECK'ET, Thomas (the form k Beck- 
et is also common), archbishop of Can¬ 
terbury, born in London 1117 or 1119, 
assassinated in Canterbury Cathedral, 


29th Dec., 1170. In 1158 Henry II. 
appointed him high-chancellor and pre¬ 
ceptor to his son, Prince Henry—the 
first instance after the Conquest of a 
high office being filled by a native Eng¬ 
lishman. At this period he was a com¬ 
plete courtier, conforming in every 
respect to the humor of the king. He 
was, in fact, the king’s prime companion, 
held splendid levees, and courted popu¬ 
lar applause. On the death of Theobald, 
1162, he was consecrated archbishop, 
when he affected an extraordinary 
austerity of character, and appeared as 
a zealous champion of the church against 
the aggressions of the king, whose policy 
was to have the clergy in subordination 
to the civil power. Becket was forced 
to assent to the “Constitutions of Clar¬ 
endon,” but a series of bitter conflicts 
with the king followed, ending in 
Becket’s flight to France, when he ap¬ 
pealed to the pope, by whom he was 
supported. After much negotiation 
a sort of reconciliation took place in 
1170, and Becket returned to England, 
resumed his office, and renewed his 
defiance of the royal authority. A rash 
hint from the king induced four barons, 
Reginald Fitz-Urse, William de Tracy, 
Hugh de Morville, and Richard Breto, 
to go to Canterbury and murder the 
archbishop while at vespers in the cathe¬ 
dral. He was canonized in 1172, and 
the splendid shrine erected at Canter¬ 
bury for his remains was, for three cen¬ 
turies, a favorite place of pilgrimage. 

BECQUEREL (bek-rel), Antoine 
C4sar, French physicist, born 1788, died 
1878. He served as an officer of engi¬ 
neers, and retired in 1815, after which 
he devoted himself to the study of elec¬ 
tricity, especially electro-chemistry. He 
refuted the “theory of contact” by 
which Volta explained the action of his 
pile or battery. Becquerel may be con¬ 
sidered one of the creators of electro¬ 
chemistry. 

BED, BEDSTEAD, an article of furni¬ 
ture to sleep or rest on. The term bed 
properly is applied to a large flat bag 
filled with feathers, down, wool, or other 
soft material, and also to a mattress 
supported on spiral springs or form of 
elastic chains or wirework which is raised 
from the ground on a bedstead. The 
term, however, sometimes includes the 
bedstead or frame for supporting the 
bed. The forms of beds are necessarily 
very various—every period and country 
having its own form of bed. Air-beds 
and water-beds are much used by in¬ 
valids. 

BED, in geol., a layer or stratum, 
usually a stratum of considerable thick- 
ness. 

BEDBUG. See Bug. 

BED'FORD, a pari, and municip. 
borough, England, county town of 
Bedfordshire, on the Ouse. John Bun- 
yan was born at Elstow, a village near 
the town, and it was at Bedford that 
he lived, preached, and was imprisoned. 
Bedford sends one member to parlia¬ 
ment. Pop. 35,144.—Bedfordshire, or 
Beds, the county is bounded by North¬ 
ampton, Bucks, Herts, Cambridge, and 
Huntingdon; area, 295,509 acres, of 
which 260,000 are under tillage or in 
permanent pasture. Chalk hills, form¬ 
ing a portion of the Chilterns, cross it on 


the s.; n. of this is a belt of 6and. Pop. 
171,249. 

BED'LAM, a corruption of Bethlehem 
(Hospital), the name of a religious house 
in London, converted, after the general 
suppression by Henry VIII., into a hos¬ 
pital for lunatics. The lunatics were 
at one time treated as little better than 
wild beasts, and hence Bedlam came to 
be typical of any scene of wild confusion. 

BEDOUINS (bed-u-enz'), a Moham¬ 
medan people of Arab race inhabiting 
chiefly the deserts of Arabia, Syria, 
Egypt, and North Africa. They lead 
a nomadic existence in tents, huts, 
caverns, and ruins, associating in fami¬ 
lies under sheiks or in tribes under emirs. 



Bedouin Arabs. 


In respect of occupation they are only 
shepherds, herdsmen, and horse-breed¬ 
ers, varying the' monotony of pastoral 
life by raiding on each other and plun¬ 
dering unprotected travelers whom 
they consider trespassers. They are 
ignorant of writing and books, their 
knowledge being purely traditional and 
mainly genealogical. They are lax in 
morals, and unreliable even in respect 
of the code of honor attributed to them 
in poetry and fiction. In stature they 
are undersized, and, though active, they 
are not strong. The ordinary dress of 
the men is a long shirt girt at the loins, 
a black or red and yellow handkerchief 
for the head, and sandals; of the women, 
loose drawers, a long shirt, and a large 
dark-blue shawl covering the head and 
figure. The lance is the favorite weapon. 

BEDSTEAD. See Bed. 

BEE, the common name given to a 
large family of winged insects, of which 
the most important is the common hive 
or honey bee. It belongs to the warmer 
parts of the eastern hemisphere, but is 
now naturalized in the western. A hive 
commonly consists of one mother or 
queen, from 600 to 800 males or drones, 
and from 15,000 to 20,000 working bees, 
formerly termed neuters, but now 
known to be imperfectly - developed 
females. The last-mentioned, the small¬ 
est, have twelve joints to their antennae, 
and six abdominal rings, and are pro¬ 
vided with a sting; there is, on the out¬ 
side of the hind-legs, a smooth hollow, 
edged with hairs, called the basket, in 
which the kneaded pollen or bee-bread, 
the food of the larvae, is stored for trans¬ 
it. The queen has the same characteris¬ 
tics, but is of larger size, especially in the 
abdomen; she has also a sting. The 
males, or drones, differ from both the 











BEECH 


BEERSHEBA 


preceding by having thirteen joints to 
the antennae; a rounded head, with 
larger eyes, elongated and united at the 
summit; and no stings. According to 
Huber the working-bees are themselves 
divisible into two classes: one, the 
cirieres, devoted to the collection of pro¬ 
visions, etc.; the other, smaller and 
more delicate, employed exclusively 
within the hive in rearing the young. 
The mouth of the bee is adapted for 
both masticatory and suctorial purposes, 
the honey being conveyed thence to the 
anterior stomach or crop, communicat¬ 
ing with a second stomach, in which 
alone a digestive process can be traced. 
The queen, whose sole office is to prop¬ 
agate the species, has two large ovaries, 
consisting of a great number of small 
cavities, each containing sixteen or 
seventeen eggs. The inferior half-cir¬ 
cles, except the first and last, on the 
abdomen of working-bees, have each 
on their inner surface two cavities, 
where the wax, secreted by the bee from 
its saccharine food, is formed in layers, 
and comes out from between the ab¬ 
dominal rings. Respiration takes place 
by means of air-tubes which branch out 
to all parts of the body, the bee being 
exceedingly sensitive to an impure at¬ 
mosphere. Of the organs of sense the 
most important are the antennae, depri¬ 
vation of these resulting in a species of 
derangement. The majority of ento¬ 
mologists regard their function as in 
the first place auditory, but they are 
exceedingly sensitive to tactual im¬ 
pressions, and are apparently the 
principal means of mutual commu¬ 
nication. Bees undergo perfect meta¬ 
morphosis, the young appearing first 
as larvae, then changing to pupae, 
from which the imagos or perfect 
insects spring. Whether the offspring 
are to be female or male is said to 
be dependent upon the contact or 
absence of contact of the egg with the 
impregnating fluid received from the 
male and stored in a special sac com¬ 
municating with the oviduct, unfertil¬ 
ized eggs producing males. The further 
question whether the offspring shall be 
queens or workers is resolved by the 
influence of environment upon function. 
The enlargement of a cell to the size of a 
royal chamber and the nourishment of 
its inmate with a special kind of food 
appear to be sufficient to transform an 
ordinary working-bee larva into a fully- 
developed female or queen-bee. The 
season of fecundation occurs about the 
beginning of summer, and the laying 
begins immediately afterward, and con¬ 
tinues until autumn; in the spring as 
many as 12,000 eggs may be laid in 
twenty-four days. Those laid at the 
commencement of fine weather all be¬ 
long to the working sort, and hatch at 
the end of four days. The larvae acquire 
their perfect state in about twelve days, 
and the cells are then immediately fitted 
up for the reception of new eggs. The 
eggs for producing males are laid two 
months later, and those for the females 
immediately afterward. This succession 
of generations forms so many distinct 
communities, which, when increased 
beyond a certain degree, leave the par¬ 
ent hive to found a new colony else¬ 
where. Thus three or four swarms 


sometimes leave a hive in a season. 
A good swarm is said to weigh at least 
6 or 8 pounds. See Apiary. 

The humble-bees, or bumble-bees, of 
which about forty species are found in 
Britain and over sixty in N. America, are 
almost world-wide in their distribution. 
Of these species solitary females which 
have survived the winter commence 
constructing small nests when the 
weather begins to be warm enough; 
some of them going deep into the earth 
in dry banks, others preferring heaps of 
stone or gravel, and others choosing 
always some bed of dry moss. In the 
nest the bee collects a mass of pollen 
and in this lays some eggs. The cells 
in these nests are not the work of the 
old bee, but are formed by the young 
insects similarly to the cocoons of silk¬ 
worms; and when the perfect insect is 
released from them by the old bee, 
which gnaws off their tops, they are 
employed as honey-cups. The humble- 
bees, however, do not store honey for 
the winter, those which survive till the 
cold weather leaving the nest and pene¬ 
trating the earth, or taking up some 
other sheltered position, and remaining 
there till the spring. The first brood 
consists of workers, and successive 
broods are produced during the summer. 

BEECH, the common name of trees 
well known in various parts of the world. 
The wood is hard and brittle, and if ex¬ 
posed to the air liable soon to decay. It 
is, however, peculiarly useful to cabinet¬ 
makers and turners, carpenters’ planes, 
furniture, sabots, etc., being made of 
it; and it is durable under water for 
piles and mill-sluices. 

BEECHER (be'cher), Henry Ward, 
an eminent American preacher, born 
in Connecticut 1813; was minister at 
Lawrenceburg, Ind., 1837, and of Plym¬ 
outh Congregational Church, Brook- 



Henry Ward Beecher. 


lyn, New York, in 1847. The latter 
pulpit he continued to occupy till his 
death in 1887, though in 1882 he ceased 
his formal connection with the Congre- 
gationalists on the ground of disbelief 
in eternal punishment. From 1861 to 
1863 he was editor of the Independent, 
and for about ten years after 1870, 
of the Christian Union. He was also 
the author of a considerable number of 
works, of which his Lectures to Young 
Men (1850), Life Thoughts (1858), 
Lectures on Preaching (1872-74), and 
the weekly issues of his sermons, com¬ 
manded wide circulation. Few con¬ 
temporary preachers appealed to as 
large and diverse a public. His brothers 
Charles, Edward, and Thomas have all 
distinguished themselves as Congre¬ 


gational clergymen. His sister Cathe¬ 
rine Esther (born 1800, died 1878) did 
much for the education of women, and 
wrote on this subject and on domestic 
economy and kindred subjects. An¬ 
other sister is still better known as Mrs. 
Beecher-Stowe. See Stowe. 

BEEFSTEAK CLUBS, certain noted 
clubs of London in the 18th century, 
articularly the Sublime Society of 
teaks, founded in 1735, to which 
belonged Thornhill, Hogarth, Garrick, 
and other celebrities of the day. There 
is a Beefsteak Club at present in London. 
The New York Beefsteak Club and the 
Gridiron Club of Washington were 
founded by newspaper and periodical 
writers. 

BEEF TEA, a drink made from an 
extract of beef, formerly believed to be 
quite nutritious but no longer considered 
so. It is made by placing chopped lean 
beef in a mason jar, closing the same, 
and placing the jar in cold water which 
is brought to boiling and kept there 
until the meat is reduced to liquid. 
Beef tea is sometimes made from solid 
beef extracts, but its food value is 
problematical. 

BEE-KEEPING, the art of hiving 
honey bees and securing the honey. 
The bee hive to be successful should 
be located in a place near to flowers or 
clover; glass, wood, and straw are good 
materials for the hive; facilities for in¬ 
creasing the space should be regarded; 
care should be taken that the swarm 
should not roam away and be lost; 
twenty pounds of honey should be left 
in the hive for the winter food of the 
bees, although ale boiled with sugar 
is a good substitute. In removing the 
honey gloves and veils should be worn 
as protection from the insects’ stings. 

BEER MONEY. A peculiar payment 
to non-commissioned officers and sol¬ 
diers in the British Army, established 
in the year 1800, at the suggestion of the 
Duke of York. It consisted of one 
penny per day for troops when on home 
service, as a substitute for an issue of 
beer and spirits. It continued as an 
addition to the daily pay until 1873, 
when, the stoppages for rations having 
been abolished, the opportunity was 
taken to consolidate beer money and 
pay proper. 

BEELZEBUB (be-el'ze-bub), the su¬ 
preme god of the Syro-Phcenician 
eoples, in whose honor the Philistines 
ad a temple at Ekron. With his name 
may be compared the epithet “averter 
of flies” applied to Zeus and later to 
Hercules. The use of Beelzebul in the 
New Testament has been the subject of 
much discussion, some asserting it to 
be an opprobrious form of Beelzebub, 
meaning the “lord of dung,” others 
translating it “lord of the dwelling,” 
and others again finding in the change 
from b to 1 only a natural linguistic 
modification. 

BEER. See Ale and Brewing. 

BEERSHE'BA, the place where Abra¬ 
ham made a covenant with Abimelech, 
and in common speech representative 
of the southernmost limit of Palestine, 
near which it is situated. It is now a 
mere heap of ruins near two large and 
five smaller wells, though it was a place 
of some importance down to the period 
of the Crusades. 




BEESWAX 


BELGAUM 


BEESWAX, a solid fatty substance 
secreted by bees, and containing in its 
purified state three chemical principles 
—myricin, cerin, and cerolein. It is 
not collected from plants, but elaborated 
from saccharine food in the body of the 
bee. It is used for the manufacture of 
candles, for modeling, and in many 
minor processes. 

BEET, a genus of plants, distin¬ 
guished by its fruit being inclosed in a 
tough woody or spongy five-lobed 
enlarged calyx. Two species only are 
known in general cultivation, namely, 
the sea-beet and the garden beet. The 
former is a tough-rooted perennial, 
sometimes cultivated for its leaves, 
which are an excellent substitute for 
spinach. Of the garden beet, which 
differs from the last in being of only 
biennial duration and in forming a 
tender fleshy root, two principal forms 
are known to cultivators, the chard beet 
and the common beet. In the chard 
beet the roots are small, white, and 
rather tough, and the leaves are fur¬ 
nished with a broad, fleshy midrib, 
employed as a vegetable by the French, 
who dress the ribs like sea-kale under 
the name of poir6e. The common beet 
includes all the fleshy-rooted varieties, 
6uch as red beet (with a fleshy large 
carrot-shaped root), yellow beet, sugar- 
beet, mangel-wurzel, etc. For garden 
purposes the best is the red beet. The 
beet requires a rich light soil. Red beet 
is principally used at table, but if eaten 
in great quantity is said to be injurious. 
The beet may be taken out of the ground 
for use about the end of August, but it 
does not attain its full 6ize and perfec¬ 
tion till the month of October. 

BEET SUGAR. See Sugar. 

BEETHOVEN (ba'to-vn), Ludwig von, 
a great German musical composer, 
born at Bonn, 16th Dec., 1770, studied 
under his father (a tenor singer), 
Pfeiffer, Van der Eden, and Neefe; 



Ludwig von Beethoven. 

began to publish in 1783; became assist 
ant court organist in 1785; and was sent 
by the Elector of Cologne to Vienna in 
1792, where he was the pupil of Haydn 
and Albrechtsberger, and acquired a 
high reputation for pianoforte extem¬ 
porization before the merit of his 
written compositions was fully under¬ 
stood. In or near Vienna almost all his 
subsequent life was spent, his artistic 
tour in North Germany in 1796 being 
the most important break. He died 
March 27, 1827. His later life was 
rendered somewhat morbid by his deaf¬ 
ness, of which the first signs appeared 


in 1797. He had the head of Jove on 
the body of Bacchus, and there was in 
him a strong dash of what in a lesser 
man would be termed insanity, with an 
alternation between the highest eleva¬ 
tion of genius and the conduct of a fool 
or buffoon. His best works were pub¬ 
lished after 1800, two periods being 
observable: the first from 1800 to 1814, 
comprising Symphonies 2-8; the opera 
Fidelio (originally Leonore), the music 
to Goethe’s Egmont, and the overtures 
to Prometheus, Coriolanus, King Stephen 
and Fidelio; the second (in which 
the poetic school of musicians find 
the germs of the subsequent devel¬ 
opment through Schumann, Wagner, 
and Liszt) comprising the 9th Sym¬ 
phony, the Missa Solemnis, and the 
Sonatas Op. 101, 102, 106, 109, 110, 
and 111. 

BEETLE, a name often used as 
synonymous with the term Coleoptera, 
but restricted by others to include all 
those insects that have their wings pro¬ 
tected by hard cases or sheaths, called 
elytra. Beetles vary in size from a mere 

f )oint to the bulk of a man’s fist, the 
argest, the elephant beetle of S. Amer¬ 
ica, being 4 inches long. The so-called 
“black beetles” of kitchens and cellars 
are not properly beetles at all, but cock¬ 
roaches, and of the order Orthoptera. 

BEETLE-STONE, a nodule of copro- 
litic ironstone, so named from the 
resemblance of the inclosed coprolite 
to the body and limb of a beetle. 
BEET-ROOT. See Beet. 

BEGGARS. See Vagrants. 
BEGO'NIA, an extensive genus of 
succulent-stemmed herbaceous plants, 
order Begoniacece, with fleshy oblique 
leaves of various colors, and showy 
unisexual flowers, the whole perianth 
colored. They readily hybridize, and 
many fine varieties have been raised 
from the tuberous-rooted kinds. From 
the shape of their leaves they have been 
called elephant’s ear. Almost all the 
plants of the order are tropical, and 
they have mostly pink or red flowers. 

BEHAR', a province of Hindustan, in 
Bengal, area 44,139 sq. miles. It is the 
most densely peopled province of India; 
pop. 24,284,370. Patna is the capital. 

BEHEADING. See Capital Punish¬ 
ment. 

BEHE'MOTH, the animal described 
in Job xl. The description is most 
applicable to the hippopotamus, and the 
word seems to be of Egyptian origin 
and to signify “water-ox”; but it has 
been variously asserted to be the ox, 
the elephant, the crocodile, etc. 
BEH'RING. See Bering. 

BELASCO, David, an American man¬ 
ager and playwright, born in San Fran¬ 
cisco in 1862. He began his career as a 
player and began writing soon there¬ 
after, his first successful venture being 
Hearts of Oak. While manager of the 
Lyceum Theater, New York, he wrote 
(with Henry C. De Mille) The Wife, The 
Charity Ball, and Lord Chumley. Other 
plays to which he has contributed are 
The Girl I Left Behind Me, The Heart 
of Maryland, Zaza, May Blossom, Men 
and Women, La Belle Russe, Valerie, 
and Du Barry. 

BEL'EMNITE, a name for straight, 
solid, tapering, dart-shaped fossils, 


popularly known as arrow-heads, thun¬ 
derbolts, finger-stones, etc., but in 
reality the internal shell or skeleton of a 
molluscous animal allied to the squid or 
sepia, and the type of an extinct family, 
Belemnitidae. 



Belemnites. 

1. Belemnoteuthis antique—ventral side. 

2. Belemnites Owenli (restored), a, Guard, 
c, Phragmacone. d, Muscular tissue of man¬ 
tle. p, Infundibulum, i, Unclnated arms. 
K, Tentacula. N, Ink-bag. 

3. Belemnite—British Museum. 

BELFAST', a seaport and municipal 
and parliamentary borough of Ireland 
(in 1888 declared a city), principal town 
of Ulster, and county town of Antrim. 
Belfast is the center of the Irish linen 
trade, and has the majority of spinning- 
mills and power-loom factories in Ire¬ 
land. Previous to about 1830 the cotton 
manufacture was the leading industry 
of Belfast, but nearly all the mills have 
been converted to flax-spinning. The 
iron ship-building trade is also of im¬ 
portance, and there are breweries, dis¬ 
tilleries, flour-mills, oil-mills, foundries, 
print-works, tan-yards, chemical works, 
rope-works, etc. The commerce is large. 
An extensive direct trade is carried on 
with British North America, the Medi¬ 
terranean, France, Belgium, Holland, 
and the Baltic, besides the regular 
traffic with the principal ports of the 
British islands. Belfast is compara¬ 
tively a modern town, its prosperity 
dating from the introduction of the 
cotton trade in 1777. It has suffered 
severely at various times from faction- 
fights between Catholics and Protes¬ 
tants, the more serious having been in 
the years 1864, 1872, and 1886. It 
returns four members to the Imperial 
Parliament. Pop. 348,965. 

BELFORT, a small fortified town and 
territory of France. Belfort, with the 
district immediately surrounding it, 
is the only part of the department of 
Haut Rhin which remained to France 
on the cession of Alsace to Germany. 
Pop. of territory, 91,765. 

BEL'FRY, a bell-tower or bell-turret. 
A bell-tower may be attached to another 
building, or may stand apart; a bell- 
turret usually rises above the roof of a 
building, and is often placed above the 
top of the western gable of a church. 
The part of a tower containing a bell 
or bells is also called a belfry. 

BELGAUM (bel-ga'um), a town and 
fortress in Hindustan, Bombay Presi¬ 
dency, district of Belgaum, on a plain 










BELGIUM 


BELL 


2500 feet above the sea-level. In 1818 
the fort and town were taken by the 
British, and from its healthful situation 
selected as a permanent military station. 
Pop. of town (including the canton¬ 
ment), 36,878. The area of the district 
is 4657 sq. miles, with a population of 
1,013,261. 

BELGIUM (bel'jum), a European 
kingdom, bounded by Holland, the 
North Sea or German Ocean, France, 
and Germany; greatest length, 165 
miles; greatest breadth, 120 miles; 
area, 11,366 sq. miles. For administra¬ 
tive purposes it is divided into nine 
provinces — Antwerp, Brabant, East 
Flanders, West Flanders, Hainaut, 
Li6ge, Limburg, Luxemburg, and Na¬ 
mur; total pop. 6,815,054. Brabant, the 
metropolitan province, occupies the 
center. The capital is Brussels; other 
chief towns are Antwerp, Ghent, and 
Li6ge. The country may be regarded 
roughly as an inclined plain, falling 
away in height from the southern dis¬ 
trict of the Ardennes until in the n. 
and w. it becomes only a few feet above 
sea-level. 

The industrial products of Belgium 
are very numerous, and are mostly of 
high character. The chief are those 
connected with linen, wool, cotton, 
metal, and leather goods. In respect of 
manufactures the fine linens of Flanders, 
and lace of South Brabant, are of Euro¬ 
pean reputation. Scarcely less cele¬ 
brated are the carpets and porcelain of 
Tournay, the cloth of Verviers, the 
extensive foundries, machine - works, 
and other iron establishments of Li6ge. 
The commerce of Belgium is large and 
increasing. Apart from the value of her 
own products, she is admirably situated 
for the transit trade of central Europe, 
to which her fine harbor of Antwerp and 
excellent railway and canal system 
minister. 

The Belgian population is the densest 
of any European state (539 per square 
mile), and is composed of two distinct 
races—Flemish, who are of German, 
and Walloons, who are of French ex¬ 
traction. The former, by far the more 
numerous, have their principal locality 
in Flanders; but also prevail throughout 
Antwerp, Limburg, and part of South 
Brabant. The latter are found chiefly 
in Hainaut, Li6ge, Namur, and part of 
Luxemburg. The Flemings speak a 
dialect of German, and the Walloons a 
corruption of French, with a consider¬ 
able infusion of words and phrases from 
Spanish and other languages. French 
is the official and literary language, 
though Flemish is also successfully 
employed in literature. Almost the 
entire population is Roman Catholic, 
and there are over 1500 convents, with 
nearly 25,000 inmates. Protestantism 
is fully tolerated, but cannot count 
more than 15,000 adherents. Improved 
means of education are now at the dis¬ 
posal of the people, every commune 
being bound to maintain at least one 
school for elementary education, the 
government paying one-sixth, the prov¬ 
ince one-sixth, and the commune the 
remainder of the expenditure. In all 
the large towns colleges have been estab¬ 
lished; while a complete course for the 
learned professions is provided by four 


universities, two of them, at Ghent and 
Li£ge, established and supported by the 
state; one at Brussels, the Free Uni¬ 
versity, founded by voluntary associa¬ 
tion; and one at Louvain, the Catholic 
University, founded by the clergy. 

By the Belgian constitution the exec¬ 
utive power is vested in a hereditary 
king; the legislative, in the king and 
two chambers—the senate and the 
chamber of representatives—the former 
elected for eight years, and the latter for 
four, but one-half renewable respec¬ 
tively every four years and every two 
years. There is now a system of pro¬ 
portional representation both for the 
senate and the chamber. Representa¬ 
tives are elected on the principle of man¬ 
hood suffrage, but certain property or 
educational qualifications may give a 
voter three votes. The senators are 
partly elected directly, partly indirectly 
by provincial councils. Senators must 
be forty years of age, deputies and 
electors twenty-five. The army is raised 
partly by enlistment, partly by the ballot, 
to which every man who has completed 
his nineteenth year is liable. The peace 
strength is about 51,500 officers and men; 
in time of war, 163,000. Besides this 
standing army, there is a garde civique 
numbering 40,000 partly active, partly 
non-active men. The navy is confined 
to a few steamers and a small flotilla of 
gun-boats. 

The territory now known as Belgium 
originally formed only a section of that 
known to Caesar as the territory of the 
Belgae, extending from the right bank 
of the Seine to the left bank of the 
Rhine, and to the ocean. This district 
continued under Roman sway till the 
decline of the empire; subsequently 
formed part of the kingdom of Clovis; 
and then of that of Charlemagne, whose 
ancestors belonged to Landen and 
Herstal on the confines of the Ardennes. 
After the breaking up of the empire of 
Charlemagne Belgium formed part of 
the kingdom of Lotharingia under 
Charlemagne’s grandson, Lothaire; Ar¬ 
tois and Flanders, however, belonging 
to France by the treaty of Verdun. 

For centuries this kingdom was con¬ 
tended for by the kings of France and 
the emperors of Germany. In 1384 
Flanders and Artois fell to the house of 
Burgundy, which in less than a century 
acquired the whole of the Netherlands. 

The Seven Years’ War (1756-63) did 
not affect Belgium, and in that period, 
and during the peace which followed, 
she regained much of her prosperity 
under Maria Theresa and Charles of 
Lorraine. 

In 1815 Belgium was united by the 
Congress of Vienna to Holland, both 
countries together now forming one 
state, the Kingdom of the Netherlands. 
This union lasted till 1830, when a re¬ 
volt broke out among the Belgians, and 
soon attained such dimensions that the 
Dutch troops were unable to repress it. 
A convention of the great powers, as¬ 
sembled in London, favored the separa¬ 
tion of the two countries, and drew up a 
treaty to regulate it; the National Con¬ 
gress of Belgium offering the crown, on 
the recommendation of England, to 
Leopold, prince of Saxe-Coburg, who 
acceded to it under the title of Leopold 


I., on July 21, 1831. Leopold II. suc¬ 
ceeded his father in 1865. In recent 
years the chief feature of Belgian politics 
lias been a keen struggle between the 
clerical and the liberal party. In 1893 
a bill giving an extension of the fran¬ 
chise was passed. Recent years have 
been marked by socialistic movements 
and labor troubles. 

BELGRADE (bel-grad'), capital of 
Servia, on the right bank of the Danube 
in the angle formed by the junction of 
the Save with that river, consists of the 
citadel or upper town, on a rock 100 
feet high; and the lower town, which 
partly surrounds it. Being the key of 
Hungary, it was long an object of fierce 
contention between the Austrians and 
the Turks, remaining, however, for the 
most part in the hands of the Turks 
until its evacuation by them in 1867. 
Since the treaty of Berlin (July, 1878) 
it has been the capital of an independent 
state. Pop. 69,097. 

BE'LIAL, a word which by the trans¬ 
lators of the English Bible is often treated 
as a proper name, as in the expressions 
‘son of Behai,” “man of Belial.” In the 
Old Testament, however, it ought not 
to be taken as a proper name, but it 
should be translated “wickedness” or 
worthlessness.” To the later Jews 
Belial seems to have become what 
Pluto was to the Greeks, the name of 
the ruler of the infernal regions; and 
in 2 Cor. vi. 15 it seems to be used as a 
name of Satan, as the personification 
of all that is bad. 

BELISA'RIUS (Slavonic, Beli-tzar, 
White Prince), the general to whom 
the Emperor Justinian chiefly owed 
the splendor of his reign; born in 
Illyria about 505 a.d. He served in the 
body-guard of the emperor, soon after 
obtained the chief command of an army 
on the Persian frontiers, and in 530 
gained a victory over a superior Persian 
army. The next year, however, he lost 
a battle, and was recalled. In the year 
532 he checked the disorders in Con¬ 
stantinople arising from the Green and 
Blue factions; and was then sent with 
15,000 men to Africa to recover the 
territories occupied by the Vandals. 
He took Carthage and led Gelimer, the 
Vandal king, in triumph through 
Constantinople. Dissensions having 
arisen in the Ostrogothic kingdom, he 
was sent to Italy, and though ill sup¬ 
plied with money and troops, stormed 
Naples, held Rome for a year, took 
Ravenna, and led captive Vitiges, the 
Gothic king. He died in 565. 

BELL, a hollow, somewhat cup¬ 
shaped sounding-instrument of metal. 
The metal from which bells are usually 
made (by founding) is an alloy, called 
bell-metal, commonly composed of 
eighty parts of copper and twenty of 
tin. The proportion of tin varies, 
however, from one-third to one-fifth of 
the weight of the copper ; according to 
the sound required, the size of the bell, 
and the impulse to be given. The 
clearness and richness of the tone depend 
upon the metal used, the perfection of 
its casting, and also upon its shape; it 
having been shown by a number of 
experiments that the well-known shape 
with a thick lip is the best adapted to 
give a perfect sound. The depth of 





BENEDICT 


BENGAL 


trio of popes, and the emperor, Henry 
III., to put an end to the scandal, de¬ 
posed all the three. He died in 1054.— 
Benedict XIII., a learned and well- 
disposed man, originally Cardinal Orsini 
and Archbishop of Benevento, became 


efficacy in epidemics. Made in the same 
way since 1510. 

BENEDICTINES, members of the 
most famous and widely-spread of all the 
orders of monks, founded at Monte 
Casino, about half-way between Rome 



Benares, from the river. 


pope in 1724. He bestowed his con¬ 
fidence on Cardinal Coscia, who was 
unworthy of it, and abused it in gratify¬ 
ing his avarice. He died in 1730, and 
was succeeded by Clement XII.—Bene¬ 
dict XIV., Prospero Lambertini, born 
at Bologna in 1675, died 1758, a man of 
superior talents, passionately fond of 
learning, of historical researches, and 
monuments of art. Benedict XIII. 
made him, in 1727, bishop of Ancona; 
in 1728 cardinal; and in 1732 archbishop 
of Bologna. In every station he ful¬ 
filled his duties with the most consci¬ 
entious zeal. He succeeded Clement 
XII. in 1740, and showed himself a 
liberal patron of literature and science. 
He was the author of several esteemed 
religious works. 

BENEDICT, St., the founder of the 
first religious order in the West; born 
at Nursia, in the province of Umbria, 
Italy, a.d. 480, died 543. In early youth 
he renounced the world and passed some 
years in solitude, acquiring a great repu¬ 
tation for sanctity. His Regula Mon- 
achorum, in which he aimed, among 
other things, at repressing the irregular 
lives of the wandering monks, gradually 
became the rule of all the western monks. 
Under his rule the monks, in addition to 
the work of God (as he called prayer and 
the reading of religious writings), were 
employed in manual labor, in the in¬ 
struction of the young, and in copying 
manuscripts, thus preserving many 
literary remains of antiquity. See 
Benedictines. 

BENEDIC'TINE, a liquor prepared 
by the Benedictine monks of the abbey 
of F6camp, in Normandy, consisting of 
spirit (fine brandy) containing an infu¬ 
sion of the juices of plants, and said to 
possess digestive, antispasmodic, and 
other virtues, and to have prophylactic 


and Naples, in 529, by St. Benedict. 
No religious order has been so remark¬ 
able for extent, wealth, and men of note 
and learning as the Benedictines. 
Among the branches of the order the 
chief were the Cluniacs, founded in 910 
at Clugny in Burgundy; the Cistercians, 
founded in 1098, and reformed by St. 



Benedictine monk. 

Bernard in 116; and the Carthusians 
from the Chartreuse, founded by Bruno 
about 1080. The order was probably 
introduced into England about 600 by 
St. Augustine of Canterbury, and a 
great many abbeys, and all the cathe¬ 
dral priories of England, save Carlisle, 
belonged to it. In Britain the Benedic¬ 
tines were called Blackfriars, from the 
color of their habit, which consisted of 
a loose black gown with large wide 


sleeves, and a cowl on the head ending 
in a point. The Benedictines have pro¬ 
duced many valuable literary works. 
The fraternity of St. Maur, founded in 
1618, had in the beginning of the 18th 
century 180 abbeys and priories in 
France, and acquired by means of its 
learned members, such as Mabillon 
Montfaucon, and Mart£ne, merited 
distinction. They published the cele¬ 
brated chronological work L’Art de 
Verifier les Dates, and edited many 
ancient authors. 

BENEDIC'TION, the ceremony of call¬ 
ing a divine blessing upon an individ¬ 
ual, a thing, a place, a community, or an 
undertaking. Invoking a blessing is 
one of the oldest of customs, and has 
been practiced by pagans as well as 
Christians. The pontifical blessing is a 
special benediction given by the pope 
of Rome. 

BENEFIT SOCIETIES, organizations 
for the purpose of securing a cheap, 
mutual life insurance, to pay funeral 
expenses, to provide for old age, or 
other beneficent end. Many labor 
unions have benefit funds which are 
applied to members during illness or 
other specified incapacity. These organ¬ 
izations are more numerous in the United 
States than elsewhere, and are re¬ 
garded as an evidence of prosperity. 

BENEVEN'TO, a city of southern 
Italy, the see of an archbishop, in a 
province of same name, on a hill be¬ 
tween the rivers Sabato and Calore, oc¬ 
cupying the site of the ancient Beneven- 
tum, and largely built of its ruins. Few 
cities have so many remains of antiq¬ 
uity, the most perfect being a magnifi¬ 
cent triumphal arch of Trajan, built in 
114. The cathedral is a building of the 
12th century in the Lombard-Saracenic 
style. Pop. 21,631.—The province has 
an area of 680 sq. miles, and a pop. of 
238,425. 

BENEV'OLENCES, a means of raising 

money by forced loans or contributions, 
first adopted by Edward IV., and em¬ 
ployed frequently down to the time of 
James I. 

BENGAL (ben-gal'), a name formerly 
given to one of the three “presidencies” 
of British India which included the 
whole of British India except what was 
under the governors of Madras and 
Bombay. Latterly in this sense the 
term had no administrative meaning 
except as regards the army. By Bengm 
is now usually understood the Lieu¬ 
tenant-governorship of Bengal, the 
most important of the local govern¬ 
ments of British India. It comprises the 
united deltas of the Ganges and Brahma¬ 
putra, and stretches north to Nepaul 
and Sikkim, west to the United Prov¬ 
inces, east to Assam, and south to the 
Bay of Bengal. The divisions of which 
it is made up are the Presidency (Cal¬ 
cutta, etc.), Dacca, Chittagong, Raje- 
shahye, Bhaugulpore, Patna, Burdwan, 
Chota Nagpur, and Orissa; total area, 
151,185 sq. miles; pop. 74,744,866. The 
feudatory states connected with it have 
an aggregate area of 38,652 sq. miles, 
and a pop. of 3,748,544. 

As a whole Bengal consists of plains, 
there being few remarkable elevations, 
though it is surrounded with lofty 
mountains. It is intersected in all di- 





































BENGAL, BAY OF 


BENZOIN 


rections by rivers, mostly tributaries of 
its two great rivers the Ganges and 
Brahmaputra, which annually, in June 
and July, inundate a large part of the 
region. These annual inundations ren¬ 
der the soil extremely fertile, but in 
those tracts where this advantage is 
not enjoyed the soil is thin, seldom 
exceeding a few inches in depth. 

The climate is variable, the heat 
being often extreme and great humidity 
prevailing. The seasons are called hot 
(March to June), rainy (June to Octo¬ 
ber), and cold (the remainder of the 
year). In eastern Bengal there is an 
annual fall of 100 inches of rain. Prod¬ 
ucts are rice, fruits, indigo, opium, 
sugar, tobacco, cotton, jute, tea, and 
cinchona. Forests abound. Wild ani¬ 
mals of numerous variety are found 
in them. The minerals are iron, coal, 
and salt. Manufactures, cotton piece 
goods, jute, and silk. The people of 
Bengal are principally Hindus and 
Burmese. Hinduism and Mohammedan¬ 
ism are the religions. 

The first of the East India Company’s 
settlements in Bengal were made early 
in the 17th century. The rise of Cal¬ 
cutta dates from the end of the same 
century. The greater part of Bengal 
came into the hands of the East India 
Company in consequence of Clive’s vic¬ 
tory at Plassy in 1757, and was formerly 
ceded to the Company by the Nabob of 
Bengal in 1765. Chittagong had pre¬ 
viously been ceded by the same prince, 
but its government under British ad¬ 
ministration was not organized till 
1824. Orissa came into British hands 
in 1803. In 1858 the country passed to 
the crown, and since then the history 
of Bengal has been, on the whole, one 
of steady and peaceful progress. 

BENGAL, BAY OF, that portion of the 
Indian Ocean whieh lies between Hin¬ 
dustan and Farther India, or Burmah, 
Siam, and Malacca, and may be re¬ 
garded as extending south to Ceylon 
and Sumatra. It receives the Ganges, 
Brahmaputra, and Irrawadi. Calcutta, 
Rangoon, and Madras are the most 
important towns on or near its coasts. 

BENGA'LI, one of the vernacular lan¬ 
guages of India, spoken by about 50,- 
000,000 people in Bengal, akin to San¬ 
skrit and written in characters that are 
evidently modified from the Devan/Lgari 
(Sanskrit). Its use as a literary lan¬ 
guage began in the 14th century with 
poetry. Large numbers of Bengali 
books are now published, as also news¬ 
papers. A large number of words are 
borrowed from Sanskrit literature. 

BENGUELA (ben-ga'la), a district 
belonging to the Portuguese on the w. 
coast of South Africa; area, perhaps 
150,000 sq. miles. The country is 
mountainous in the interior, and thickly 
intersected by rivers and streams. Its 
vegetation is luxuriant, including every 
description of tropical produce, and 
animal life is equally abundant. Copper, 
silver, iron, salt, sulphur, petroleum, 
and other minerals are found. The 
natives are mostly rude and barbarous. 
Pop. estimated at 2,000 000. 

BENJAMIN, Judah Philip, an Ameri¬ 
can statesman, born in the West Indies 
in 1811, died 1884. He was educated 
at Yale, was, in 1840, a member of the [ 


law firm of Slidell, Benjamin, and Con¬ 
rad, at New Orleans. He became 
famous for his ability as a lawyer, and 
declined a seat on the United States 
Supreme bench. From 1852 to 1861 he 
was United States senator from New 
Orleans, but in the latter year resigned 
to join with the confederacy, becoming 
attorney-general, secretary of war, and 
secretary of state in President Davis’s 
cabinet. After the war he fled to Eng¬ 
land and was called to the English bar 
in 1866, and soon acquired a great 
reputation and a very large practice. 
He was known as “the brains of the 
Confederacy.” 

BENJAMIN, Park, an American law¬ 
yer and authority on patents. He was 
born in New York in 1849, entered the 
navy, resigned in 1869, studied law, 
and was associate editor of The Scientific 
American from 1872 to 1878. Since that 
..time he has practiced law and written 
numerous sketches and books on 
scientific and pseudo-scientific subjects. 

BEN'NETT, James Gordon, an Amer¬ 
ican journalist, born in Banffshire, 
Scotland, 1795, and educated at Aber¬ 
deen. He emigrated to Halifax, Nova 
Scotia, in 1819 as a teacher, and went 
thence to Boston as a proof-reader. 
In 1822 he went to New York, and, 
after being connected with various 
papers, started the New York Herald 
in 1835. By his enterprise and not very 
scrupulous conduct of the journal it 
speedily became an enormous success, 
its yearly profit at his death being 
estimated at from a half to three-quar¬ 
ters of a million dollars. It was the first 
paper which published a daily money 
article and stock lists. The expedition 
of Stanley to Africa in 1871 in search of 
Livingstone was projected and supported 
by Bennett, who, however, died in the 
following year. 

BENT, Silas, an American naval 
officer, born at St. Louis in 1820, died in 
1889. He entered the navy in 1836 and 
served 25 years as hydrographer and 
meteorologist. He took part in the 
Seminole war and was captain under 
Commodore Perry in Japanese waters. 
He was the first to describe the Pacific 
stream 

BENTHAM (ben'tham), Jeremy, a 
distinguished writer on politics and 
jurisprudence, born at London in 1749; 
educated at Westminster and Oxford; 
entered Lincoln’s Inn 1763. He was 
called to the bar, but did not pratice, 
and, having private means, devoted him¬ 
self to the reform of civil and criminal 
legislation. A criticism on a passage 
in Blackstone’s Commentaries, pub¬ 
lished under the title A Fragment on 
Government, 1776, brought him into 
notice; and it was followed by a long 
list of works, of which the more impor¬ 
tant were: The Hard Labour Bill, 1778; 
Principles of Morals and Legislation, 
1780; A Defence of Usury, 1787; Intro¬ 
duction to the Principles of Morals and 
Legislation, 1789; Discourses on Civil 
and Penal Legislation, 1802; Treatise 
on Judicial Evidence, 1813; Paper 
relative to Codification and Public In¬ 
struction, 1817; and the Book of Falla¬ 
cies, 1824. His mind, though at once 
subtle and comprehensive, was char¬ 
acterized by something of the Coleridg- 


ean defect in respect of method and 
sense of proportion; and he is, therefore, 
seen at his best in works that underwent 
revision at the hands of his disciples. 
Of these M. Dumont, by his excellent 
French translations and rearrangements, 
secured for Bentham at an early date a 
European reputation and influence, and 
his editions are still the most satisfac¬ 
tory. In England James Mill, Romilly, 
John Stuart Mill, Burton, and others of 
independent genius, have been among 
his exponents. In ethics he must be 
regarded as the founder of modern 
utilitarianism; in polity and criminal 
law he anticipated or suggested many 
practical reforms; and his whole influ¬ 
ence was stimulating and humanizing. 

BENT'LEY, Richard, an English 
classical scholar and critic, born 1662, 
died 1742. He was noted as a contro¬ 
versialist, and his Dissertation on the 
Epistles of Phalaris is a great classic 
in controversial style. 

BENTON, James Gilchrist, an Ameri¬ 
can inventor and soldier, born in New 
Hampshire in 1820, died 1881. He 
graduated from West Point and entered 
the army in 1842. In 1853 he per¬ 
fected a gun-carriage for seacoast serv¬ 
ice, and during the civil war had 
charge of arsenals. He invented many 
devices for the perfection of firearms, 
the Springfield rifle being chiefly of his 
invention. 

BENTON, Thomas Hart, an American 
statesman, author of Thirty Years’ 
View (of the United States senate). He 
was born in North Carolina in 1782, 
and in 1815 settled at St. Louis and 
established The Missouri Inquirer. He 
fought several duels, killing one man, 
and in 1820 was chosen United States 
senator. He opposed the United 
States Bank, favored election of the 
President by direct popular vote, and 
generally allied himself with the West. 
Senator Benton was an advocate of 
abolition. He died in 1858 

BEN'ZINE, a liquid hydrocarbon 
obtained from coal-tar and petroleum. 
It may also be got by distilling 1 part of 
crystallized benzoic acid intimately 
mixed with 3 parts of slaked lime. It 
is quite colorless, of a peculiar, ethereal, 
agreeable odor, is used by manufacturers 
of india-rubber and gutta-percha, on 
account of its great solvent powers, in 
the preparation of varnishes, and for 
cleaning gloves, removing grease-spots 
from woolen and other cloths, etc., on 
account of its dissolving fats and resins. 
It is highly inflammable. 

BENZO'IC ACID, a vegetable acid ob¬ 
tained from benzoin and other resins 
and balsams, as those of Peru and Tolu. 
It forms light feathery needles; taste 
pungent and bitterish; odor slightly 
aromatic. 

BENZOIC ETHER, a colorless oily 
liquid, with a feeble aromatic smell and 
a pungent aromatic taste, obtained by 
distilling together 4 parts alcohol, 2 of 
crystallized benzoic acid, and 1 of con¬ 
centrated hydrochloric acid. 

BEN'ZOINC ‘Javanese incense”), a solid, 
brittle, vegetable substance, the concrete 
resinous juice flowing from incisions in 
the stem or branches of a tree 70 or 80 
feet high. In commerce several varie¬ 
ties are distinguished, of which the yel- 




BERANGER 


BERIBERI 


low, the Siam, the amygdaloidal—the 
last containing whitish tears of an al¬ 
mond shape—and Sumatra firsts are the 
finest. It is imported from Siam, Sin¬ 
gapore, Bombay, and occasionally from 



Benzoin tree. 


Calcutta; it is found also in South Amer¬ 
ica. The pure benzoin consists of two 
principal substances, viz., a resin, and 
an acid termed benzoic. It has little 
taste, but its smell is fragrant when 
rubbed or heated, and it is used as in¬ 
cense in the Greek and Roman Catholic 
Churches. It is insoluble in water, but 
soluble in alcohol, in which form it is 
used as a cosmetic and in pharmacy. 
Benzoin may be produced by the con¬ 
tact of alkalies with the commercial oil 
of bitter almonds. It is also known as 
benjamin, or gum benjamin. 

BERANGER (ba-ran-zha), Pierre Jean 
de, French lyric poet, born in Paris 19th 
August, 1780. Reduced to extremity, 
he applied in 1804 to Lucien Bonaparte 
for assistance, and succeeded in obtain¬ 
ing from him, first, a pension of 1000 
francs, and five years later a university 
clerkship. Although as yet unprinted, 
many of his songs had become extremely 
popular, and in 1815 the first collection 
of them was pubiished. A second col¬ 
lection, published in 1821, made him 
obnoxious to the Bourbon government, 
and in addition to being dismissed 
from his office in the university he was 



Bfiranger. 


sentenced to three months’ imprison¬ 
ment and a fine of 500 francs. A 
third collection appeared in 1825, and 
in 1828 a fourth, which subjected him 
to a second state prosecution, an im¬ 
prisonment of nine months, and a fine 
of 10,000 francs. In 1833 he published 
his fifth and last collection, thereafter 
remaining silent till his death. Shortly 
after the revolution of February, 1848, 
he was elected representative of the 
department of the Seine in the con¬ 
stituent assembly, but sent in his resig¬ 
nation in the month of May of same 
year. He died at Paris on July 1G, 1857. 


BERAR', otherwise known as the 
Hyderabad Assigned Districts, a prov¬ 
ince of India, in the Deccan, under the 
British resident at Haidarabad; area, 
17,711 sq. miles, consisting chiefly of an 
elevated valley at the head of a chain of 
ghauts. It is watered by several afflu¬ 
ents of the Godavari and by the Tapti, 
and has a fertile soil, producing some of 
the best cotton, millet, and wheat crops 
in India. The two principal towns of 
Berar are Amr&oti (pop. 39,511) and 
Khamgaon (12,390). Coal and iron ore 
are both found in the province, the pop. 
of which is 2,754,016. Exports, $17,281,- 
740; imports, $10,504,515. Berar was 
assigned by the Nizam to the British 
government in 1853 in security of ar¬ 
rears due. 

BER'BERS, a people spread over 
nearly the whole of northern Africa, 
from whom the name Barbary is de¬ 
rived. The chief branches into which 
the Berbers are divided are, first, the 
Amazirgh or Amazigh, of northern 
Morocco, numbering from 2,000,000 to 
2,500,000. They are for the most part 
quite independent of the Sultan of 
Morocco. Second, the Shuluh, Shillooh, 


having largely-attended fairs. Pop. 
78,287, including many Jews. 

BERENICE (ber-e-ni'se), the name of 
several distinguished women of antiq¬ 
uity; in particular the wife of Ptolemy 
Euergfites, king of Egypt. When her 
husband went to war in Syria she made 
a vow to devote her beautiful hair to the 
gods if he returned safe. She accord¬ 
ingly hung it in the temple of Venus, 
from which it disappeared, and was 
said to have been transferred to the 
skies as the constellation Coma Bere¬ 
nices. Also the wife of Mithridates the 
Great, king of Pontus; put to death by 
her husband (about 71 b.c.) lest she 
should fall into the hands of Lucullus. 

BER'GAMO, a town of North Italy, 
capital of the province of Bergamo 
(1028 sq. miles, 390,775 inhabitants), 
consists of two parts, the old town 
situated on hills and having quite an 
ancient appearance, and the new town 
almost detached and on the plain. 

BER'GAMOT, a fruit-tree, a variety 
or species of the genus Citrus, variously 
classed with the orange, Citrus Auran- 
tium, the lime, Citrus Limetta, or made 
a distinct species as Citrus Bergamia. 



Bergen, from the northwest. 


or Shellakah, who number about 1,450,- 
000, and inhabit the south of Morocco. 
They are more highly civilized than the 
Amazirgh. Third, the Kabyles in Al¬ 
geria and Tunis, who are said to number 
960,000 souls; and fourth, the Berbers 
of the Sahara, who inhabit the oases. 
Among the Sahara Berbers the most 
remarkable are the Beni-Mzab and the 
Tuaregs. To these we may also add the 
Guanches of the Canary Islands, now 
extinct, but undoubtedly of the same 
race. The Berbers generally are about 
the middle height; their complexion is 
brown, and sometimes almost black, 
with brown and glossy hair. They are 
sparely built, but robust and graceful; 
the features approach the European 
type. Their language has affinities to 
the Semitic group, but Arabic is spoken 
along the coast. They are believed to 
represent the ancient Mauritanians, 
Numidians, Gaetulians, etc. The Ber¬ 
bers live in huts or houses, and practice 
various industries. 

BER'DITCHEF, a city of European 
Russia, gov. of Kiev, with broad streets, 
well-built houses, numerous industrial 
establishments, and a very large trade, 


It is probably of eastern origin, though 
now grown in southern Europe, and bears 
a pale-yellow pear-shaped fruit with a 
fragrant and slightly acid pulp. Its 
essential oil is in high esteem as a per¬ 
fume.—Bergamot is also a name given 
to a number of different pears. 

BERGEN (ber'gen), a seaport on the 
w. coast of Norway, the second town 
of the kingdom, about 25 miles from the 
open sea, on a bay of the Byfiord, which 
forms a safe harbor, shut in by hills 
which encircle the town on the land side, 
and promote perpetual rains. The trade 
is large, timber, tar, train-oil, cod-liver 
oil, hides, and particularly dried fish 
(stock-fish) being exported in return for 
corn, wine, brandy, coffee, cotton, 
w'oolens, and sugar. Pop. 72,179. 

BERGH, Henry, an American phi¬ 
lanthropist, founder of the Society for 
the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, 
and of the Society for the Prevention of 
Cruelty to Animals. He was born in 
New York in 1820, and died there in 
1888. 

BER'IBERI, a disease endemic in 
parts of India, Ceylon, etc., character¬ 
ized by paralysis, numbness, difficult 















BERING 


BERLIN 


breathing, and often other symptoms, 
attacking strangers as well as natives, 
and generally fatal. 

BERING, or BEHRING (ba'ring), 
Vitus, a famous navigator, born in 1680 
at Horsens, Jutland. The courage dis¬ 
played by him as captain in the navy of 
Peter the Great during the Swedish wars 
led to his being chosen to command a 
voyage of discovery in the Sea of 
Kamtchatka. In 1728 and subse¬ 
quently he examined the coasts of 
Kamtchatka, Okhotsk, and the north 
of Siberia, ascertaining the relation be¬ 
tween the northeastern Asiatic and 
northwestern American coasts. Re¬ 
turning from America in 1741, he was 
wrecked upon the desert island of 
Awatska (Bering’s Island), and died 
there. 

BERING’S STRAIT, SEA, and IS¬ 
LAND. The strait is the channel 
separating the continents of Asia and 
America, and connecting the North 
Pacific with the Arctic Ocean; breadth 
at the narrowest part, between Cape 
Prince of Wales and East Cape, about 
36 miles; depth in the middle, from 29 
to 30 fathoms. It is frozen in winter, 
and seldom free from fog or haze. 
Though named after Vitus Bering, it 
was only fully explored by Cook in 
1778.—Bering’s Sea, sometimes called 
the Sea of Kamtchatka, is that portion 
of the North Pacific Ocean lying be¬ 
tween the Aleutian Islands and Be¬ 
ring’s Strait.—Bering’s Island, the most 
westerly of the Aleutian chain, off the 
east coast of Kamtchatka. It is unin¬ 
habited, and is without wood. 

Bering Sea and its fisheries have been 
the occasion of a long dispute between 
the United States and Great Britain be¬ 
cause of the seal poaching of unlicensed 
Canadian fishers. Seals are abundant 
in these waters, and the fisheries have 
been leased by the United States to 
the North American Commercial Com¬ 
pany, a limit of 100,000 being placed on 
the annual catch, and $10 a hide royalty 
being paid to the government. Cana¬ 
dian fishing schooners have frequently 
been seized by American war vessels. 
Protests from Britain followed and a 
court of arbitration met in 1893 at 
Paris to settle the dispute. Restric¬ 
tions were agreed to, but the agreement 
was without effect. In 1897 the Ber¬ 
ing Sea seal treaty was signed, which 
will do much to prevent the slaughter 
of the seals. 

BERKELEY (berk'li) a city in 
Alameda Co., Cal., 5 miles north of 
Oakland, the county seat; on the Cali¬ 
fornia and Nevada and the Southern 
Pacific railroads. Pop. 15,000. 

BERKELEY (berk'li), Dr. George, 
Bishop of Cloyne in Ireland, celebrated 
for his ideal theory. He maintains that 
the belief in the existence of an exterior 
material world is false and inconsistent 
with itself; that those things which are 
called sensible material objects are not 
external but exist in the mind, and are 
merely impressions made on our minds 
by the immediate act of God, according 
to certain rules termed laws of nature, 
from which he never deviates; and that 
the steady adherence of the Supreme 
Spirit to these rules is what constitutes 
the reality of things to his creatures, 


and so effectually distinguishes the 
ideas perceived by sense from such as 
are the work of the mind itself or of 
dreams, that there is no more danger 
of confounding them together on this 
hypothesis than on that of the existence 
of matter. He was born in 1685, died 
1753. 

BERK'HAMPSTEAD, Great, a town 
in England, Hertfordshire, with manu¬ 
factures of straw-plait and wooden 
ware. Birthplace of Cowper. Pop. 5219. 

BERKSHIRE, or BERKS, a county 
of England, between Oxfordshire, Buck¬ 
inghamshire, Surrey, Hampshire, and 
Wilts; area, 450,132 acres, of which 
eight-ninths are cultivated or under 
timber. A range of chalk hills, entering 
from Oxfordshire, crosses Berkshire in a 
westerly direction. The western and 
central parts are the most productive 
in the county, which contains rich 
pasturage and excellent dairy farms, 
and is especially suited for barley and 
wheat crops. The Thames skirts the 
county on the north, and connects the 
towns of Abingdon, Wallingford, Read¬ 
ing, Henley, Maidenhead, and Windsor 
with the metropolis. Pop. 254,931. 

BERLIN', the largest town in Ger¬ 
many; capital of the Prussian domin¬ 
ions and of the German Empire, in the 
province of Brandenburg. It has water 
communication to the North Sea by the 


museums, royal academy, etc.’ while at 
the w. end is the Brandenburg Gate, re¬ 
garded as one of the finest portals in 
existence. One of the most remarkable 
of modern monuments is that erected 
in 1851 to Frederick the Great in the 
Unter den Linden. The literary institu¬ 
tions of the city are numerous and ex¬ 
cellent; they include the university, 
having an educational staff of nearly 
360 professors and teachers, and at¬ 
tended by over 5000 students, exclusive 
of 5000 others who do not matriculate; 
the academy of sciences; the academy 
of fine arts; and the technical high 
school or academy of architecture and 
industry. The oldest parts of the city 
were originally poor villages, and first 
rose to some importance under Mark- 
graf Albert (1206-20), yet about two 
centuries ago Berlin was still a place of 
little consequence, the first important 
improvement being made by the great 
Elector Frederick William, who planted 
the Unter den Linden, and in whose 
time it already numbered 20,000 in¬ 
habitants. Under his successors Fred¬ 
erick I. and Frederick the Great the 
city was rapidly enlarged and im¬ 
proved, the population increasing five¬ 
fold in the hundred years preceding 
the death of Frederick the Great and 
tenfold in the century succeeding it. 
Pop. 1,884,151. 



Berlin—Royal theater and new church In the Gensdarmenmarkt. 


Spree, which flows into the Havel, a 
tributary of the Elbe, and to the Baltic 
by canals connecting with the Oder. Of 
the numerous bridges, the finest is the 
Castle (Schloss) Bridge, 104 feet wide, 
and having eight piers surmounted by co¬ 
lossal groups of sculpture in marble. The 
principal and most frequented street, 
Unter den Linden (“under the lime- 
trees”), is about two-thirds of a mile in 
length and 160 feet wide, the center 
being occupied by a double avenue of 
lime-trees. At the e. end of this street, 
and round the Lustgarten, a square with 
which it is connected by the Schloss 
Bridge, are clustered the principal pub¬ 
lic buildings of the city, such as the 
royal palace, the palace of the crown- 
prince, the arsenal, the university, the 


Treaty of Berlin, the treaty, signed 
13th July, 1878, at the close of the 
Berlin Congress, which was consti¬ 
tuted by the representatives of the six 
great powers and Turkey. The treaty 
of San Stefano previously concluded be¬ 
tween Turkey and Russia was modified 
by the Berlin treaty, which resulted in 
the division of Bulgaria into two parts, 
Bulgaria proper and Eastern Roumelia, 
the cession of parts of Armenia to Russia 
and Persia, the independence of Ru¬ 
mania, Servia, and Montenegro, the 
transference of Bosnia and Herzegovina 
to Austrian administration, and the 
retrocession of Bessarabia to Russia. 
Greece was also to have an accession of 
territory. The British representatives 
were Beaconsfield, Salisbury, and Lord 



































BERMUDA GRASS 


BERNINI 


Odo Russell. By a separate arrange¬ 
ment previously made between Britain 
and Turkey the former got Cyprus to 
administer. 

BERMU'DA GRASS, a grass cul¬ 
tivated in the West Indies, United 
States, etc., a valuable fodder grass in 
warm climates. 

BERMU'DAS, or SOMERS ISLANDS, 

a cluster of small islands in the Atlantic 
Ocean belonging to Britain, and num¬ 
bering about 400, set within a space of 
about 20 miles long and 6 wide; area, 
20 sq. miles or 12,000 acres; 18 or 20 
only inhabited. They were first dis¬ 
covered by Juan Bermudez, a Spaniard, 
in 1522; in 1609 Sir George Somers, an 
Englishman, was wrecked here, and, 
after his shipwreck, formed the first 
settlement. The most considerable are 
St. George, Bermuda or Long Island 
(with the chief town Hamilton, the seat 
of the governor), Somerset, St. David’s, 
and Ireland. They form an important 
British naval and military station. An 
immense iron floating-dock, capable of 
receiving a vessel of 3000 tons, was 
towed from London to the Bermudas 
in 1868. The climate is generally 
healthful and delightful, but they have 
been sometimes visited by yellow fever. 
Numbers of persons from the U. States 
and Canada now pass the colder months 
of the year in these islands. About 
4000 acres are cultivated. The military 
stationed here usually number about 
1500. Pop. 17,535. 

BERN, a town in Switzerland, capital 
of the canton Bern, and, since 1848, 
of the whole Swiss Confederation. 
Among the public buildings are the 
great Gothic cathedral, built between 
1421 and 1502; the Church of the Holy 
Spirit; the federal-council buildings 
(or parliament house), commanding a 
splendid view of the Alps; the univer¬ 
sity; the town-house, a Gothic edifice 
of the 15th century; the mint; several 
fine bridges; etc. It has an excellent 
public and other libraries, museum, 
etc. Bern became a free city of the 
empire in 1218. In 1353 it entered the 
Swiss Confederacy. Pop. 63,994.—The 
canton of Bern has an area of 2660 sq. 
miles. The northern part belongs to the 
Jura mountain system, the southern to 
the Alps; between these being an 
elevated undulating region where is 
situated the Emmenthal, one of the 
richest and most fertile valleys in Swit¬ 
zerland. The southern part of the can¬ 
ton forms the Bernese Oberland (Upper- 
land). The lower valleys here are fertile 
and agreeable; higher up are excellent 
Alpine pastures; and above them rise the 
highest mountains of Switzerland (Fin- 
steraarhorn, Schreckhorn, Wetterhorn, 
Eiger, and Jungfrau). The canton is 
drained by the Aar and its tributaries; 
the chief lakes are those of Brienz, 
Thun, and Bienne. Of the surface over 
58 per cent is under cultivation or 
pasture. Agriculture and cattle-raising 
are the chief occupations; manufactures 
embrace linen, cotton, silk, iron, watches, 
glass, pottery, etc. Bienne and Thun 
are the chief towns after Bern. Pop. 
(1900), 586,918, 87 per cent being 
Protestants, and nearly as many Ger¬ 
man-speaking. 


BERNADOTTE (ber-na-dot), Jean- 
Baptiste-Jules, a French general, after¬ 
ward raised to the Swedish throne, was 
the son of an advocate of Pau; born in 
1764. In 1798 he married Mademoiselle 
Clary, sister-in-law of Joseph Bona¬ 
parte. The following year he became 
for a short time minister of war, and 
on the establishment of the empire was 
raised to the dignity of marshal of 
France, and the title of Prince of Ponte- 
Corvo. On the death of the Prince of 
Holstein-Augustenburg the heir appar¬ 
ency to the Swedish crown was offered 
to the Prince of Ponte-Corvo, who 
accepted with the consent of the em¬ 
peror, went to Sweden, abjured Catholi¬ 
cism, and took the title of Prince Charles 
John. In the maintenance of the 
interests of Sweden a serious rupture 
occurred between him and Bonaparte, 
followed by his accession in 1812 to 
the coalition of sovereigns against 
Napoleon. At the battle of Leipzig he 
contributed effectually to the victory 
of the allies. At the close of the war 
strenuous attempts were made by the 
Emperor of Austria and other sover¬ 
eigns to restore the family of Gustavus 
IV. to the crown; but Bernadotte, 
retaining his position as crown-prince, 
became King of Sweden on the death 
of Charles XIII. in 1818, under the title 
of Charles XIV. During his reign 
agriculture and commerce made great 
advances, and many important public 
works were completed. He died 8th 
March, 1844, and was succeeded by his 
son Oscar. 

BER'NARD, Great St., a celebrated 
Alpine pass in Switzerland, canton 
Valais, on the mountain-road leading 
from Martigny in Switzerland to Aosta 
in Piedmont, and rising to a height of 
8150 feet. On the e. side of the pass is 
Mount Velan, and on the w. the Pointe 
de Dronaz. Almost on the very crest of 
the pass, near a small lake on which ice 
sometimes remains throughout the year, 
is the famous Hospice, next to Etna 
Observatory the highest inhabited spot 
in Europe. It is a massive stone build¬ 
ing, capable of accommodating seventy 
or eighty travelers with beds, and of 
sheltering 300, and is tenanted by ten 
or fifteen brethren of the order of St. 
Augustine, who have devoted them¬ 
selves by vow to the aid of travelers 
crossing the mountains. The institution 
is chiefly supported by subscriptions 
and donations. The severest cold 
recorded is 29° below zero Fah., but it 
has often been 18° and 20° below zero; 
and few of the monks survive the period 
of their vow. The dogs kept at St. 
Bernard, to assist the brethren in their 
humane labors, are well known. The 
true St. Bernard dog was a variety by 
itself, but this is now extinct, though 
there are still descendants of the last 
St. Bernard crossed with a Swiss 
shepherd’s dog. The color of these is 
yellowish, or white with yellow-gray 
or brown spots; head large and broad, 
muzzle short, lips somewhat pendulous, 
hanging ears. A pagan temple formerly 
stood on the pass, and classic remains 
are found in the vicinity. The hospice 
was founded in 962 by St. Bernard of 
Menthon, an Italian ecclesiastic, for the 
benefit of pilgrims to Rome. In May, 


1800, Napoleon led an army of 30,000 
men, with its artillery and cavalry, into 
Italy by this pass. 

BERNARD, Little St., a mountain, 
Italy, belonging to the Graian Alps, 
about 10 miles s. of Mont Blanc. The 
pass across it, one of the easiest in the 
Alps, is supposed to be that which Han¬ 
nibal used. Elevation of Hospice, 7192 
feet. 

BER'NARD, Saint, of Clairvaux, one 
of the most influential ecclesiastics of 
the middle ages, born at Fontaines, 
Burgundy, 1091, of a noble family. His 
austerities, tact, courage, and eloquence 
speedily gave him a wide reputation; 
and when, on the death of Honorius III. 
(1130), two popes, Innocent and Ana- 
clete, were elected, the j'udgment of 
Bernard in favor of the former was ac¬ 
cepted by nearly all Europe. In 1140 
he secured the condemnation of Abelard 
for heresy; and after the election of 
his pupil, Eugenius III., to the papal 
chair, he may be said to have exer¬ 
cised supreme power in the church. 
He died Aug. 20, 1153. Seventy-two 
monasteries owed their foundation or 
enlargement to him; and he left no 
fewer than 440 epistles, 340 sermons, 
and 12 theological and moral treatises. 
He was canonized in 1174. 

BER'NARDINE MONKS, a name given 
in France to the Cistercians, after St. 
Bernard. See Cistercians. 

BERNESE ALPS, the portion of the 
Alps which forms the northern side of 
the Rhone Valley, and extends from the 
Lake of Geneva to that of Brienz, com¬ 
prising the Finsteraarhorn, Schreck¬ 
horn, Jungfrau, Monk, etc. 

BERNHARDT (ber-nar), Rosine Sara, 
a French actress, born at Paris 1844. 
Of Jewish descent, her father French, 
her mother Dutch, her early life was 
spent largely in Amsterdam. In 1858 
she entered the Paris Conservatoire and 
gained prizes for tragedy and comedv 
in 1861 and 1862; but her d6but at the 
Th£&tre Frangais in Iphig6nie and 
Scribe’s Valerie was not a success. After 
a brief retirement she reappeared at the 
Gymnase and the Porte Saint-Martin 
in burlesque, and in 1867 at the Oddon 
in higher drama. Her success in Hugo’s 
Ruy Bias led to her being recalled to 
the Tlie&tre Fran^ais, since which she 
has abundantly proved her dramatic 
genius. In 1879 she visited London, 
and again in 1880, about which time she 
severed connection with the Comgdie 
Fransaise under heavy penalty. In 
1882 she married M. Damala, a Greek. 
Her tours both in Europe and America 
have as yet never failed to be successful, 
despite a somewhat painful eccentricity. 
She has several times visited the United 
States. 

BERNICIA, an ancient Anglian king¬ 
dom stretching from the Firth of Forth 
to the Tees, and extending inland to the 
borders of Strathclyde. Is was united 
with Deira, and became part of the 
kingdom of Northumbria. 

BERNICLE GOOSE. See Barnacle 
Goose. 

BERNINI (ber-ne'ne), Giovanni Lo¬ 
renzo, Italian painter, sculptor, and 
architect, born 1598. His marble group, 
Apollo and Daphne, secured him fame 
at the age of eighteen, and he was em- 






BERRY 


BETTING 


ployed by Urban VIII. to prepare plans 
for the embellishment of the Basilica 
of St. Peter’s. He declined Mazarin’s 
invitation to France in 1G44. After his 
return to Rome he was charged with the 
decoration of the bridge of St. Angelo, 
the tomb of Alexander VII., etc. He 
died in 1680. 

BERRY, a succulent fruit, in which 
the seeds are immersed in a pulpy mass 
inclosed by a thin skin. The name is 
usually given to fruits in which the calyx 
is adherent to the ovary and the pla¬ 
centas are parietal, the seeds finally 
separating from the placenta and lying 
loose in the pulp. The term, however, 
is frequently used to include fruits in 
which the ovary is free and the placentas 
central, as the grape. Popularly it is 
applied to fruits like the strawberry, 
bearing external seeds on a pulpy recep¬ 
tacle, but not strictly berries. 

BERSERK'ER, a Scandinavian name 
for warriors who fought in a sort of 
frenzy or reckless fury, dashing them¬ 
selves on the enemy in the most regard¬ 
less manner. The name is probably 
derived from the bear-sark or bearskin 
shirt worn by early warriors. 

BERTHIER (bert-ya), Alexander, 
prince of Neufch&tel and Wagram, 
marshal, vice-constable of France, etc.; 
born 1753. In all Napoleon’s expedi¬ 
tions he was one of his closest com¬ 
panions, on several occasions rendering 
valuable services, as at Wagram in 
1809j when he gained the title of Prince 
of Wagram. He left a son, Alexander 
(b. 1810, d. 1887), one of the most 
zealous adherents of Napoleon III. 

BERTHOLLET (ber-to-la), Claude 
Lcuis, Count, an eminent French chem¬ 
ist, born 1748; studied medicine; be¬ 
came connected with Lavoisier; was 
admitted in 1780 member of the Acad¬ 
emy of Sciences at Paris. His chief 
chemical discoveries were connected 
with the analysis of ammonia, the use 
of chlorine in bleaching, the artificial 
production of niter, etc. He died in 
Paris 1822. 

BERTILLON SYSTEM, a method of 
identifying individuals, originated by 
Dr. Alphonse Bertillon of Paris in 1885, 
and widely used by the police of Europe 
and America. The criminal, when 
captured, is carefully measured as 
follows: height, outstretched arms, 
finger tips to finger tips, trunk (height 
sitting), length and width of head, and 
of right ear; length of left foot, left mid¬ 
dle finger, left little finger, left forearm. 
Each description is placed on a card, 
the cards classified according to size of 
head, etc., and suspects are readily 
tested. The system is founded on abso¬ 
lutely sure scientific data, but general 
description and marks of identification, 
such as scars, etc., are also used with 
Bertillon’s plan. 

BERWICK (ber'ik), or, more fully, 
BERWICK-ON-TWEED, a seaport town 
of England. In the beginning of the 
12th century, during the reign of Alex¬ 
ander I., Berwick was part of Scotland, 
and the capital of the district called 
Lothian. In 1216 the town and castle 
were stormed and taken by King John; 
Bruce retook them in 1318; but, after 
undergoing various 6ieges and vicissi¬ 
tudes, both were surrendered to Ed¬ 


ward IV. in 14S2, and have ever since 
remained in possession of England. 
Pop. 13,378.—The county of Berwick, 
the most eastern border-county of Scot¬ 
land, is bounded by the German Ocean, 
East Lothian, Roxburgh, Peebles, the 
river Tweed, and the English borders. 
Total area, 297,161 acres, of which two- 
thirds are productive. The principal 
rivers are the Tweed, the Leader, the 
Eye, the Whiteadder, and Blackadder. 
Pop. 30,816. 

BER'YL, a colorless, yellowish, bluish, 
or less brilliant green variety of emerald, 
the prevailing hue being green of various 
shades, but always pale, the want of 
color being due to absence of chromium, 
which gives to the emerald its deep rich 
green. Its crystals, which are six-sided, 
are usually longer and larger than those 
of the precious emerald, and its struc¬ 
ture more distinctly foliated. The best 
beryls are found in Brazil, in Siberia, 
and Ceylon, and in Dauria, on the fron¬ 
tiers of China. Beryls are also found 
in many parts of the U. States. Some 
of the finer and transparent varieties of 
it are often called aquamarine. 

BERYLL'IUM, a metal occurring in 
beryl and other minerals, of a color 
similar to zinc. 

BESANT', Sir Walter, English novel¬ 
ist, born 1836, educated in London and 
at Christ’s College, Cambridge, where he 
graduated with mathematical honors. 
He is best known by his novels, a num¬ 
ber of which were written in partner¬ 
ship with Mr. James Rice, including 
Ready-Money Mortiboy; The Golden 
Butterfly; The Monks of Thelema; etc. 
After Mr. Rice’s death (1882) he wrote 
All Sorts and Conditions of Men; The 
World Went Very Well Then; etc. He 
died in 1901. 

BESSARA'BIA, a Russian province 
stretching in a northwesterly direction 
from the Black Sea, between the Pruth 
and Danube and the Dniester. In the 
north the country is hilly, but in the 
south flat and low. It is fertile in grain, 
but is largely used for pasturage. 
Capital, Kishenef. Pop., chiefly Wala¬ 
chians, Gypsies, and Tatars, 1,933,436. 

BES'SEL, Friedrich Wilhelm, a Ger¬ 
man astronomer, born in 1784; ap¬ 
pointed in 1810 director of the observa¬ 
tory at Konigsberg. In 1840 he called 
attention to the probable existence of a 
planetary mass beyond Uranus, result¬ 
ing in the discovery of Neptune. He 
died in 1846. 

BES'SEMER, Sir Henry, English 
engineer and inventor, was born in 
Hertfordshire in 1813. He is celebrated 
for his new and cheap process of rapidly 
making steel from pig-iron by blowing 
a blast of air through it when in a state 
of fusion, so as to clear it of all carbon, 
and then adding just the requisite 
quantity of carbon to produce steel—a 
process which has introduced a revolu¬ 
tion in the steel-making trade, cheap 
steel being now made in vast quantities 
and used for many purposes in which its 
price formerly prohibited its application. 
He was knighted in 1879. He died in 
1898. 

BET'EL, a species of pepper, a creep¬ 
ing or climbing plant, native of the East 
Indies. The leaves are employed to 
inclose a piece of the areca or betel-nut 


and a little lime into a pellet, which is 
extensively chewed in the East. The 
pellet is hot and acrid, but has aromatic 
and astringent properites. It tinges the 
saliva, gums, and lips a brick-red, and 
blackens the teeth. 

BETEL-NUT, the kernel of the fruit of 
a beautiful palm found in India and 
the East, and named from being chewed 



Leaf, flowers, and nut of betel palm. 

along with betel-leaf. When ripe it is 
of the size of a cherry, conical in shape, 
brown externally, and mottled internally 
like a nutmeg. Ceylon alone exports 
70,000 cwt. annually. 

BETH'ANY, now called El’Azariyeh or 
Lazarieh, a village of Palestine at the 
base of Mount Olivet, about 2 miles e. of 
Jerusalem, formerly the home of Martha, 
Mary, and Lazarus, and the place near 
which the ascension of our Lord took 
place. 

BETH'LEHEM, the birthplace of 
Christ; a village, formerly a town, in 
Palestine, a few miles south from Jeru¬ 
salem. Pop. about 3000, chiefly Chris¬ 
tians, who make rosaries, crucifixes, 
etc., for pilgrims. There are three con¬ 
vents for Catholics, Greeks, and Arme¬ 
nians. A richly adorned grotto lighted 
with silver and crystal lamps, under the 
choir of the fine church built by Jus¬ 
tinian, is shown as the actual spot where 
Jesus was born. 

BETHLEHEM, a town of the United 
States, founded by Moravians in 1741 in 
Pennsylvania, on the Lehigh, across 
which is a bridge connecting it with S. 
Bethlehem, the seat of Lehigh Univer¬ 
sity. Pop. of both together, 17,064. 

BETROTH'MENT, a mutual promise 
or contract between two parties, by 
which they bind themselves to marry. 
It was anciently attended with the inter¬ 
change of rings, joining hands, and kiss¬ 
ing in presence of witnesses; and formal 
betrothment is still the custom on the 
continent of Europe, being either solemn 
(made in the face of the church) or pri¬ 
vate (made before witnesses out of the 
church). As betrothments are contracts, 
they are valid only between persons 
whose capacity is recognized by law, 
and the breach of them may be the sub¬ 
ject of litigation. 

BETTING, the staking or pledging of 
money or property upon a contingency 
or issue. The processes of betting may 
be best illustrated in connection with 
horse-racing, which furnishes the mem¬ 
bers of the betting fraternity with their 
best [markets. Betters are divided into 
two classes—the backers of horses, and 
the book-makers or professional betters, 
who form the betting ring, and make a 
living by betting against horses ac- 






BEVERIDGE 


BIBLE 


cording to a methodical plan. By the 
method adopted by the professional 
better the element of chance is as far 
as possible removed from his trans¬ 
actions, so that he can calculate, with 
a reasonable prospect of having his 
calculations verified, on making more 
or less profit as the result of a season’s 
engagements. Instead of backing any 
particular horse, the professional better 
lays the same sum against every horse 
that takes the field, or a certain number 
of them, and in doing so he has usually 
to give odds, which are greater or less 
according to the estimate formed of the 
chance of success which each of the 
horses has on which the odds are given. 
In this way, while in the event of the 
race being won (as is usually the case) 
by any of the horses entered in the 
betting-book of a professional better, 
the latter has always a certain fixed sum 
(say $5000) to pay, he receives from the 
backers of the losers sums which vary 
in proportion to the odds given. Thus, 
if a book-maker is making a $5000 book, 
and the odds against some horse is 4 to 1, 
he will, if that horse wins, have to pay 
$5000, while, if it loses, he will receive 
$1250. It usually depends upon which 
horse it is that wins a race whether the 
book-maker gains or loses. If the first 
favorite wins it is evidently the worst 
thing that could happen for the book¬ 
maker, for, as he is bound to receive 
the sum of the amounts to which all 
the horses except one have been 
backed, the largest deduction must be 
made from his total receipts on ac¬ 
count of the first favorite. Very fre¬ 
quently the receipts of the book-maker 
are augmented by sums paid on ac¬ 
count of horses which have Been backed 
and never run at all. Sometimes, al¬ 
though not often, the odds are given 
upon and not against a particular horse. 
Books may also be made up on the prin¬ 
ciple of betting against any particular 
horse getting a place among the first 
three. The odds in this case are usually 
one-fourth of the odds given against 
the same horse winning. Another mode 
of betting is that called a sweepstake, 
in which a number of persons join in 
contributing a certain stake, after 
which each of those taking part in the 
sweepstake has a horse assigned to him 
(usually by lot), which he backs, and 
the backer of the winning horse gains 
the whole stakes. If there are more 
persons taking part in the sweepstake 
than there are horses running some of 
them must draw blanks, in which 
case of course their stakes are at once 
lost. 

BEVERIDGE, Albert J., an American 
lawyer and politician, born in Ohio in 
1862. In 1899 he was elected United 
States senator from Indiana. 

BEVERIDGE, Kvihne, an American 
sculptor, born in 1877 at Springfield, 
Ill. She has won considerable fame in 
England and France by her clever 
work. 

BEVERLY, a city in Essex Co., Mass., 
18 miles northeast of Boston; on the 
Boston and Maine Railroad. It is situ¬ 
ated on a narrow coast inlet, which is 
spanned by a bridge connecting with 
the city of Salem. Pop. 15,884. 

BEY. See Beg. 


BEYROUT (bi-rot0, or BEIRUT, the 

chief seaport of Syria, 60 miles n.w. of 
Damascus (89 by railway); pop. 120,000, 
largely Christians. Ancient Beyrout 
was an important Phoenician city. The 
Byzantine emperor Theodosius II. raised 
it to the rank of a metropolis, and it 
again rose to importance during the 
Crusades. In later times it was long in 
the possession of the Druses. It was 
bombarded and taken by the British in 
1840. 

BEZIERS (ba-zyar), a town in south¬ 
ern France, dep. HArault, beautifully 
situated on a height and surrounded by 
old walls, its chief edifice being the 
cathedral, a Gothic structure crowning 



The cathedral of Beziers. 


the height on which the town stands. 
Manufactures, woolens, hosiery, liquors, 
chemicals, etc., with a good trade in 
spirits, wool, grain, oil, verdigris, and 
fruits. Pop. 49,186. 

BEZIQUE (be-zek'), a simple game of 
cards most commonly played by two 
persons with two packs. It was a 


Bhagalpur has an area of 20,511 sq. 
miles, and a pop. (chiefly Hindus and 
Mohammedans) of 8,582,490.—The dis¬ 
trict has an area of 4226 sq. miles; pop. 
2,088,565. 

BHOOJ. See Bhuj. 

BHOPAL (bho-pal'), a native state of 
central India under British protection, 
on the Nerbudda, in Malwah. Area, 
6874 sq. miles. Pop. 1,094,800.—The 
capital of above state, also called Bho¬ 
pal, is on the boundary between Malwah 
and Gundwana. Pop. 77,023. 

BHURTPORE', a native state, India, 
in Rajput&na, bounded e. by Agra, 6. 
and w. by the Rajput States. Area, 
1974 sq. miles. Pop. 640,620.—The 
capital, which has the same name, is a 
fortified place, and was formerly of 
great strength. The rajah’s palace is a 
large building of red and yellow free¬ 
stone presenting a picturesque appear¬ 
ance. Pop. 43,601. 

BIBLE, the collection of the Sacred 
Writings or Holy Scriptures of the Chris¬ 
tians. Its two main divisions, one re¬ 
ceived by both Jews and Christians, the 
other by Christians only, are improperly 
termed Testaments, owing to the con¬ 
fusion of two meanings of the Greek 
word diatheke, which w r as applied in¬ 
differently to a covenant and to a last 
will or testament. The Jewish religion 
being represented as a compact between 
God and the Jews, the Christian religion 
w T as regarded as a new compact between 
God and the human race; and the Bible 
is, therefore, properly divisible into the 
Writings of the Old and New Cove¬ 
nants. The books of the Old Testament 
received by the Jews were divided by 
them into three classes: 1. The Law, 
contained in the Pentateuch or five 
books of Moses. 2. The Prophets, com¬ 
prising Joshua, Judges, I. and II. 
Samuel, I. and II. Kings, Isaiah, Jere¬ 
miah, Ezekiel, and the twelve minor 
prophets. 3. The Ketubim, or Hagiog- 
rapha (holy writings), containing the 
Psalms, the Proverbs, Job, in one di¬ 
vision; Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesi¬ 
astes, Esther, the Song of Solomon, in 
another division; Daniel, Ezra, Nehe- 
miah, I. and II. Chronicles, in a third. 



The rajah’s palace Bhurtpore. 


favorite game at the French court in 
the 18th century. 

BHAGALPUR (bha-gol-por'), a city 
in Bengal, capital of a district and 
division of the same name, on the right 
bank of the Ganges, here seven miles 
wide. Pop. 75,760.—The division of 


These books are extant in the Hebrew 
language; others, rejected from the 
canon as apocryphal by Protestants, 
are found only in Greek or Latin. 

The books of Moses were deposited, 
according to the Bible, in the taber¬ 
nacle, near the ark, the other sacred 











BIBLE CHRISTIANS 


BIBLICAL CRITICISM 


writings being similarly preserved. They 
were removed by Solomon to the temple, 
and on the capture of Jerusalem by 
Nebuchadnezzar probably perished. 
According to Jewish tradition Ezra, 
With the assistance of the great syna¬ 
gogue, collected and compared as many 
copies as could be found, and from this 
collation an edition of the whole was 
prepared, with the exception of the 
writings of Ezra, Malachi, and Nehe- 
miah, added subsequently, and certain 
obviously later insertions in other books. 
When Judas Maccabaeus repaired the 
temple, which had been destroyed by 
Antiochus Epiphanes, he placed in it 
a correct copy of the Hebrew Scriptures, 
whether the recension of Ezra or not is 
.not known. This copy was carried to 
Rome by Titus. The exact date of the 
determination of the Hebrew canon is 
uncertain, but no work known to be 
written later than about 100 years after 
the captivity was admitted into it by 
the Jews of Palestine. The Hellenistic 
or Alexandrian Jews, however, were less 
strict, and admitted many later writ¬ 
ings, forming what is now known as the 
Apocrypha, in which they were followed 
by the Latin Church. The Protestant 
churches at the Reformation gave in 
their adherence to the restricted Hebrew 
canon, though the Apocrypha was long 
included in the various editions of the 
Bible. The division into chapters and 
verses, as it now exists, is of compara¬ 
tively modern origin, though divisions 
of some kind were early introduced. 
Cardinal Hugo de Sancto Caro, in the 
13th century, divided the Latin trans¬ 
lation known as the Vulgate into chap¬ 
ters for convenience of reference, and 
similar divisions were made in the He¬ 
brew text by Rabbi Mordecai Nathan 
in the 15th century. About the middle 
of the 16th century the verses in Robert 
Stephanus’s edition of the Vulgate were 
for the first time marked by numbers. 

The earliest and most famous version 
of the Old Testament is the Septuagint, 
or Greek translation, executed by Alex¬ 
andrian Greeks, and completed probably 
before 130 b.c., different portions being 
done at different times. This version 
was adopted by the early Christian 
church and by the Jews themselves, and 
has always held an important place in 
regard to the interpretation and history 
of the Bible. The Syriac version, the 
Peshito, made early in the 2d century 
after Christ, is celebrated for its fidelity. 
The Coptic version was made from the 
Septuagint in the 3d or 4th century. 
The Gothic version, by Ulphilas, was 
made from the Septuagint in the 4th 
century; but mere insignificant frag¬ 
ments of it are extant. The most im¬ 
portant Latin version is the Vulgate, 
executed by Jerome, partly on the basis 
of the original Hebrew and completed 
in 405 a.d. 

The books of the New Testament 
were all written in Greek, unless it be 
true, as some critics suppose, that the 
Gospel of St. Matthew was originally 
written in Hebrew. Most of these 
writings have always been received as 
canonical; but the Epistle to the He¬ 
brews, commonly ascribed to St. Paul, 
that of St. Jude, the second of Peter, 
the second and third of John, and the 


Apocalyse, have been doubted. The 
three oldest MSS. are: (1) the Sinaitic 
MS., discovered by Tischendorf in a 
convent on Mount Sinai in 1859, as¬ 
signed to the middle of the 4th century; 
(2) the Vatican MS. at Rome of similar 
date; (3) the Alexandrine MS. in the 
British Museum, assigned to the middle 
of the 5th century. Each MS. contains 
also the Septuagint Greek of the Old 
Testament in great part. The Vulgate 
of Jerome embraces a Latin translation 
of the New as well as of the Old Testa¬ 
ment, based on an older Latin version. 
The division of the text of the New 
Testament into chapters and verses 
was introduced later than that of the 
Old Testament; but it is not precisely 
known when or by whom. The Greek 
text was first printed in the Complu- 
tenisian Polyglot, in 1514; in 1516 an 
edition of it was published at Basel by 
Erasmus. Among recent valuable edi¬ 
tions are those of Lachmann, Tischen¬ 
dorf, Tregelles, and Westcott and Hort. 

Of translations of the Bible into 
modern languages the English and the 
German are the most celebrated. Con¬ 
siderable portions were translated into 
Anglo-Saxon, including the Gospels and 
the Psalter. Wycliffe’s translation of 
the whole Bible (from the Vulgate) 
begun about 1356, was completed 
shortly before his death, which took 
place in 1384. The first printed version 
of the Bible in English was the trans¬ 
lation of William Tindall or Tyndale, 
whose New Testament was printed in 
quarto at Cologne in 1525, a small 
octavo edition appearing at the same 
time at Worms. The Pentateuch was 
published by Tindall in 1530, and he 
also translated some of the prophetical 
books. A translation of the entire 
Bible was published by Miles Coverdale 
in 1535. It was undertaken at the 
instance of Thomas Cromwell, and being 
made from German and Latin versions 
was inferior to Tindall’s. After the 
death of Tindall John Rogers under¬ 
took the completion of his translation 
and the preparation of a new edition. 
In this edition the latter part of the Old 
Testament (after II. Chronicles) was 
based on Coverdale’s version. A revised 
edition was published in 1539 under 
the superintendence of Richard Tav¬ 
erner. In the same year as Taverner’s 
another edition appeared, printed by 
authority, with a preface by Cranmer, 
and hence called Cranmer’s Bible. This 
was the first Bible printed by authority 
in England. This continued, with 
various revisions, to be the authorized 
version till 1568. In 1557-60 an 
edition appeared at Geneva, based on 
Tindall’s—the work of Whittington, 
Coverdale, Goodman, John Knox, and 
other exiles — and commonly called 
the Geneva, or Breeches Bible (from 
“breeches” standing instead of “aprons” 
in Gen. iii. 7.) This version, for sixty 
years the most popular in England, 
was allowed to be printed in England 
under a patent of monopoly in 1561. 
It was the first printed in Roman letters, 
and was also the first to adopt the plan 
previously adopted in the Hebrew of a 
division into verses. It omitted the 
Apocrypha, left the authorship of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews open, and put 


words not in the original in italics. The 
Bishop’s Bible, published 1568 to 1572, 
was based on Cranmer’s, and revised by 
Archbishop Parker and eight bishops. 
It succeeded Cranmer’s as the authorized 
version, but did not commend itself to 
scholars or people. In 1582 an edition 
of the New Testament, translated from 
the Latin Vulgate, appeared at Rheims, 
and in 1609-10 the Old Testament 
was published at Douay. This is the 
version recognized by the Roman 
Catholic Church. 

In the reign of James I. a Hebrew 
scholar, Hugh Broughton, insisted on 
the necessity of a new translation, and 
at the Hampton Court Conference 
(1604) the suggestion was accepted by 
the king. The work was undertaken by 
forty-seven scholars divided into six 
companies, two meeting at Westmin¬ 
ster, two at Oxford, and two at Cam¬ 
bridge, while a general committee 
meeting in London revised the portions 
of the translation finished by each. 
The revision was begun in 1607, and 
occupied three years, the completed 
work being published in folio in 1611. 
By the general accuracy of its transla¬ 
tion and the purity of its style it super¬ 
seded all other versions. In response, 
however, to a widely-spread desire for 
a translation even yet more free from 
errors, the Convocation of Canterbury 
in 1870 appointed a committee to con¬ 
sider the question of revising the English 
version. Their report being favorable 
two companies were formed, one for the 
Old Testament and one for the New, 
consisting partly of members of Con¬ 
vocation and partly of outside scholars. 
Two similar companies were also organ¬ 
ized in America to work along with the 
British scholars. The result was that 
the revised version of the New Testa¬ 
ment was issued in 1881; that of the 
Old Testament in 1885. The revision 
has been carried out in a spirit of 
reverence toward the older version, and 
few alterations have been admitted but 
such as have been called for on the score 
of accuracy, clearness, and uniformity. 

In Germany some seventeen transla¬ 
tions of the Bible, partly in the High 
German partly in the Low German 
dialect, appeared between the invention 
of printing and the Reformation, but 
they had all to make way for Luther’s 
great translation—the New Testament 
in 1522, and the whole Bible in 1534. 

BIBLE CHRISTIANS, a small sect 
founded by a Cornish Methodist preacher 
called O’Bryan, who profess to follow 
only the doctrines of the Bible and 
reject all human authority in religion. 
Called also Bryanites. 

BIBLE COMMUNISTS. See Perfec¬ 
tionists. 

BIBLICAL CRITICISM, a term by 
which is designated any investigation 
of the Old or New Testament. “Text 
criticism” of the Bible seeks to estab¬ 
lish the true texts of the Bible, that is, 
to decide what has been added to the 
original documents. The so-called 
higher criticism has for its function the 
establishment of the historical accuracy 
of the Scriptures and the genuineness 
of the authorship. The critic relies on 
what is called internal and external 
evidence, checking the historical accu- 






BIBLE SOCIETIES 


BILE 


racy of the statements in the text, the 
agreements of the texts among them¬ 
selves, and the alleged authorship by 
the contents of the texts and the known 
facts of history as found in profane 
history. Modern criticism began in the 
latter part of the 18th century and cul¬ 
minated with the “Tuebingen school,” 
some of the members of which denied 
the divinity of Jesus. 

BIBLE SOCIETIES, societies formed 
for the distribution of the Bible or 
portions of it in various languages, 
either gratuitously or at a low rate. 
Since the formation of the British and 
Foreign Bible Society it has circulated 
over 340 versions of the whole or parts 
of the Scriptures in 298 different lan¬ 
guages. In more than thirty instances 
languages have for the first time been 
reduced to a written form in order to 
translate into them and circulate among 
the people the Bibles of this society. 
The total issues now amount to about 
100,000,000 copies, while about 70,000,- 
000 additional copies have been dis¬ 
tributed by the kindred societies which 
have sprung out of it. In the United 
States the great American Bible Society, 
formed in 1816, acts in concert with 
auxiliary societies in all parts of the 
Union. Its total issue since its organiza¬ 
tion has been over 40,000,000. 

BIB'LIA PAU'PERUM, the name for 
block-books common in the middle ages, 
and consisting of a number of rude 
pictures of Biblical subjects with short 
explanatory text accompanying each 
picture. 

BIBLIOG'RAPHY, the knowledge of 
books, in reference to the subjects dis¬ 
cussed in them, their different degrees 
of rarity, curiosity, reputed and real 
value, the materials of which they are 
composed, and the rank which they 
ought to hold in the classification of a 
library. The subject is sometimes 
divided into general, national, and 
special bibliography, according as it 
deals with books in general, with those 
of a particular country, or with those on 
special subjects or having a special char¬ 
acter (as early printed books, anony¬ 
mous books). A subdivision of each of 
these might be made into material and 
literary, according as books were viewed 
in regard to their mere externals or in 
regard to their contents. 

BIBLIOMA'NIA, a passion for pos¬ 
sessing curious books, which has reached 
its highest development in France and 
England, though originating in Holland 
toward the close of the 17th century. 
The true bibliomanist is determined in 
the purchase of books, less by the value 
of their contents, than by certain acci¬ 
dental circumstances attending them, 
as that they belong to particular classes, 
are made of singular materials, or have 
something remarkable in their 1ns- 
tory. 

BICARBONATE, a carbonate derived 
from carbonic acid by replacing one of 
the atoms of hydrogen by a metal. 
Bicarbonate of sodium is used as an 
antacid, and effervescing liquors are 
usually produced by mixing it with 
tartaric acid. It is also the chief in¬ 
gredient of baking-powder. 

BI'CEPS, the large muscle in front of 
the upper arm. See Arm. 


BI'CYCLE, a light vehicle impelled 
by the rider, consisting of two wheels 
placed one before the other, and of 
connecting bars or framework. The 
vehicle is driven by the pressure of the 
rider’s feet either directly applied to 
two cranks attached to the axle of the 
front wheel, or to cranks in the frame 
driving the after-wheel by a chain and 
sprockets. The rider sits upon a saddle 
generally placed above and between the 
two wheels, and steers the machine by a 
handle, which turns the front wheel in 
in any required direction. It is kept in 
an upright position by the action of the 
rider’s body and legs, by the steering 
power, and also by its own momentum. 
The speed attained by an expert rider 
is considerable, 30 miles or more an 
hour having been covered. 

BIDDEFORD (bid'e-ford), a town in 
Maine, on the Saco, with which it is 
connected by several bridges. The river 
falls, 42 feet high, affording valuable 
water-power. Pop. 16,145. 

BIDDLE, John, father of the modern 
Unitarians, born in 1615 at Wotton- 
under-Edge, in Gloucestershire, died in 
prison 1662. He was repeatedy im¬ 
prisoned for his anti-Trinitarian views. 
A general act of oblivion in 1652 re¬ 
stored him to liberty, when he immedi¬ 
ately disseminated his opinions both by 
preaching and by the publication of his 
Twofold Scripture Catechism. He was 
again imprisoned. Cromwell banished 
him to St. Mary’s Castle, Scilly, and 
assigned him a hundred crowns annually. 
Here he remained three years, until the 
Protector liberated him in 1658. He 
then continued to preach his opinions 
till the death of Cromwell, and also after 
the Restoration, w T hen he was committed 
to jail in 1662, and died a few months 
sifter 

BIEL (bel). See Bienne. 

BIELA’S (be'la) COMET, discovered 
by M. Biela (1782-1856), an Austrian 
officer, in 1826. Its periodic time was 
determined as 6 years 38 weeks. It re¬ 
turned in 1832, 1839, 1846, and 1852. 
On the latter two occasions it was in 
two parts, each having a distinct 
nucleus and tail. It has not since been 
seen as a comet; but in 1872, 1879, and 
1885, when the earth passed through 
the comet’s track, immense flights of 
meteors were seen, which have been 
connected with the broken-up and dis¬ 
persed comet. 

BIEN'NIAL, a plant that requires 
two seasons to come to maturity, bear¬ 
ing fruit and dying the second year, as 
the turnip, carrot, wallflower, etc. 

BIERSTADT, Albert, an American 
landscape painter, born at Lxisseldorf, 
Germany, 1830, died in 1902. His 
principal paintings are of the Rocky 
Mountain regions. 

BIGAMY, the act or state of having 
more wives or husbands than one. It 
is regarded as an offense in. most coun¬ 
tries, and in the U. States ft is a felony, 
punishable by a term in the peniten¬ 
tiary, the length of the term varying in 
different states. To be guilty of bigamy 
the offender must have knowledge of 
the fact that his or her spouse is living, 
and the second or other marriage must 
be solemnized by form of law or church, 
I or other formal ceremonial, and not 


merely a personal agreement or con¬ 
tract. Bigamy may be committed by 
persons of either sex. 

BIG HORN, a river of the U. States 
rising in the Rockies and flowing 
through Montana into the Yellowstone 
river. It is 460 miles long. 

BIG HORN, a popular name for the 
celebrated Rocky Mountain sheep, 
which, in its several species, is found 
along the whole course of the Rocky 
Mountain system to the Arctic regions. 
The common species is 3 feet 4 inches 
high, brownish in color, with a dark 
line along the spine. The horns of the 
ram are massive, spiral-like, and often 
measure 45 inches in length. The big 
horn is a marvelous jumper, scaling 
great heights almost perpendicular, and 
one of the hardiest of the wild animals 
of America. It is called also Rocky 
Mountain goat. 

BIGELOW, Erastus Brigham, an 
American inventor, born in Massachu¬ 
setts in 1814, died 1879. His principal 
inventions are weaving apparatus. He 
founded the Bigelow Carpet Company 
of Clinton, Mass., and was one of the 
founders of the Massachusetts Institute 
of Technology. 

BIGELOW, Poultney, an American 
writer, traveler, and critic. He was 
born in 1855, and was educated at Yale 
and abroad. He has been editor of 
Outing, and correspondent of numerous 
ublications. He has published several 
ooks of travel and criticism on foreign 
countries. 

BIGNO'NIA, a genus of plants of 

many species, inhabitants of hot cli¬ 
mates, usually climbing shrubs fur¬ 
nished with tendrils; flowers mostly in 
terminal or axillary panicles; corolla 
trumpet-shaped, hence the name of 
trumpet-flower commonly given to 
these plants. All the species are splen¬ 
did plants when in blossom, and many 
of them are cultivated. 

BIKANER', a native state of Rajpu- 
tana, India. Area, 23,090 sq. miles; 
pop. 584,712.—Bikaner, the capital, 
has a fort, containing the rajah’s palace. 
Pop. 53,075. 

BILASPUR (bi-las-pdr'), a district in 
the chief commissionership of the Cen¬ 
tral Provinces of India. Area 8341 sq. 
miles; pop. 1,164; 158. 

BILBA'O, a city in northern Spain, 
capital of the province of Biscay on the 
navigable Nervion, 6 miles from the sea. 
It has a cathedral and fine public build¬ 
ings; flourishing industries; iron-works, 
steel-works, foundries, shipyards, etc.; 
excellent harbor accommodation, and 
exports much iron ore. Pop. 83,306. 

BILBERRY. See'Whortleberry. 

BILE, a yellow bitter liquor, separa¬ 
ted from the blood by the primary cells 
of the liver, and collected by the biliary 
ducts, which unite to form the hepatic 
duct, whence it passes into the duode¬ 
num, or by the cystic duct into the gall¬ 
bladder, to be retained there till required 
for use. The most obvious use of the 
bile in the animal economy is to aid in 
the digestion of fatty substances and to 
convert the chyme into chyle. It ap¬ 
pears also to aid in exciting the peris¬ 
taltic action of the intestines. The 
natural color of the faeces seems to be 
owing to the presence of bile. The 







BILGE 


BINARY 


chemical composition varies with the 
animal which yields it, but every kind 
contains two essential constituents, the 
bile salts and the bile coloring matter 
associated with small quantities of 
cholesterine, fats, and certain mineral 
salts, chiefly chloride of sodium, phos¬ 
phates, and iron. Some of the constitu¬ 
ents of the bile return into the blood by 
absorption, the coloring matters and 
cholesterine being the principal excre- 
mentitious substances. When bile is 
not secreted in due quantity from the 
blood the unhealthy condition of bil¬ 
iousness results. 

BILGE, the breadth of a ship’s bot¬ 
tom, or that part of her floor which 
approaches to a horizontal direction, on 
which she would rest if aground.— 
Bilge-water, water which enters a ship 
and lies upon her bilge or bottom; when 
not drawn off it becomes dirty and 
offensive.—Bilge ways, planks of timber 
laced under a vessel’s bilge on the 
uilding-slip to support her while 
launching. 

BIL'IARY CAL'CULUS, a concretion 
which forms in the gall-bladder or bile- 
ducts; gall-stone. It is generally com¬ 
posed of a peculiar crystalline fatty 
matter which has been called cholester¬ 
ine. 

BILL, a written or printed paper con¬ 
taining a statement of any particulars. 
In common use a tradesman’s account, 
or a printed proclamation or advertise¬ 
ment, is thus called a bill. In legislation 
a bill is a draft of a proposed statute 
submitted to a legislative assembly for 
approval, but not yet enacted or passed 
and made law. When the bill has passed 
and received the necessary assent, it 
becomes an act. 

BILL OF ATTAINDER, a bill intro¬ 
duced in a legislature fixing a penalty 
or punishment on an individual by 
enactment of the legislature. Bills of 
attainder are forbidden by the consti¬ 
tution of the United States. This pro¬ 
vision was prompted by the abuses 
wrought in England by this method of 
punishment. 

BILL OF COSTS, a statement of the 
costs of a lawsuit, fixed to the judgment, 
and chargeable to the defeated party to 

the suit. . , ... 

BILL OF CREDIT, a letter of credit. 
In the United States constitution the 
term “bills of credit” means no more 
than paper money. The states are for¬ 
bidden to issue bills of credit; that is, 
no state can issue paper money, this 
function being a federal one. 

BILL OF EXCEPTIONS, a statement 
of the exceptions taken to the ruling of 
a court in a cause. The bill of excep¬ 
tions is used for purposes of appeal. 

BILL OF EXCHANGE, a written order 
to pay a sum of money to a third party. 
The order may be to pay at sight or 
after a certain number of days. If the 
person on whom the order is made 
accepts it, by signing it he is liable for 

its payment. . 

BILL IN EQUITY, a petition filed in a 
court cf chancery stating all the cir¬ 
cumstances of the case in dispute and 
asking the chancery judge, or chancellor, 
to decide the points at issue, i he 
custom arose from the old English me- 
P. E.—10 


thod of appealing directly to the con¬ 
science of the king. 

BILL OF HEALTH, a statement of the 
condition of the health of the crew and 
passengers of a ship, made by the ship’s 
surgeon or the captain. A clean bill of 
health reports no infection on ship board; 
a foul bill reports passengers unfit to 
land; a suspected bill reports infection 
at the place whence the ship sailed. 

BILL OF INDEMNITY, a bill passed 
by congress justifying the action of an 
official who, under stress of circum¬ 
stance, has exceeded his authority.— 
Also a bill to reimburse one who has 
spent his own money in the service of the 
state. 

BILL OF LADING, an agreement or 

contract made by a common carrier 
with a shipper providing for the trans¬ 
portation of the goods or freight men¬ 
tioned, the rate of transportation, and 
the liabilities of both parties. Bills of 
lading are made out in duplicate, the 
latter being sent to the consignee. 
Bills of lading are not negotiable, but are 
often so used, and some states have 
even tried to make them negotiable by 
law. 

BILL OF RIGHTS, the name given to 
the ten first amendments to the con¬ 
stitution of the United States. 

BILL OF SALE, a conveyance of 
property from one person to another, 
containing the description of the prop¬ 
erty and transferring the title of the 
property to the buyer. 

BILLIARDS, a game played with 
three or four ivory balls and a stick, 
called a “cue,” on a large table the 
sides of which are banked with rubber, 
the whole being covered with green 
baize. Considerable difference exists 
between the English and the French 
game, the latter being the game played 
in the U. States. The English table is 
6x12 feet, has six pockets and three 
balls, two white and a red being used. 
In the U. States pockets are not used. 
The American table is about 6x12, the 
cue is ash or maple with a leather tip, 
the balls ivory, 2§ inches in diameter, 
the color being two white and one red. 
The object of the player is so to strike 
his own ball that it will, after leaving 
his cue, come into contact with the two 
remaining balls. The rebound from the 
first ball is called a carom, and when 
both balls are hit the play counts one 
point. By playing along the cushions 
(banked sides of the table) a skilful 
player can count points indefinitely. 
To prevent this the game called “the 
balk-line game” was invented. In this 
game four fines are drawn parallel 
with the cushion at an agreed upon 
distance and the player is allowed to 
make but one shot, or an agreed-upon 
number of shots, when one or both balls 
fie between the fine and the cushion. 
The three-ball game without the balk- 
fine is called the straight-rail game. 
The following is a fist of high runs made 
since 1880: Straight rail—highest run 
for match play (3 balls, on regulation 
5x10 table) 1531 points, Maurice Vig- 
naux, Paris, 1880. Highest average for 
match play, 333J, by Jacob Schaefer, 
Chicago, 1879. Cushion caroms—high¬ 
est run for tournament play, 85 points, 
Frank C. Ives, Boston, 1896. Highest 


average for tournament play, 10 (in 200 
points), Jacob Schaefer, Chicago, 1887. 
Highest average (with “anchor nurse” 
allowed), 100, Jacob Schaefer, New 
York, 1893, and Frank C. Ives, Cnicago, 
1894. Highest average (with “anchor 
nurse” barred), 63 2-10, Frank C. Ives, 
New York, 1894. 18-inch balk-line— 
highest run for tournament play, 290 
points (with 5 shots allowed in “anchor” 
spaces), Frank C. Ives, New York, 
1896; 140 (with the “anchor nurse” 
barred), Frank C. Ives, New York, 1897. 
Highest average for tournament play, 
50 (with 5 shots allowed in “ancnor” 
spaces), Frank C. Ives, New York, 1896; 
40 (with “anchor nurse” barred), Jacob 
Schaefer, Chicago, 1898. In 1906 Jacob 
Schaefer made a run of 100 in an 18.1 
match, which is the highest in a cham¬ 
pionship match. 

BILLINGS, John Shaw, an American 
surgeon, born in Indiana in 1837. He 
was surgeon in the Union army during 
the civil war, and curator of the military 
museum at Washington from 1864. In 
1896 he became librarian of the New 
York City Public Library. He has 
published several scientific works and 
catalogues and is a member of numerous 
learned societies. 

BILLINGS, JOSH. See Henry W. 

Shaw. 

BIL'LINGSGATE, the principal fish- 
market of London, on the left bank of 
the Thames, a little below London 
Bridge. From the character, real or 

3 osed, of the Billingsgate fish- 
srs, the term Billingsgate is ap- 

[ )lied generally to coarse and violent 
anguage. 

BIL'LION, in Britain and Germany 
the designation for a million of millions; 
among the French and in America a 
thousand millions. A similar difference 
of usage exists in regard to trillion, 
quadrillion, etc. 

BI'MANA, animals having two hands: 
a term applied by Cuvier to the highest 
order of Mammalia, of which man is the 
type and sole genus. By some natural¬ 
ists man is classified as a sub-division 
of the order Primates, which includes 
also the apes, monkeys, and lemurs. 

BIMETALLISM, that system of coin¬ 
age which recognizes coins of two metals 
(silver and gold) as legal tender to any 
amount; or, in other words, the concur¬ 
rent use of coins of two metals as a 
circulating medium, the ratio of value 
between the two being arbitrarily fixed 
by law. It is contended by advocates 
of the system that by fixing a legal ratio 
between the value of gold and silver, and 
using both as legal tender, fluctuations 
in the value of the metals are avoided, 
while the prices of commodities are 
rendered steadier. 

BINARY, twofold; double.—Binary 
compound, in chemistry, a compound of 
two elements, or of an element and a 
compound performing the function of an 
element, or of two compounds perform¬ 
ing the function of elements, according 
to the laws of combination. The term is 
now little used.—Binary theory of salts, 
the theory which regarded all salts as 
being made up of two oxides, an acid 
oxide and a basic oxide; thus sodium 
carbonate as made up of soda and carbon 
dioxide.—Binary star, a double star 






BINGHAMPTON 


BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 


whose members revolve round a com¬ 
mon center of gravity. 

BING'HAMPTON, a town in New 
York, at the junction of the Chenango 
and Susquehanna rivers, with numerous 
manufactures and an extensive flour 
and lumber trade. Pop. 47,000. 

BINOC'ULAR, a field-glass or opera- 
glass, or a microscope suited for viewing 
objects with both eyes at once. 

BI'OBIO, a Chilean river, rises in Lake 
Huchueltui, flows in a n.w. direction 
for 180 miles, and falls into the Pacific 
at the city of Concepcion. It gives 
name to a province of the country, 
with 100,000 inhabitants; area, 4158 sq. 
miles. 

BIOGEN'ESIS, the history of life 
development generally; specifically, 
that department of biological science 
which speculates on the mode by which 
new species have been introduced; often 
restricted to that view which holds that 
living organisms can spring only from 
living parents. 

BIOG'RAPHY, that department of 
literature which treats of the individual 
lives of men or women; and also a prose 
narrative detailing the history and un¬ 
folding the character of an individual 
written by another. When written by 
the individual whose history is told it is 
called an autobiography. This species 
of writing is as old as literature itself. 
In the first century after Christ Plutarch 
wrote his Parallel Lives; Cornelius 
Nepos, the Lives of Military Com¬ 
manders; and Suetonius, the Lives of 
the Twelve Caesars. Modern biograph¬ 
ical literature may be considered to 
date from the 17 th century, since 
which time individual biographies have 
multiplied enormously. Dictionaries of 
biography have proved extremely use¬ 
ful, Mor6ri’s Dictionnaire Historique 
et Critique, 1671, being perhaps the 
first of this class. During the 19th 
century have been published the Bi- 
ographie Universelle, 85 vols., 1811- 
62; Nouvelle Biographie G6n4rale, 46 
\’ols., 1852-66; Chalmer’s General Bio¬ 
graphical Dictionary, 32 vols., 1812-17; 
Rose’s Biographical Dictionary, 12 
vols., 1848-50; the admirable Diction¬ 
ary of National Biography, 63 vols., 
the first published in 1885, the last 
in 1900, with Supplement of other 3 
vols. (1901); and Appleton’s Cyclopaedia 
of American Biography, 6 vols. (1887- 
1889). 

BIOL'OGY, a comprehensive term 
for those departments of science which 
treat of living beings, including under 
this head both animals and plants. 
It therefore comprehends both botany 
and zoology in all their branches and 
details. 

BI'PED, an animal having two feet: 
applied to man and birds, indicating 
their mode of progression rather than 
the mere possession of two limbs. 

BIRCH, a genus of trees which com¬ 
prises only the birches and alders, 
which inhabit Europe, northern Asia, 
and North America. The common 
birch is indigenous throughout the 
north, and on high situations in the 
south of Europe. It is extremely hardy, 
and only one or two other species of 
trees approach so near to the north pole. 
The wood of the birch, which is light 


in color, and firm and tough in texture, 
is used for chairs, tables, bedsteads, and 
the woodwork of furniture generally, 
also for fish-casks and hoops, and for 
smoking hams and herrings, as well as 
for many small articles. In France 
wooden shoes are made of it. The 
bark is whitish in color, smooth and 
shining, separable in thin sheets or lay¬ 
ers. Fishing-nets and sails are steeped 
with it to preserve them. In some 
countries it is made into hats, shoes, 
boxes, etc. In Russia the oil extracted 
from it is used in the preparation of 
of Russian leather, and imparts the 
well-known scent to it. In Lapland 
bread has been made from it. The sap, 
from the amount of sugar it contains, 
affords a kind of agreeable wine, which 
is produced by the tree being tapped 
during warm weather in the end of 
spring or beginning of summer, when 
the sap runs most copiously. The 
dwarf birch, a low shrub, two or three 
feet high at most, is a native of all the 
most northerly regions. The cherry- 
birch of America, and also the black 
birch, produce valuable timber, as do 
other American species. The largest 
of these is the yellow birch, which 
attains the height of 80 feet. It 
is named from its bark being of a 
rich yellow color. The paper birch of 
America has a bark that may readily be 
divided into thin sheets almost like 
paper. From it the Indian bark canoes 
are made. 

BIRD, a great class of vertebrate 
animals, warm-blooded, covered with 
feathers and ordinarily capable of flight. 
They have existed since early times, 
exhibit an interesting evolution within 
very compact and well-defined limits, 
dwell in every part of the globe, are 
exceedingly diverse in size, form, ability, 
and appearance, adapted to every sort 
of climate and food, show mental 
qualities of a high order, are of great 
importance in their economic relations 
with man, and in most cases are beauti¬ 
ful in outline and color and possessed of 
melodious voices. 

Birds are classified between the rep¬ 
tiles (regarded as inferior to them) and 
the mammals (regarded as superior in 
general organization). Birds differ from 
mammals, broadly, in being clothed with 
feathers instead of hairs, and in the 
absence of milk-glands, and by sundry 
differences in anatomy and methods of 
existence, such as the hatching exter¬ 
nally of eggs, and the devotion of the fore 
limbs to flight. They differ from rep¬ 
tiles in having a covering of feathers 
instead of scales; a complete double 
circulation of warm blood; no more 
than three digits in the manus, long 
legs, etc. The differences noted are, 
however, of much less importance than 
those which separate them from mam¬ 
mals, and the structural resemblance is 
so close that some anatomists, notably 
Huxley, have included reptiles and 
birds in a single group, the Sauropsida, 
comparable to Fishes or Mammals, and 
completing, with them, the three di¬ 
visions of the Vertebrata. This group¬ 
ing was founded upon the fact that birds 
and reptiles were alike in being ovipa¬ 
rous or ovoviviparous; in having a 
cloaca; in the incompleteness of the 


diaphragm, and of a corpus callosum in 
the brain j in having only one occipital 
condyle; in the presence of a movable 
quadrate bone and other peculiarities 
of the skull; and in the fact that the 
ankle-joint is between two sets of tarsal 
bones. The close relationship thus 
implied has been confirmed by the dis¬ 
closures of paleontology, which show 
that birds have a reptilian ancestry, and 
are an offshoot of the same stock as 
modern reptiles. 

All the species of birds now inhabiting 
the earth are the descendents of ancient 
ancestors long since vanished, some of 
which have, however, left remains 
behind from which zoologists have 
reconstructed skeletons of these animals 
quite accurate in their general features. 
Tracks have been found in the sand¬ 
stones of Connecticut which are be¬ 
lieved to be of ancient gigantic birds 
with three toes and a stride of seven 
feet. 


BIRD-C^LL, an instrument for imi¬ 
tating the cry of birds in order to attract 
them so that they may be caught. 

BIRD-CATCHING SPIDER, a name 
applied to a gigantic spider which preys 
upon insects and small birds which it 
hunts for and pounces on. It is about 
two inches long, very hairy, and almost 
black; its feet when spread out occupy 
a surface of nearly a foot in diameter. 

BIRD-CHERRY, a species of cherry, 
a very ornamental tree in shrubberies 
from its purple bark, its bunches of white 
flowers, and its berries, which are suc¬ 
cessively green, red, and black. Its 
fruits is nauseous to the taste, but is 
greedily eaten by birds. The wood is 
much used for cabinet-work. It is 
common in the native woods of Sweden 
and Scotland. 


BIRD-LIME, a viscous substance 
used for entangling birds so as to make 
them easily caught, twigs being for this 
purpose smeared with it at places where 
birds resort. It is prepared from holly- 
bark, being extracted by boiling; also 
from the viscid berries of the mistletoe. 

BIRDS. See Ornithology. 

BIRD OF PARADISE, the name for 
members of a family of birds of splendid 
plumage allied to the crows, inhabiting 
New Guinea and the adjacent islands. 
The family includes eleven or twelve 
genera and a number of species, some 
of them remarkably beautiful. The 
largest species is over 2 feet in length. 
The king bird of paradise is possibly 
the most beautiful species, but is rare. 
It has a magnificent plume of feathers, 
of a delicate yellow color, coming up 
from under the wings, and falling over 
the back like a jet of water. The feathers 
are those chiefly worn in plumes. These 
splendid ornaments are confined to the 
male bird. 

BIRD-SEED, seed for feeding cage- 
birds, especially the seed of canary- 
grass. 

BIRD’S-EYE MAPLE, curled maple 
the wood of the sugar-maple when full 
of little knotty spots somewhat re¬ 
sembling birds’ eyes, much used in 
cabinet-work. 

BIRD’S-EYE VIEW, the representa¬ 
tion of any scene as it would appear if 
seen from a considerable elevation right 
above. 





BIRD’S-NESTS 


BISHOP 


BIRDS’-NESTS, Edible, the nests of 
the salangane and other species of swifts 
found in the Indian seas. They are par¬ 
ticularly abundant in the larger islands 
of the Eastern Archipelago. The nest 
has the shape of a common swallow’s 
nest, is found in caves, particularly on 
the sea-shore, and has the appearance 
of fibrous, imperfectly concocted isin¬ 
glass. When procured before the eggs 
are laid the nests are of a waxy white¬ 
ness and are then esteemed most val¬ 
uable; when the bird has laid her eggs 
they are of second quality; when the 
young are fledged and flown, a third 
quality. They appear to be composed 
of a mucilaginous substance secreted by 
special glands, and not, as was formerly 
thought, made form a glutinous marine 
fucus or seaweed. The Chinese con¬ 
sider the nests as a great stimulant and 
tonic, and it is said that about 8£ mil¬ 
lions of them are annually imported 
into Canton. 



Bird of paradise. 


BIRDS OF PASSAGE, birds which 
migrate with the season from a colder 
to a warmer, or from a warmer to a 
colder climate, divided into summer 
birds of passage and winter birds of 
passage. Such birds always breed in 
the country to which they resort in 
summer, i.e. in the colder of their homes. 

BIRDS OF PREY, the Accipitres or 
Raptores, including vultures, eagles, 
hawks or falcons, buzzards, and owls. 

BIR'KENFELD (-felt), an outlying 
principality belonging to Oldenburg, 
surrounded by the Rhenish districts of 
Coblentz and Treves; area 194 sq. miles; 
pop. 53,409. 

BIR'KENHEAD, a pari., county, and 
municipal borough of England, in 
Cheshire, on the estuary of the Mersey, 
opposite Liverpool. Its commerce is in 
all respects a branch of that of Liverpool. 
The communication with Liverpool is 
by large steamboats and by a railway 
tunnel under the bed of the Mersey 4£ 
miles long including the approaches, 
21 feet high, 20 feet wide, the roof being 


about 30 feet below the bed of the river. 
Pop. 110.926. 

BIRMAH. See Burmah. 

BIR'MINGHAM, a great manufactur¬ 
ing city of England, situated on the 
small river Rea near its confluence with 
the Tame, in^the n.w. of Warwickshire, 
with suburbs extending into Stafford¬ 
shire and Worcestershire; 112 miles 
n.w. of London, and 97 s.e. of Liver¬ 
pool. It is the principal seat of the hard¬ 
ware manufacture in Britain, producing 
metal articles of all kinds from pins to 
steam-engines. It manufactures fire¬ 
arms in great quantities, swords, jew¬ 
elry, buttons, tools, steel-pens, locks, 
lamps, bedsteads, gas-fittings, sewing- 
machines, articles of papier-mach.6, 
railway-carriages, etc. The quantity of 
solid gold and silver plate manufactured 
is large, and the consumption of these 
metals in electroplating is very great. 
Japanning, glass manufacturing, and 
glass-staining or painting form impor¬ 
tant branches of industry, as also does 
the manufacture of chemicals. At Soho 
and Smethwick in the vicinity of the 
town were the famous works founded 
by Boulton and Watt, who there manu¬ 
factured their first steam-engines, where 
gas was first used, plating perfected, 
and numerous novel applications tried 
and experiments made. The principal 
educational institutions are: The Uni¬ 
versity (opened in 1900), which has 
developed from the Mason University 
College, founded by Sir Josiah Mason in 
1875, opened in 1880 and united with 
Queen’s College (as the medical depart¬ 
ment) in 1892; a Roman Catholic college 
(at Oscott); King Edward’s Grammar 
School; and a school of art and design. 
Pop. 522,182. 

BIRMINGHAM, a city and the county 
seat of Jefferson Co., Ala., and an impor¬ 
tant manufacturing center, 97 miles 
northwest of Montgomery, on the Central 
Railroad of Georgia, the Louisville and 
Nashville, the Southern, the Alabama 
Great Southern, and the Kansas City, 
Memphis, and Birmingham railroads. 
The chief industry is the manufacture 
of iron and steel in various forms. Be¬ 
sides pig-iron furnaces, foundries, engine 
and boiler works, machine-shops, and 
car-wheel works, it has cotton-factories, 
packing-houses, cottonseed-oil mills, and 
extensive iron and coal mining and lum¬ 
ber interests. Pop. 42,000. 

BIRS NIMRUD, a famous mound in 
Babylonia, on the west side of the Eu¬ 
phrates, 6 miles s.w. of Hillah, generally 
identified as the remains of the Tower of 
Babel. 

BIRTH, or LABOR, in physiology, is 
the act by which a female of the class 
Mammalia brings one of her own species 
into the world. When the foetus has re¬ 
mained its due time in the womb, and 
is in a condition to carry on a separate 
existence, it is extruded from its place 
of confinement, in order to live the life 
which belongs to its species, independ¬ 
ently of the mother. The period of 
gestation is very different in different 
animals, but in each particular species 
it is fixed with much precision. At the 
end of the thirty-ninth or the beginning 
of the fortieth week, the human child 
has reached its perfect state, and is ca¬ 
pable of living separate from the mother; 


hence follows in course its separation 
from her, that is, the birth. Contrac¬ 
tions of the womb gradually come on, 
which are called, from the painful sen¬ 
sations accompanying them, labor-pains. 
The contractions of the womb take place 
in the same order as the enlargement 
had previously done, the upper part of 
it first contracting, while the mouth of 
the womb enlarges and grows thin, and 
the vagina becomes loose and distensi¬ 
ble. By this means the foetus, as the 
space within the womb is gradually 
narrowed, descends with a turning 
motion toward the opening, and some 
time after the head of the child appears 
and the rest of the body soon follows. 
An artificial birth is that which is accom¬ 
plished by the help of art, with instru¬ 
ments or the hands of the attendant. 
Premature birth is one which happens 
some weeks before the usual time, 
namely, after the seventh and before 
the end of the ninth month. Late birth 
is a birth after the usual period of forty 
weeks. Although this is considered 
the usual time for legitimate births, the 
practice of the English law courts is to 
allow a longer time when the opinions 
of the faculty, or the peculiar circum¬ 
stances of the case, are in favor of a 
protracted gestation. In Scotland a 
child born after the tenth month is 
accounted illegitimate. Abortion and 
miscarriage take place when a foetus is 
brought forth so immature that it can¬ 
not live. They happen from the begin¬ 
ning of pregnancy to the seventh month, 
but most frequently in the third month. 

BIRTH MARK. See Naevus. 

BIRTH'RIGHT, any right or privilege 
to which a person is entitled by birth, 
such as an estate descendible by law to 
an heir, or civil liberty under a free con¬ 
stitution. See Primogeniture. 

BIS'CAY, a province of Spain near 
its northeast corner, one of the three 
Basque provinces (the other two being 
Alava and Guipuzcoa), area 850 sq. 
miles. The surface is generally moun¬ 
tainous; the most important mineral 
is iron, which is extensively worked; 
capital, Bilbao. Pop. 290,222. 

BISCAY, BAY OF, that part of the 
Atlantic which lies between the pro¬ 
jecting coasts of France and Spain, ex¬ 
tending from Ushant to Cape Finisterre, 
celebrated for its dangerous navigation. 

BISCUIT (bis'ket), a kind of hard, dry 
bread which is not liable to spoil when 
kept. Biscuits are either fermented or 
unfermented, the kinds in ordinary use 
being generally fermented, while the 
unfermented biscuit is much used at 
sea, and hence called sea-biscuit. 

BISHOP, the highest of the three 
orders in the Christian ministry—bish¬ 
ops, priests, and deacons—in such 
churches as recognize three grades. 
Originally in the Christian church, the 
name was used interchangeably with 
presbyter or elder for the overseer or 
pastor of a congregation; but at a com¬ 
paratively early period a position of 
special authority was held by the 
pastors of the Christian communities be¬ 
longing to certain places, and the name 
of bishop became limited to these by 
way of distinction. There is much that 
is doubtful or disputed in regard to the 
history of the episcopal office. Roman 









BISMARCK 


BISON 


Catholics and many others hold that it 
is of divine ordination and existed al¬ 
ready in apostolic times; and they 
maintain the doctrine of the apostolical 
succession, that is to say. the doctrine 
of the transmission of tne ministerial 
authority in uninterrupted succession 
from Christ to the apostles, and through 
these from one bishop to another. Pres¬ 
byterians deny that the office was of 
divine or apostolic origin, and hold that 
it was an upgrowth of subsequent times 
easily accounted for, certain of the pres¬ 
byters or pastors acquiring precedence 
as bishops over others, just as the 
bishops of the chief cities (Jerusalem, 
Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, 
Rome) obtained precedence among the 
bishops and received the title of metro¬ 
politan bishops; while the Bishop of 
Rome came to be regarded as the head 
of the church and the true successor of 
Peter. At present in the R. Catholic 
Church the bishop is usually elected by 
the presbyters of the diocese, subj'ect 
to the approbation of the pope and of 
the secular power. When the monarch 
is Roman Catholic a bishopric may be 
in the royal gift, subject to papal appro¬ 
val. The bishop comes next in rank to 
the cardinal. His special insignia are 
the miter and crosier or pastoral staff, 
a gold ring, the pallium, dalmatica, 
etc. He guards the purity of doctrine 
in his diocese, appoints professors in 
the clerical colleges, licenses books on 
religious subjects, ordains and appoints 
the clergy, consecrates churches, takes 
charge of the management of funds 
for ecclesiastical or pious purposes, etc. 
The bishops of the Greek Church have 
similar functions but on the whole less 
authority. They are always selected 
from the monastic orders. 

In the Church of England bishops are 
nominated by the sovereign, who, upon 
request of the dean and chapter for 
leave to elect a bishop, sends a cong6 
<Telire, or license to elect, with a letter 
missive, nominating the person whom 
be would have chosen. The election, 
by the chapter, must be made within 
twelve days, or the sovereign has a right 
to appoint whom he pleases. 

In the U. States there are 24 arch¬ 
bishops, and 86 bishops of the Roman 
Catholic Church, and upward of a hun¬ 
dred bishops of the Protestant Epis¬ 
copal Church. The Methodist Episcopal 
Church (North) has 28 bishops, and the 
Methodist Episcopal Church (South) 
has twelve. The African Methodist 
Episcopal in the U. States has 13 bish¬ 
ops, and the Reformed Episcopal Church 
has seven. There is also a bishop of the 
Polish Catholic Church, one of the Old 
Catholic Church, one of the Greek 
Orthodox Church, and one of the 
Syrian Greek Orthodox Church in the 
U. States. 

Bishops in partibus infidelium (in 
part occupied by the infidels) are held 
to be successors of ancient bishops 
whose dioceses became extinct. Suf¬ 
fragan bishops fill the function of assist¬ 
ants to bishops. 

BISMARCK, (bis'mark), the capital 
of North Dakota, and county seat of 
Burleigh Co., on the Missouri river, 
and on the Northern Pacific Railroad. 
In 1883 it was made the capital of 


Dakota Territory, and in 1889 was 
chosen as the state capital of North 
Dakota. 



State capitol, Bismarck, N. D. 


BISMARCK - SCHONHAUSEN (bis'- 
mark-sheun'hou-zen), Otto Eduard 
Leopold, Prince; born of a noble family 
of the “Mark” (Brandenburg), at Schon- 
hausen, April 1, 1815; studied at Got¬ 
tingen, Berlin, and Greifswald; entered 
the army and became lieutenant in the 
Landwehr. After a brief interval 
devoted to his estates and to the office 
of inspector of dikes, he became in 1846 
a member of the provincial diet of 
Saxony, and in 1847 of the Prussian 
diet. In 1851 he was appointed repre- 



Prince Bismarck. 


sentative of Prussia in the diet of the 
German Federation at Frankfort, where 
with brief interruptions he remained 
till 1859, exhibiting the highest ability 
in his efforts to checkmate Austria and 
place Prussia at the head of the German 
states. From 1859-62 he was ambassa¬ 
dor at St. Petersburg, and in the latter 
year, after an embassy to Paris of five 
months’ duration, was appointed first 
minister of the Prussian crown. The 
Lower House persistently refusing to 
pass the bill for the reorganization of 
the army, Bismarck at once dissolved 
it (Oct., 1862), closing it for four suc¬ 
cessive sessions until the work of re¬ 
organization was complete. When pop¬ 
ular feeling had reached its most 
strained point the Schleswig-Holstein 
question acted as a diversion, and Bis¬ 
marck—by the skilful manner in which 
he added the duchies to Prussian terri¬ 
tory, checkmated Austria, and excluded 
her from the new German confeder¬ 


ation, in which Prussia held the first 
place—became the most popular man 
in Germany. As chancellor and presi¬ 
dent of the Federal Council he secured 
the neutralization of Luxembourg in 
place of its cession by Holland to 
France; and, though in 1868 he with¬ 
drew for a few months into private life, 
he resumed office before the close of the 
year. A struggle between Germany and 
France appearing to be sooner or later 
inevitable, Bismarck, having made full 
preparations, brought matters to a head 
on the question of the Hohenzollern 
candidature for the Spanish throne. 
Having carried the war to a successful 
issue, he became chancellor and prince 
of the new German empire. Subse¬ 
quently, in 1872, he alienated the 
Roman Catholic party by promoting 
adverse legal measures and expelling 
the Jesuits. He then resigned his presi¬ 
dency for a year, though still continuing 
to advise the emperor. Toward the close 
of 1873 he returned to power, retaining 
his position until, in March, 1890, he dis¬ 
agreed with the emperor and tendered 
his resignation. In 1878 he presided at 
the Berlin Congress, in 1880 at the Ber¬ 
lin Conference, and in 1884 at the Congo 
Conference. His life was twice at¬ 
tempted—at Berlin in 1866, and at 
Kissingen in 1874. He died in 1898. 

BIS'MUTH, a metal of a yellowish or 
reddish-white color, and a lamellar tex¬ 
ture. It is somewhat harder than lead 
and not malleable, when cold being so 
brittle as to break easily under the 
hammer, so as to be reducible to powder. 
Its internal face or fracture exhibits 
large shining plates variously disposed. 
It fuses at 476° Fahr., and expands con¬ 
siderably as it hardens. It is often 
found in a native state, crystallized in 
rhombs or octahedrons, or in the form 
of dendrites, or thin laminae investing 
the ores of other metals, particularly 
cobalt. Bismuth is used in the com¬ 
position of pewter, in the fabrication of 
printers’ types, and in various other 
metallic mixtures. The subnitrate or 
basic nitrate of bismuth is used as a 
paint and as a cosmetic, and is known 
as Pearl White or Pearl Powder. 

BP30N, the name applied to two 
species of ox. One of these, the Euro¬ 
pean bison or aurochs, is now nearly 
extinct, being found only in the forests 
of Lithuania and the Caucasus. The 
other, or American bison, improperly 



American bison. 


termed buffalo, was formerly found over 
a wide region in the U. States and west¬ 
ern Canada, where it was wont to wan¬ 
der in immense herds, but may now be 
considered as extinct in the wild state, 









BISQUE 


BLACKBIRD 


having been ruthlessly slaughtered. I 
The two species closely resemble each 
other, the American bison, however, 
being for the most part smaller, and 
with shorter and weaker hind-quarters. 
The bison is remarkable for the great 
hump or projection over its fore¬ 
shoulders, at •which point the adult 
male is almost six feet in height; and 
for the long, shaggy, rust-colored hair 
over the head, neck, and fore-part of the 
body. In summer, from the shoulders 
backward, the surface is covered with a 
very short hair, smooth and soft as 
velvet. The tail is short and tufted at 
the end. The American bison used to 
be much hunted for sport as well as for 
its flesh and skin. Its flesh is rather 
coarser grained than that of the domes¬ 
tic ox, but was considered by hunters 
and travelers as superior in tenderness 
and flavor. The hump is highly cele¬ 
brated for its richness and delicacy. 
Their skins, especially that of the cow, 
dressed in the Indian fashion, with the 
hair on, make admirable defenses 
against the cold, and are known as 
buffalo robes; the wool has been manu¬ 
factured into hats, and a coarse cloth. 
The American bison has been found 
to breed readily with the common ox, 
the issue being fertile among them¬ 
selves. 

BISQUE (bisk), a kind of unglazed 
white porcelain used for statuettes and 
ornaments. 

BITTERN, the name of several 
grallatorial birds. There are two Brit¬ 
ish species, the common bittern, and 
the little bittern, a native of the south, 
and only a summer visitor to Britain. 
Both, however, are becoming rare. The 
common bittern is about 28 inches in 
length, about 44 in extent of wing; 
general color, dull yellowish-brown, 
with spots and bars of black or dark 
brown; feathers on the breast long and 
loose; tail short; bill about 4 inches long. 
It is remarkable for its curious booming 
or bellowing cry. The eggs (greenish- 
brown) are four or five in number. The 
little bittern is not more than 15 inches 
in length. The American bittern has 
some resemblance to the common Euro¬ 
pean bittern, but is smaller. 

BIT'TERN, the syrupy residue from 
evaporated sea-water after the common 
salt has been taken out of it. It is used 
in the preparation of Epsom salt (sul¬ 
phate of magnesia), of Glauber’s salt 
(sulphate of soda), and contains also 
chloride of magnesium, iodine, and 
bromine. 

BITTER-NUT, a tree of N. America, 
of the walnut order, or swamp-hickory, 
which produces small and somewhat 
egg-shaped fruits, with a thin fleshy 
rind; the kernel is bitter and uneatable. 

BITTER-ROOT, a plant of Canada 
and part of the U. States, so called from 
its root being bitter though edible, and 
indeed esteemed as an article of food by 
whites as well as Indians. From the 
root, which is long, fleshy, and tapering, 
grow clusters of succulent green leaves, 
with a fleshy stalk bearing a solitary 
rose-colored flower rising in the center, 
and remaining open only in sunshine. 
Flower and leaves together, the plant 
appears above ground for only about 
six weeks. 


BITTERS, a liquor (frequently spirit¬ 
uous), in which bitter herbs or roots 
have been steeped. Gentian, quassia, 
angelica, bogbean, chamomile, hops, 
centaury, etc., are all used for prepara¬ 
tions of this kind. The well-known 
Angostura bitters have aromatic as 
well as bitter properties. 

BITU'MEN, a mineral substance of a 
resinous nature, composed principally 
of hydrogen and carbon, and appearing 
in a variety of forms which pass into 
each other and are known by different 
names, from naphtha, the most fluid, 
to pertoleum and mineral tar, which are 
less so, thence to maltha or mineral 
pitch, which is more or less cohesive, 
and lastly to asphaltum and elastic 
bitumen (or elaterite), which are solid. 
It burns like pitch, with much smoke 
and flame. It consists of 84 to 88 of 
carbon and 12 to 16 of hydrogen, and 
is found in the earth, occurring princi¬ 
pally in the secondary, tertiary, and 
alluvial formations. It is a very widely 
spread mineral, and is now largely em¬ 
ployed in various ways. As the binding 
substance in mastics and cements it is 
used for making roofs, arches, walls, 
cellar-floors, etc., water-tight, for street 
and other pavements, and in some of its 
forms for fuel and for illuminating pur¬ 
poses. The bricks of which the walls of 
Babylon were built are said to have 
been cemented with bitumen, which 
gave them unusual solidity. 

BITUMINOUS COAL. See Coal. 

BITUMINOUS SHALE, or SCHIST, an 
argillaceous shale impregnated with 
bitumen and very common in the coal- 
measures. It is largely worked for the 
production of paraffin, etc. 

BI'VALVES, molluscous animals hav¬ 
ing a shell consisting of two halves or 



valves that open by an elastic hinge 
and are closed by muscles; as the oyster, 
mussel, cockle, etc. 

BIVOUAC (biv'u-ak), the encamp¬ 
ment of soldiers in the open air without 
tents, each remaining dressed and with 
his weapons at hand. It was the regular 
practice of the French revolutionary 
armies, but is only desirable where great 
celerity of movement is required. 

BJORNSON, Bjornstjerne, a cele¬ 
brated Norwegian poet, born at Kvikne 
in 1832. He first tried journalism, but 
that failing wrote in 1858 his first 
drama, Between the Battles, and also 
in that year his first novel, Trust and 
Trial. He became a theatrical manager 
in 1860, traveled much, was a leader of 
Norwegian republicans, and helped to 
carry the revolution of 1901. His 
poems chiefly celebrate the folk lore 
of Scandinavia, and his plays deal 
largely with so-called moral and social 
problems. In 1880 he visited the U. 
States, where he delivered a course of 


lectures and was well received. His 
principal plays and novels have been 
translated into English. 

BLACK, the negation of all color, the 
opposite of white. There are several 
black pigments, such as ivory-black, 
made from burned ivory or bones; lamp¬ 
black, from the smoke of resinous sub¬ 
stance; Spanish-black, or cork-black, 
from burned cork, etc. 

BLACK, Jeremiah Sullivan, an Amer¬ 
ican jurist, born in Pennsylvania in 
1810, admitted to the bar in 1831, and 
from 1842 to 1851 was judge of district 
courts in Pennsylvania. He was su¬ 
preme court justice of Pennsylvania 
from 1851 to 1857, attorney-general in 
President Buchanan’s cabinet, secre¬ 
tary of state in 1860, counsel for Presi¬ 
dent Johnson in 1868, and counsel for 
Tilden before the electoral commission 
in the contest of Hayes’s election in 
1877. He died in 1883. 

BLACK, William, novelist, born in 
Glasgow in 1841. His first novel, Love 
or Marriage, 1S67, was only moderately 
successful, but his In Silk Attire, Kil- 
meny, The Monarch of Mincing Lane, 
and especially A Daughter of Hetb 
(1871), gained him an increasingly wide 
circle of readers. He died in 1898. 
Other works: The Strange Adventures 
of a Phaeton (1872), A Princess of Thule 
(1873), The Maid of Killeena, etc. (1874), 
Three Feathers (1875), Madcap Violet 
(1876), Green Pastures and Piccadilly 
(1877), Macleod of Dare (1878), White 
Wings (1880), Sunrise (1S81), The Beau-; 
tiful Wretch (1882), Shandon Bells 
(1883), Judith Shakespeare (1884), 
White Heather (1885), The Strange 
Adventures of a House-boat (1888), 
In Far Lochaber (1889), The New Prince 
Fortunatus (1890), etc. 

BLACK-BEETLE, a popular name for 
the cockroach. 

BLACK'BERRY, a popular name of 
the bramble-berry or the plant itself. 

BLACK'BIRD, called also the merle, 
a well-known species of thrush. It 
is larger than the common thrush, its 
length being about 11 inches. The 
color of the male is a uniform deep black, 
the bill being an orange-yellow; the 
female is of a brown color, with blackish- 
brown bill. The nest is usually in a. 
thick bush, and is built of grass, roots. 



The crow-blackbird. 


twigs, etc., strengthened with clay. 
The eggs, generally four or five in num¬ 
ber, are of a greenish-blue, spotted with 
various shades of brown. The song is; 
rich, mellow, and flute-like, but of no¬ 
great variety of compass. Its food is; 
insects, worms, snails, fruits, etc. The 









BLACKBURN 


BLACKSTONE 


blackbirds or crow-blackbirds of Amer¬ 
ica are quite different from the 
European blackbird, and are more 
nearly allied to the starlings and crows. 
See Crow-blackbird. The red-winged 
blackbird, belonging to the starling 
family, is a familiar American bird that 
congregates in great flocks. 

BLACK'BURN, a municipal county, 
and parliamentary borough of England, 
Lancashire, 21 miles n.n.w. from Man¬ 
chester. Blackburn is one of the chief 
seats of the cotton manufacture, there 
being upward of 140 mills, as well as 
works for making cotton machinery and 
steam-engines. Pop. 127,527. 

BLACK DEATH. See Plague. 

BLACK DRAUGHT, sulphate of mag¬ 
nesia and infusion of senna, with aro¬ 
matics to make it palatable. 

BLACKFEET INDIANS, a tribe of 
American Indians, partly inhabiting 
the U. States, partly Canada, from the 
Yellowstone to Hudson’s Bay. 

BLACKFISH, a fish caught on the 
American coast, especially in the 
vicinity of Long Island, whence large 
supplies are obtained for the New York 
market. Its back and sides are of a 



Blackfish. 


bluish or crow black, the under parts, 
especially in the males, are white. It 
is plump in appearance, and much 
esteemed for the table, varying in size 
from 2 to 12 lbs. 

BLACK FOREST, a chain of European 
mountains in Baden and Wiirtemberg, 
running almost parallel with the Rhine 
for about 85 miles. The Danube, 
Neckar, Kinzig, and other streams, rise 
in the Black Forest, which is rather a 
chain of elevated plains than of isolated 
peaks; highest summit, Feldberg, 4900 
feet. The skeleton of the chain is granite, 
its higher points covered with sand¬ 
stone. The principal mineral is iron, 
and there are numerous mineral springs. 
The forests are extensive, chiefly of 
pines and similar species, and yield 
much timber. The manufacture of 
wooden clocks, toys, etc., is the most 
important industry, employing about 
40,000 persons. The inhabitants of the 
forest are quaint and simple in their 
habits, and the whole district preserves 
its old legendary associations. 

BLACK FRIARS, friars of the Domin¬ 
ican order; so called from their habit. 

BLACK FRIDAY, the name given to 
Friday, Sept. 24, 1869, or Friday, Sept. 
19, 1873, on both of which days Wall 
Street, New York, was stricken with 
money panics. The first panic was 
caused by the Fisk-Gould attempt to 
corner gold; the second was the financial 
smash which was part of the general 
panic of 1873. 

BLACK GUM, an American tree, 
yielding a close-grained, useful wood; 
fruit a drupe of blue-black color, whence 
it seems to get its name of “black”; it has 
no gum about it. It is called also pep- 
peridge, and has been introduced into 
Europe as an ornamental tree. 


BLACK HAWK, a historic Indian, 
chief of the Sacs, who repudiated his 
father’s sale of the land of the Sacs and 
Foxes east of the Mississippi and made 
war on the Americans in 1812. In 1830 
Black Hawk opened war a second time 
and was defeated at the Wisconsin 
river by Dodge, July 21, 1832. On 
Aug. 1 he surrendered and was con¬ 
fined in Fortress Monroe until 1833. 
He died Oct. 18, 1838. 

BLACK HILLS, a part of the Rocky 
Mountains Range in South Dakota. 
They cover a total area of about 6000 
sq. miles, 1893 sq. miles of which have 
been set apart by the U. States govern¬ 
ment as a forest reserve. They are 
drained and nearly surrounded by the 
two main forks of the Cheyenne river. 
Their altitude ranges from between 
2500 and 300,0 feet at their base, to the 
summit of Harney Peak, 7216 feet in 
height. The mountains were formed 
by a local uplift, which raised the 
Archaean and later formations into a 
concentric fold. The Black Hills dis¬ 
trict was first partly explored in 1874 
by an expedition under General Custer, 
when gold was discovered. In 1876, 
after some hostilities, a treaty made 
with the Sioux Indians opened the 
country to settlement, and Deadwood, 
Central City, Lead City, and other 
towns grew up very rapidly. The 
Black Hills constitute one of the richest 
gold-mining districts in the U. States. 

BLACK HOLE OF CALCUTTA, a 
small chamber, 20 feet square, in the old 
fort of Calcutta, in which, after their 
capture by Surajah Dowlah, the whole 
garrison of 146 men were confined dur¬ 
ing the night of June 21, 1756. Only 
twenty-three survived. The spot is now 
marked by a monument. 

BLACKING, for boots and shoes, etc., 
usually contains for its principal in¬ 
gredients oil, vinegar, ivory or bone 
black, sugar or molasses, strong sul¬ 
phuric acid, ajid sometimes caoutchouc 
and gum-arabic. It is used either liquid 
or in the form of paste, the only differ¬ 
ence being that in making the paste a 
portion of the vinegar is withheld. 

BLACK LEAD. See Graphite. 

BLACKLEG, a disease which afflicts 
cattle, sheep, swine, and horses, but 
from which man is immune. It is 
caused by a germ which produces 
tumors in the muscles and various 
systemic symptoms which end almost 
always in death. It is chiefly prevalent 
in Kansas, Texas, Colorado, and South 
Dakota. Blackleg may be prevented 
by vaccination. 

BLACK-LETTER, the name com¬ 
monly given to the Gothic characters 
which began to supersede the Roman 
characters in the writings of western 
Europe toward the close of the 12th 
century. The first types were in black- 
letter, but these were gradually modi¬ 
fied in Italy until they took the later 
Roman shape introduced into most Eu¬ 
ropean states during the 16th century. 

BLACKLIST, a term applied to a 
number of persons who are deemed 
obnoxious by the maker of the list and 
against whom he warns his associates, 
and with whom he refuses to have any 
kind of business dealings, either as 
employer or trader. Black lists have 


been used in almost every kind of busi¬ 
ness. The alleged black list of the rail¬ 
roads against those who took part in 
the Pullman and other strikes, and the 
notorious baseball black list of the base¬ 
ball organizations under the famous 
“national agreement” of a few years 
ago, are notable instances of this process 
in the U. States. 

BLACKMAIL, a certain rate of money, 
corn, cattle, or the like, anciently paid 
in the north of England and in Scot¬ 
land, to certain men who were allied 
to robbers, to be protected by them 
from pillage. Blackmail was levied 
in the districts bordering the Highlands 
of Scotland till the middle of the 18th 
century. 

The term now generally survives as 
the designation of an attempt to extort 
money, or other things, by threats, 
usually of exposure or calumny. In 
many states blackmail by written threat 
is deemed actionable. 

BLACKMORE, Richard Doddridge, 
novelist, born at Longworth, Berkshire, 
1825, died in 1900. His greatest success 
was Lorna Doone, a Romance of Exmoor 
(1869), one of the best of modern 
romances. 

BLACK MOUNTAINS, the group 

which contains the highest summits of 
the Appalachian system, Clingman’s 
Peak being 6701 feet, Guyot’s Peak 
6661. See Appalachian Mountains. 

BLACK SEA, a sea situated between 
Europe and Asia, and mainly bounded 
by the Russian and Turkish dominions, 
being connected with the Mediterranean 
by the Bosporus, Sea of Marmora, and 
Dardanelles, and by the Strait of 
Kertsch with the Sea of Azov, which 
is, in fact, only a bay of the Black Sea; 
area of the Black Sea and the Sea of 
Azov about 175,000 square miles, with a 
depth in the center of more than 150 
fathoms and few shoals along its shores. 
The water is not so clear as that of the 
Mediterranean, and is less salt on ac¬ 
count of the many large rivers which 
fall into it — the Danube, Dniester, 
Dnieper, Don, etc. Though not tidal, 
there are strong currents. The tem¬ 
pests on it are very violent, as the land 
which confines its agitated waters gives 
to them a kind of whirling motion, and 
in the winter it is scarcely navigable. 
During January and February the 
shores from Odessa to the Crimea are 
ice-bound. It contains few islands, and 
those of small extent. The most im¬ 
portant ports are those of Odessa, 
Kherson, Nicolaiev, Sebastopol, Batum, 
Trebizond, Samsun, Sinope, and Varna. 

BLACKSNAKE, a common snake 
reaching a length of 5 or 6 feet, and so 
agile and swift as to have been named 
the racer, with no poison fangs, and 
therefore comparatively harmless. It 
feeds on small quadrupeds, birds, and 
the like, and is especially useful in killing 

BLACK'STONE, Sir William, an emi¬ 
nent jurist, born in London in 1723; 
educated at the Charter House and 
Pembroke College, Oxford. In 1743 
he was elected fellow of All-Souls Col¬ 
lege, Oxford, and in 1746 was called to 
the bar; but, having attended the West¬ 
minster law-courts for seven years 
without success, he retired to Oxford- 




BLACKTAIL 


BLAND 


Here he gave lectures on law, which 
suggested to Mr. Viner the idea of 
founding a professorship at Oxford for 
the study of the common law; and 
Blackstone was in 1758 chosen the first 
Vinerian professor. In 1761 he was 
elected M.P. for Hindon, made king’s 
counsel and solicitor-general to the 
queen. In 1765 he published the first 
volume of his famous Commentaries on 
the Laws of England, the other three 
volumes being produced at intervals 
during the next four years. Its merits 
as an exposition made it for a long 
period the principal text-book of Eng¬ 
lish law. In 1770 he was knighted and 
made one of the justices of Common 
Pleas, continuing in office until his 
death in 1780. 

BLACKTAIL, an American deer, so 
called because of its black tail. Similar 
in its general characters to the mule deer, 
it occupies the coast region from central 
California to Alaska. Its color is brown- 

f ray mottled with black, and it has a 
lack stripe along the spine. 

BLACK TIN, tin ore when dressed, 
stamped, and washed ready for smelt¬ 
ing, forming a black powder. 

BLACK VOMIT, the dark substance 
thrown up in yellow fever; hence a name 
of this disease. 

BLACK WADD, an ore of manganese, 
used as a drying ingredient in paints. 

BLACKWELL, Elizabeth, the first 
woman who ever obtained the degree of 
M.D. She was born in England in 1821, 
and settled in America with her parents 
in 1831. After numerous difficulties she 
was admitted into the College of Geneva, 
N. Y., and graduated M. D. in 1849. 

BLADDER, Urinary, a musculo- 
membranous bag or pouch present in all 
Mammalia, destined to receive and 
retain for a time the urine which is 
secreted by the kidneys. It occupies 
the anterior and median portion of the 
pelvis, and in the male of the human 
subject is situated behind the pubis and 
above and in front of the rectum; in the 
female above and in front of the vagina 
and uterus. The urine secreted by the 
kidneys is conveyed into this reservoir 
by means of two tubes called the ureters, 
which open near the neck or lower part 
of the bladder in an oblique direction, 
by which means they prevent the reflux 
of the urine. When empty it forms a 
rounded, slightly conoid mass about 
the size of a small hen’s egg. As it 
gradually fills with urine its walls be¬ 
come distended in all directions except 
in front, and it then rises above the 
elvis proper into the abdomen. It is 
eld in its place by two lateral ligaments, 
one on each side, and an anterior liga¬ 
ment. The contents are carried off by 
the urethra, which, as well as the neck 
of the bladder, is surrounded by a 
structure called the prostate gland. 

BLADDERWORT, the common name 
of slender aquatic plants, species of 
which are natives of Britain, the United 
States, etc., growing in ditches and 
pools. They are named from having 
little bladders or vesicles, that fill with 
air at the time of flowering and raise 
the plant in the water, so that the 
blossoms expand above the surface. 

BLAINE, James Gillespie, American 
statesman, born 1830. He entered 


Washington College, Pa., at the age of 
thirteen, graduated in 1847, studied 
law, acted as a teacher, and then having 
gone to Augusta, Maine, was for several 
years newspaper editor. He was sent 
to congress by Maine as a republican in 
1862, and was repeatedly reelected. 
He was several times speaker of the 
House of Representatives. In 1876 he 
entered the senate; in 1884 he was 
nominated for the presidency, but was 
defeated by Mr. Cleveland. In 1884 
appeared the first volume of his Twenty 
Years of Congress, a work which has had 
a very favorable reception. He died in 
January, 1893. 

BLAIR, Francis Preston, an American 
politician and writer, born in 1791, at 
Abingdon, Va., died 1876. He sup¬ 
ported Abraham Lincoln for the presi¬ 
dency and took part in the famous peace 
conference at Hampton Roads, Feb. 
3, 1865. 

BLAIR, Francis Preston, an American 
statesman, soldier and jurist, born in 
Lexington, Ky., in 1821, died 1875. 
He settled in St. Louis, took the federal 
side during the civil war, after which 
he became a democrat and was candi¬ 
date for vice-president in 1868. 

BLAIR, John Insley, an American 
philanthropist, born in New Jersey in 
1802, died 1899. He founded Blair 
Hall at Princeton University and gave 
large endowments to other schools and 
colleges. He was one of the builders 
of the,Delaware, Lackawanna & Western 
Railroad. 

BLAIR, Montgomery, an American 
jurist and statesman, bom in Kentucky 
in 1813, died 1883. He settled in St. 
Louis, and was counsel for the defend¬ 
ant in the famous Dred Scott case. He 
was postmaster-general in Lincoln’s 
cabinet and introduced the money-order 
system in the American postal service. 
He subsequently joined the democratic 
party and was a supporter of Tilden 
in the Tilden-Hayes controversy. 

BLAKE, Eli Whitney, an American 
inventor, born at New Haven, Conn., in 
1795, died in 1886. His principal inven¬ 
tion was the famous stone-crusher called 
by his name. 

BLAKE, Lillie Devereaux, an Ameri¬ 
can reformer, born at Raleigh, N. C., in 
1835. She became known as a novelist 
in the early sixties and for 20 years, 
until 1890, served as president of the 
New York State Woman’s Suffrage 
Association. She is also known as a 
most capable lecturer. 

BLAKE, Robert, a celebrated British 
admiral, was born at Bridgewater in 
1599, died at the entrance of Plymouth 
Sound 1657. He was elected member 
for Bridgewater in the parliament of 
1640. This being soon dissolved he lost 
his election for the next, and sought to 
advance the parliamentary cause in a 
military capacity in the war which then 
broke out. He soon distinguished him¬ 
self, and in 1649 he was sent to command 
the fleet with Colonels Deane and Pop- 
ham. His greatest achievements were 
in the Dutch war which broke out in 
1652. In November, 1654, he was sent 
with a strong fleet to enforce a due 
respect to the British flag in the Mediter¬ 
ranean. He sailed first to Algiers, 
which submitted, and then demolished 


the castles of Goletta and Porto Ferino, 
at Tunis, because the dey refused to 
deliver up the British captives. A 
squadron of his ships also blocked up 
Cadiz, and intercepted a Spanish Plate 



Admiral Blake. 


fleet. In April, 1657, he sailed with 
twenty-four ships to Santa Cruz, in 
Teneriffe; and, notwithstanding the 
strength of the place, burned the ships 
of another Spanish Plate fleet which 
had taken shelter there, and by a for¬ 
tunate change of wind came out without 
loss. 

BLAKE, William, mystic artist and 
poet, author of many exquisite lyrics, 
and of designs mainly allegorical or 
symbolical, was the son of a London 
hosier, and was born in 1757. Failing 
to find a publisher for his work Songs 
of Innocence, he invented a process by 
which he was both printer and illustrator 
of his own poems. Some of his best- 
known works are: Gates of Paradise, 
Book of Thel, Marriage of Heaven and 
Hell, Songs of Experience, Book of 
Urizen, Song of Los, Book of Ahania, 
etc. He died in 1828. 

BLANCHARD, Thomas, an American 
inventor, born in 1788, died in 1864. 
His principal inventions were a tack¬ 
making machine, a lathe for turning 
gun-barrels, and several contrivances 
for steamboat navigation. 

BLANCHE OF CASTILE, daughter of 
Alphonso IX., queen of Louis VIII., 
king of France, and mother of St. Louis, 
born 1187, died 1252 or 1253. On the 
death of Louis VIII. she procured the 
coronation of her son, and during his 
minority held the reins of government 
in his name with distinguished success. 
In 1244, when St. Louis left for the 
Holy Land, she again became regent, 
and gave new proofs of her abilities and 
firmness as a ruler. 

BLANC - MANGE (ble-manzh'), in 
cookery, a name of different prepara¬ 
tions of the consistency of a jelly, vari¬ 
ously composed of dissolved isinglass, 
arrow-root, maize-flour, etc., with milk 
and flavoring substances. 

BLAND, Richard Parks, an American 
statesman, born in Kentucky in 1835, 
died in 1899. He settled in Missouri, 
He served as congressman from that 
state from 1872 till his death. He was 
an ardent supporter of the silver move¬ 
ment, and introduced the celebrated 
Bland Act of 1878 for the coinage of 
silver. In 1896 he was a prominent 


i 





BLANKET 


BLEACHING 


candidate for the presidential nomina¬ 
tion at the Chicago convention. 

BLANKET, a woolen covering for the 
bed or for the person. Blanket manu¬ 
facture in the U. States has grown 
vastly since the war of 1812, and the 
industry is chiefly in New England. 
Excellent blankets are made by the 
natives of India, and also by the N. 
American Indians. In recent years the 
industry has grown considerably in Cal¬ 
ifornia and Oregon. 

BLANK VERSE, verse without rhyme, 
first introduced into English poetry 
(from the Italian) by the Earl of Surrey. 
The most common form of English 
blank verse is the decasyllabic, such as 
that of Milton’s Paradise Lost, or of the 
dramas of Shakespeare. From Shake¬ 
speare’s time it has been the kind of 
verse almost universally used by dra¬ 
matic writers, who often employ an 
additional syllable, making the lines 
not strictly decasyllabic. The first use 
of the term blank verse is said to be 
in Hamlet, ii. 2: “The lady shall say her 
mind freely, or the blank verse shall 
halt for’t.” The term is not applied to 
the Anglo-Saxon and Early English 
alliterative unrhymed verse. 

BLAR'NEY, a village in Ireland, 4 
miles n.w. of the city of Cork, with 
Blarney Castle in its vicinity. A stone 
called the Blarney Stone, near the top 
of the castle, is said to confer on those 
who kiss it the peculiar kind of per¬ 
suasive eloquence alleged to be charac¬ 
teristic of the natives of Ireland. 

BLAS'PHEMY is the denying of the 
existence of God, assigning to him false 
attributes, or denying his true attributes; 
contumelious reproaches of our Savior; 
profane scoffing at the Holy Scriptures, 
or exposing them to ridicule and con¬ 
tempt. In Catholic countries it also 
includes the speaking contemptuously 
or disrespectfully of the Holy Virgin or 
the saints. 

BLAST-FURNACE, the name given 
to the common smelting-furnace used 
for obtaining iron from its ores with the 
aid of a powerful blast of air. This air- 
blast, which is propelled by a powerful 
blowing-engine and is now invariably 
heated to a high temperature (600° to 
900° F.), is injected by pipes called 
tuyeres, situated as shown at A in the 
annexed vertical section, in the lowest 
part of the furnace, near to the 
hearth B. The conical part c next 
above the hearth is termed the boshes, 
and the interior is continued upward, 
sometimes, as in the annexed cut, in a 
tapered body or cone d, sometimes as a 
perpendicular cylinder, which is sur¬ 
mounted by an opening for the intro¬ 
duction of the materials from an exter¬ 
nal gallery f. The exterior consists of 
massive masonry of stone or firebrick, 
the body part being lined with two 
shells of firebricks separated by a thin 
space to allow for expansion, this space 
being generally filled with sand, ground 
fire-clay, or the like, to hinder the 
radiation of heat to the outside. When 
the body rises in the form of a perpen¬ 
dicular cylinder it is called the barrel. 
The cone or barrel is sometimes clasped 
round on the outside by numerous 
6trong iron hoops, or is cased with iron 
plates fastened to the masonry by iron 


bolts. The boshes C are lined with fire¬ 
brick or firestone, and the hearth b is 
built with large blocks of refractory 
stone. The charging of the furnace 
goes on all day and night, one charge 
consisting of a barrow-load of coal and 



Section of blast furnace. 


a barrow-load of ore, char, and lime, 
the last mineral acting as a flux. These 
charges are constantly passing down¬ 
ward and undergoing a change as they 
come nearer the hotter parts of the 
furnace. Toward the lower part the 
earthy matter of the ore unites with 
the limestone and forms a slag, which 
finally escapes at an opening below the 
tuyeres, and the molten metal drops 
down and fills the lower part at b, to be 
drawn off at stated periods. This is 
done usually twice in the twenty-four 
hours by means of a round hole called 
a tap. The furnace is constantly kept 
filled to within about 2 feet of the top. 
The ore put in at the top takes about 
thirty-six hours before it comes out as 
iron. Hematite yields on an average 
about 55 per cent of metal, and black- 
band about 40 to 50. In the newer 
forms of furnaces the top is closed, and 
the gases formerly burned at the top 
are conveyed by pipes g to be utilized 
as fuel in heating the blast and in raising 
steam for the blowing-engine. The 
principle adopted is to close the top by 
a bell-and-cone arrangement e, which 
is opened and shut at pleasure by 
hydraulic or other machinery. The 
height of furnaces varies from 50 to 80, 
and even in some cases to upward of 
100 feet, and the greatest width is about 
one-third of this. 

BLASTING, the operation of breaking 
up masses of stone or rock in situ by 
means of gunpowder or other explosive. 
In ordinary operations holes are bored 
into the rock from 1 to 6 inches in 
diameter, by means of a steel-pointed 
drill, by striking it with hammers or 
allowing it to fall from a height. After 
the hole is bored to the requisite depth 
it is cleaned out, the explosive is intro¬ 
duced, the hole is “tamped” or filled up 


with broken stone, clay, or sand, and 
the charge exploded by means of a fuse 
or by electricity. In larger operations 
mines or shafts of considerable diameter 
take the place of the holes above de¬ 
scribed. Shafts are sunk from the top 
of the rock to various depths, some¬ 
times upward of 60 feet. This shaft 
joins a heading, or gallery, driven in 
from the face, if possible along a natural 
joint; and from this point other galleries 
are driven some distance in various 
directions, with headings at intervals, 
returning toward the face of the rock 
and terminating in chambers for the 
charges. Enormous charges are fre¬ 
quently made use of, upward of twenty 
tons of gunpowder having been fired in 
a single blast. One of the greatest blast¬ 
ing operations ever attempted was the 
removal of the reefs in the East River, 
near New York, known as Hellgate. 
An entrance-shaft was sunk on the Long 
Island shore, from which the reef pro¬ 
jected. From this shaft nearly twenty 
tunnels were bored in all directions, 
extending from 200 to 240 feet, and 
connected by lateral galleries. Upward 
of 52,000 lbs. of dymanite, rend-rock, 
and powder were used, and millions of 
tons of rock were dislodged. Numerous 
important improvements have been made 
in blasting by the substitution of rock- 
boring machines for hand labor. Of 
such machines, in which the “jumper” 
or drill is repeatedly driven against the 
rock by compressed air or steam, being 
also made to rotate slightly at each 
blow, there are many varieties. 

BLATCHFORD, Samuel, an American 
jurist, born in 1820 at New York City, 
died in 1893. In 1882 he was appointed 
an associate justice of the United States 
Supreme court, and served in that ca¬ 
pacity until his death. 

BLEACHING, the act or art of freeing 
textile fibers and fabrics and various 
other substances (such as materials for 
paper, ivory, wax, oils) from their 
natural color, and rendering them per¬ 
fectly white, or nearly so. The ancient 
method of bleaching by exposing the 
fabrics, etc., to the action of the sun’s 
rays, and frequently wetting them, has 
been nearly superseded, at least where 
the business is carried on on the large 
scale, more complicated processes in 
connection with powerful chemical 
preparations being now employed. 
Among the latter the chief are chlorine 
and sulphurous acid, the latter being 
employed more especially in the case 
of animal fibers (silk and wool), while 
cotton, flax, and other vegetable fibers 
are operated upon with chlorine, the 
bleaching in both cases being preceded 
by certain cleansing processes. The use 
of chlorine as a bleaching agent was 
first proposed by Berthollet in 1786, 
and shortly afterward introduced into 
Great Britain, where it was first used 
simply dissolved in water, afterward 
dissolved in alkali, and then in the form 
of bleaching-powder, commonly called 
chloride of lime. In modern calico 
bleaching the preliminary process is 
singeing by passing the fabric over red- 
hot plates or through a gas-flame to 
remove the downy pile and short threads 
from the surface of the cloth. The 
goods next pass to the liming process. 















bleaching-powder 


BLOCKADE 


■when they are uniformly and thoroughly 
impregnated with a supersaturated 
solution of lime. The next process is 
the bowking or boiling for several hours, 
after which they are washed. They are 
then soured by being passed through a 
solution of hydrochloric acid for the 
purpose of dissolving any traces of free 
lime which may have been left in the 
washing, and to decompose the calcare¬ 
ous soap formed by the bowking process. 
After boiling in kiers with a solution of 
6oda-ash and rosin and another washing, 
the cloth is ready for the processes of 
chemicking or liquoring with bleaching- 
powder, and white-souring with a very 
dilute sulphuric acid. Another thorough 
washing concludes the operations of 
bleaching proper, after which the cloth 
goes through various finishing processes. 
Modifications of the same processes are 
adopted in bleaching linen, wool, silk, 

BLEACHING-POWDER, chloride of 
lime, made by exposing slaked lime to 
the action of chlorine. It is regarded as 
a double salt of the chloride of calcium 
and hypochlorite of calcium. It is much 
used as a disinfectant, besides its use in 
bleaching. 

BLENHEIM DOG,a variety of spaniel, 
bearing a close resemblance to the King 
Charles breed, but somewhat smaller, so 
named from having been originally bred 
by one of the Dukes of Marlborough. 
It has a short muzzle, long silky hair 
without any curl, and long pendulous 
ears. 

BLEN'NERHAS'SET, Harman, a large 
Anglo-American land-owner and emi¬ 
grant who became noted for his asso¬ 
ciation with the Aaron Burr conspiracy. 
He was born in England in 1764 and 
died in 1831. Coming to America in 
1797 he settled in Virginia, and soon 
grew very rich, subsequently becoming a 
cotton planter in Mississippi. His wife, 
n6e Adeline Agnew, published several 
novels which were popular in her 
day. 

BLESSING, or BENEDICTION, a 
prayer or solemn wish imploring happi¬ 
ness upon another; a certain holy action 
which, combined with prayer, seeks for 
God’s grace for persons, and, in a lower 
degree, a blessing upon things, with a 
view whether to their efficiency or 
safety. The lifting up of the hands is 
an inseparable adjunct of the act of 
blessing. In the Roman Catholic 
Church the sign of the cross is made, 
and the thumb and the two first fingers 
of the right hand are extended, the two 
remaining fingers turned down. In the 
Greek Church the thumb and the third 
finger of the same hand are conjoined, 
the other fingers being stretched out. 
Some see in this position a representa¬ 
tion of the sacred monogram in Greek 
letters of our Lord’s name.—In the 
English liturgy there are two blessings 
or benedictions; in the service of the 
Scotch Church there is only one. 

BLESSINGTON, Margaret, Countess 
of, was born near Clonmel, Ireland, 
1789, died at Paris 1849. At the age of 
fifteen she married Captain Farmer, 
who died in 1817; and a few months 
after his death married Charles John 
Gardiner, earl of Blessington. In 1822 
they went abroad, and continued to 


reside on the Continent till the earl’s 
death in 1829, when Lady Blessington 
took up her abode in Gore House, 
Kensington. Her residence became the 
fashionable resort for all the celebrities 
of the time. She contributed to the 
New Monthly Magazine, Conversations 
with Lord Byron; wrote numerous 
novels, including The Belle of a Season, 
The Two Friends, Strathern, and the 
Victims of Society; and acted as editress 
for several years of Heath’s Book of 
Beauty, the Keepsake, and the Gems of 
Beauty. 

BLIGHT, a generic name commonly 
applied to denote the effects of disease 
or any other circumstance which causes 
plants to wither or decay. It has been 
vaguely applied to almost every dis¬ 
ease of plants whether caused by the 
condition of the atmosphere or of the 
soil, the attacks of insects, parasitic 
fungi, etc. The term is frequently 
limited to disease in cereal crops. 

BLIND, a screen of some sort to pre¬ 
vent too strong a light from shining in 
at a window, or to keep people from 
seeing in. Venetian blinds are made of 
slats of wood, so connected as to overlap 
each other when closed, and to show a 
series of open spaces for the admission 
of light and air when in the other 
position. 

BLIND, The, those who want, or are 
deficient in, the sense of sight. Blind¬ 
ness may vary in degree from the slight¬ 
est impairment of vision to total loss of 
sight; it may also be temporary or per¬ 
manent. It is caused by defect, disease, 
or injury to the eye, to the optic nerve, 
or to that part of the brain connected 
with it. Old age is sometimes accom¬ 
panied with blindness, occasioned by 
the drying up of the humors of the eye, 
or by the opacity of the cornea, the 
crystalline lens, etc. There are several 
causes which produce blindness from 
birth. Sometimes the eyelids adhere to 
each other, or to the eyeball itself, or a 
membrane covers the eyes; sometimes 
the pupil of the eye is closed, or adheres 
to the cornea, or is not situated in the 
right place, so that the rays of light do 
not fall in the middle of the eye; besides 
other defects. The blind are often dis¬ 
tinguished for a remarkable mental 
activity, and a wonderful development 
of the intellectual powers. Their touch 
and hearing, particularly, become very 
acute. 

There are now comparatively few 
large cities that do not possess a school 
or institution of some kind for the blind. 
The occupations in which the blind are 
found capable of engaging are such as 
the making of baskets and other kinds 
of wicker-work, brushmaking, rope and 
twine making, the making of mats and 
matting, knitting, netting, fancy work 
of various kinds, cutting fire-wood, the 
sewing of sacks and bags, the carving 
of articles in wood, etc. Piano-tuning 
is also successfully carried on by some, 
and the cleaning of clocks and watches 
has even been occasionally practiced by 
them. 

Various systems have been devised 
for the purpose of teaching the blind to 
read, some of which consist in the use 
of the ordinary Roman alphabet, with 
more or less modification, and some of 


which employ types quite arbitrary in 
form. 

BLIND-FISH, the name of several 
species of fish, inhabiting the American 
cave-streams. They are all small, the 
largest not exceeding five inches. In 
the typical species, of the Mammoth 
Cave of Kentucky, the eyes are reduced 
to a useless rudiment hidden under the 
skin, the body is translucent and 
colorless, and the head and body are 
covered with numerous rows of sensitive 
papillae, which form very delicate organs 
of touen. 

BLIND TOM, a celebrated musical 
prodigy. He was born in 1850 near 
Columbus, Ga., and his performances 
on the piano were incredible. He could 
repeat, after a single hearing, exceedingly 
complex compositions. He was ex¬ 
hibited for many years, but his mental 
infirmities finally caused his with¬ 
drawal. He was perfectly blind, and 
almost idiotic. Of late he is said to have 
lived in New York City. Died in 1908. 

BLISS, Cornelius Newton, an Ameri¬ 
can merchant and politician, born at 
Fall River, Mass., in 1833. He has been 
chairman of the republican state com¬ 
mittee of New York and treasurer of the 
republican national committee for sev¬ 
eral terms. In President McKinley’s 
cabinet he was secretary of the interior. 

BLISTER, a topical application which, 
when applied to the skin, raises the 
cuticle in the form of a vesicle, filled 
with serous fluid, and so produces a 
counter-irritation. The Spanish fly- 
blister operates with most certainty 
and expedition, and is commonly used 
for this purpose, as well as mustard, 
hartshorn, etc. 

BLIZ'ZARD, a fierce storm of frosty 
wind with fine powdery snow, occurring 
in some parts of N. America and often 
causing loss of life through suffocation 
and cold. 

BLOCK, a mechanical contrivance 
consisting of one or more grooved 
pulleys mounted in a casing or shell 
which is furnished with a hook, eye, or 
strap, by which it may be attached to 
an object, the function of the apparatus 
being to transmit power or change the 
direction of motion by means of a rope 
or chain passing round the movable 
pulleys. Blocks are single, double, 
treble, or fourfold, according as the 
number of sheaves or pulleys is one, 
two, three, or four. A running block is 
attached to the object to be raised or 
moved; a standing block is fixed to 
some permanent support. Blocks also 
receive different denominations from 
their shape, purpose, and mode of ap¬ 
plication. They are sometimes made 
of iron as well as of wood. Blocks to 
which the name of dead-eyes has been 
given are not pulleys, being .unpro¬ 
vided with sheaves. 

BLOCKADE', is the rendering of inter¬ 
course with the seaports of an enemy 
unlawful on the part of neutrals, and it 
consists essentially in the presence of a 
sufficient naval force to make such 
intercourse difficult. It must be de¬ 
clared or made public, so that neutrals 
may have notice of it. If a blockade 
is instituted by a sufficient authority, 
and maintained by a sufficient force, 
a neutral is so far affected by it that an 






BLOCK-BOOKS 


BLOOMER COSTUME 


attempt to trade with the place invested 
subjects vessel and cargo to confisca¬ 
tion by the blockading power. The 
term is also used to describe the state 
of matters when hostile forces sit down 
around a place and keep possession of 
all the means of access to it, so as to 
cut off entirely its communication with 
the outside world, and so compel sur¬ 
render from want of supplies. 

BLOCK-BOOKS, before and for a 
short time after the invention of print¬ 
ing, books printed from wooden blocks 
each the .size of a page and having the 
matter to be reproduced, whether text 
or picture, cut in relief on the surface. 

BLOCKHOUSE, a fortified edifice of 
one or more stories, constructed chiefly 
of blocks of hewn timber. Blockhouses 
are supplied with loopholes for mus¬ 
ketry (a a ) and sometimes with em- 



Block-house. 


brasures for cannon, and when of more 
than one story the upper ones are made 
to overhang those below, and are fur¬ 
nished with machicolations or loopholes 
in the overhung floor, so that a perpen¬ 
dicular fire can be directed against the 
enemy in close attack. Blockhouses are 
often of great advantage, and in wooded 
localities readily constructed. 

BLOCK-SYSTEM, a system of work¬ 
ing the traffic on railways according 
to which the line is divided into sections 
of 3 or 4 miles, each section generally 
stretching from one station to the next, 
with a signal and telegraphic connection 
at the end of each section. The essential 
principle of the system is that no train 
is allowed to enter upon any one section 
till the section is signaled wholly clear, 
so that between two successive trains 
there is not merely an interval of time, 
but also an interval of space. 

BLOCK-TIN, tin at a certain stage 
of refinement, but not quite pure. 

BLOIS (blwa), capital of the French 
dep. Loir-et-Cher, 99 miles s.s.w. Paris, 



Court of the Castle of Blois. 


on the Loire. The castle was long 
occupied by the counts of the name; 
and became a favorite residence of the 
kings of France. Louis XII. was born, 
Francis I., Henry II., Charles IX., and 


Henry III. held their courts in it Pop. 

21,077. 

BLOOD, the fluid which circulates 
through the arteries and veins of the 
human body and that of other animals, 
which is essential to the preservation 
of life and nutrition of the tissues. This 
fluid is more or less red in vertebrates, 
except in the lowest fishes. In insects 
and in others of the lower animals there 
is an analogous fluid which may be 
colorless, red, bluish, greenish, or milky. 
The venous blood of mammals is a dark 
red, but in passing through the lungs it 
becomes oxidized and acquires a bright 
scarlet color, so that the blood in the 
arteries is of a brighter hue than that 
in the veins. The central organ of the 
blood circulation is the heart (which 
see). The specific gravity of human 
blood varies from l - 045 to 1‘075, and 
its normal temperature is 99° Fahr. 
1000 parts contain 783'37 of water, 2'83 
fibrin, 67 - 25 albumen, 126'31 blood 
corpuscles, 5’16 fatty matters, 15'08 
various animal matters and salts. When 
ordinary blood stands for a time it 
separates into two portions, a red coagu¬ 
lated mass consisting of the fibrin, cor¬ 
puscles, etc., and a yellowish watery 
portion, the serum. The blood cor¬ 
puscles or globules are characteristic 
of the fluid. These are minute red and 
white bodies floating in the fluid of the 
blood. The red ones give color to the 
fluid, and are flattish discs, oval in birds 
and reptiles, and round in man and most 
mammals. In man they average g^Vid-h 
inch in diameter, and in the Proteus, 
which has them larger than any other 
vertebrate, ^jjth inch in length and 
T^fth in breadth. The white or color¬ 
less corpuscles are the same as the 
lymph or chyle corpuscles, and are 
spherical or lenticular, nucleated, and 
granulated, and rather larger than the 
red globules. See Harvey William. 

BLOOD, Avenger of, in Scripture, the 
nearest relation of any one that had died 
by manslaughter or murder, so called 
because it fell to him to punish the 
person who was guilty of the deed. 

BLOOD FEUD, the right of private 
vengeance for injuries done by violence. 
The feud is generally found a legal or 
acknowledged right in primitive so¬ 
cieties only. The right passes to the 
nearest of kin to the injured or mur¬ 
dered person. It persists today in 
Corsica and other places, and in the U. 
States it is practiced by the moun¬ 
taineers of Kentucky. 

BLOODHOUND, a variety of dog 
with long smooth and pendulous ears, 
remarkable for the acuteness of its 
smell, and employed to recover game or 
prey which has escaped wounded from 
the hunter, by tracing the lost animal 
by the blood it has spilt; whence the 
name of the dog. There are several 
varieties of this animal, as the English, 
the Cuban, and the African bloodhound. 
In some places bloodhounds have not 
only been trained to the pursuit of 
game, but also to the chase of man. In 
America they used to be employed in 
hunting fugitives slaves. 

BLOOD-LETTING. See Phlebotomy. 

BLOOD-RAIN, showers of grayish and 
reddish dust mingled with rain which 
occasionally fall usually in the zone of 


the earth which extends on both sides 
of the Mediterranean westwardly over 
the Atlantic, and eastwardly to central 
Asia. The dust is largely made up of 
microscopic organisms, especially the 
shells of diatoms; the red color being 
owing to the presence of a red oxide of 
iron. 



Blood-hound. 


BLOODROOT, a plant of Canada and 

the U. States, belonging to the poppy 
order, and so named from its root-stock 
yielding a sap of a deep orange color. 
Its leaves are heart-shaped and deeply 
lobed, the flower grows on a scape and 
is white or tinged with rose. The plant 
has acrid narcotic properties, and has 
been found useful in various diseases. 
Geum canadense, another American 
plant used as a mild tonic, is also known 
as bloodroot. 

BLOOD-STAINS, the stains left by 
blood, and of importance in criminal 
trials. Until recently it was impossible 
positively to identify a blood-stain, old 
or new, as human blood, because the 
crystals formed by chemical tests are 
indistinguishable as between man and 
some other animals. A positive test, 
however, has recently been discovered. 
The stain is extracted with a double 
strength of salt solution and filtered. 
Small quantities of human blood are 
then injected daily for six days into the 
peritoneal cavity of a rabbit. Some of 
the rabbit’s serum is then added to the 
clear filtrate of the suspected blood, and 
if the latter be human a light flocculent 
precipitate will fall. 

BLOOD-VESSELS are the tubes or 
vessels in which the blood circulates. 
See Arteries, Veins, Heart. 

BLOODY ASSIZES, those held by 
Judge Jeffreys in 1685, after the sup¬ 
pression of Monmouth’s rebellion. Up¬ 
ward of 300 persons were executed after 
short trials; very many were whipped, 
imprisoned, and fined; and nearly 1000 
were sent as slaves to the American 
plantations. 

BLOODY MARY, a name given to 
Queen Mary of England, daughter of 
Henry VIII., whose reign from 1553 to 
1558 was marked by persecution of the 
Protestants. 

BLOODY TOWER, a name given to 
the tower in the Tower of London, in 
which Richard III. had murdered the 
young sons of Edward IV. 

BLOOMER, Amelia Jenks, theinventor 
of the bloomer costume for women 
She was a native of New York, born in 
1818, died in 1894. She was a general 
reformer and temperance advocate. 
See Bloomers. 

BLOOMER COSTUME, a style of dress 
adopted about the year 1849 by Mrs. 
Bloomer, of New York, who proposed 
































BLOOMFIELD-ZEISLER 


BLUE-BOTTLE FLY 


thereby to effect a complete revolution 
in female dress, and add materially to 
the health and comfort of women. It 
consisted of a jacket with close sleeves, 
a skirt reaching a little below the knee, 
and a pair of Turkish pantaloons se¬ 
cured by bands round the ankles. See 
Bloomer, Amelia Jenks. 

BLOOMFIELD-ZEISLER, Fanny, an 
American pianist, born in Austria in 
1866. She was educated in Chicago and 
abroad and made her first appearance 
in 1883. She ranks among the greatest 
of living pianists. 

BLOOM'INGTON, a thriving city, 
in the state of Illinois, 60 miles n.n.e. 
of Springfield. It has several important 
educational institutions, including the 
Illinois Wesleyan University, a college 
for women, and the state Normal Uni¬ 
versity in the vicinity. Has coal-mines, 
iron industries, railway works, etc., and 
a large trade. Pop. 24,000. 

BLOUSE (blouz), a light loose upper 
garment, resembling a smock-frock, 
made of linen or cotton, and worn by 
men as a protection from dust or in place 
of a coat. A blue linen blouse is the 
common dress of French workmen. 

BLOW-FLY, a name for a species of 
two-winged flies that deposit their eggs 
on flesh, and thus taint it. 

BLOWING-MACHINE, any contri¬ 
vance for supplying a current of air, 
as for blowing glass, smelting iron, 
renewing the air in confined spaces, and 
the like. This may consist of a single 
pair of bellows, but more generally two 
pairs are combined to secure continuity 
of current. The most perfect blowing- 
machines are those in which the blast 
is produced by the motion of pistons in 
a cylinder, or by some application of the 
fan principle. For smelting and refining 
furnaces, where a blast with a pressure 
of 3 or 4 lbs. to the square inch is re¬ 
quired, blowing-engines of large size 
and power, worked by steam, are em¬ 
ployed. 

BLOW-PIPE, an instrument by which 
a current of air or gas is driven through 
the flame of a lamp, candle, or gas jet, 
and that flame directed upon a mineral 
substance, to fuse or vitrify it, an in- 



Blow-pipe.—o, Ball to catch moisture from 
the mouth. 


tense heat being created by the rapid 
supply of oxygen and the concentration 
of the flame upon a small area. In its 
simplest form it is merely a conical tube 
of brass, glass, or other substance, 
usually 7 inches long and \ inch in 
diameter at one end, and tapering so as 
to have a very small aperture at the 
other, within 2 inches or so of which it 
is bent nearly to a right angle, so that 
the stream of air may be directed side- 
wise to the operator. The flame is 
turned to a horizontal direction, assumes 
a conical shape, and consists of two parts 
of different colors. The greatest heat is 
obtained at the tip of the inner blue 
flame. Here the substance subjected 
to it is burned or oxidized, a small piece 
of lead or copper, for instance, being 
converted into its oxide. Hence the 


name of the oxidizing flame. By shift¬ 
ing the substance to the interior blue 
flame, which is wanting in oxygen, this 
element will be abstracted from the sub¬ 
stance, and a metallic oxide, for in¬ 
stance, will give out its metal; hence 
this is called a reducing flame. The 
blow-pipe is largely used in the manu¬ 
facture of glass, jewelry, and other com¬ 
modities. 

BLUBBER, the fat of whales and 
other large sea animals, from which 
train-oil is obtained. The blubber lies 
under the skin and over the muscular 
flesh. It is eaten by the Eskimo and 
the sea-coast races of the Japanese 
islands, the Kuriles, etc. The whole 
quantity yielded by one whale ordinarily 
amounts to 40 or 50, but sometimes to 
80 or morecwts. 

BLUCHER (blii'fter), Gebhard Leb- 
erecht von, distinguished Prussian gen¬ 
eral, born at Rostock 1742, died at 
Krieblowitz, in Silesia, 1819. He en¬ 
tered the Swedish service when fourteen 



Blucher. 


years of age and fought against the 
Prussians, but was taken prisoner in 
his first campaign, and was induced to 
enter the Prussian service. He became 
a major in 1793 and in 1794 major- 
general of the army of observation. 
After the Peace of Tilsit he labored 
in the department of war at Ko- 
nigsberg and Berlin. He then re¬ 
ceived the chief military command 
in Pomerania, but at the instiga¬ 
tion of Napoleon was afterward, with 
several other distinguished men, dis¬ 
missed from the service. In the cam¬ 
paign of 1812, when the Prussians 
assisted the French, he took no part; 
but no sooner did Prussia rise against 
her oppressors than Blucher, then 
seventy years old, engaged in the cause 
with all his former activity, and was 
appointed commander-in-chief of the 
Prussians and the Russian corps under 
General Winzingerode. His heroism in 
the battle of Ltitzen (May 2, 1813) was 
rewarded by the Emperor Alexander 
with the order of St. George. The 
battles of Bautzen and Hanau, those on 
the Katzbach and Leipzig, added to his 
glory. He was now raised to the rank 
of field-marshal, and led the Prussian 
army which invaded France early in 
1814. After a period of obstinate con¬ 
flict the day of Montmartre crowned 
this campaign, and, March 31, Blucher 
entered the capital of France. His king, 
in remembrance of the victory which he 
had gained at the Katzbach, created 
him Prince of Wahlstadt, and gave him 
an estate in Silesia. On the renewal of 


the war in 1815 the chief command was 
again committed to him, and he led his 
army into the Netherlands. June 15 
Napoleon threw himself upon him, and 
Blucher, on the 16th, was defeated at 
Ligny. In the battle of the 18th Bliicher 
arrived at the most decisive moment 
upon the ground, and taking Napoleon 
in the rear and flank assisted materially 
in completing the great victory of Water¬ 
loo. He was a rough and fearless soldier, 
noted for his energy and rapid move¬ 
ments, which had procured him the 
name of "Marshal Vorwarts” (Forward). 

BLUE, one of the seven colors into, 
which the rays of light divide them¬ 
selves when refracted through a glass 
prism, seen in nature in the clear ex¬ 
panse of the heavens; also a dye or pig¬ 
ment of this hue. The substances used 
as blue pigments are of very different 
natures, and derived from various 
sources; they are all compound bodies, 
some being natural and others artificial. 
They are derived almost entirely from 
the vegetable and mineral kingdoms. 

BLUEBEARD, the hero of a well- 
known tale, originally French, founded, 
it is believed, on the enormities of a real 
personage, Gilles de Laval, Count de 
Retz, a great nobleman of Brittany, put 
to death for his crimes in 1440. 

BLUEBELL, a name given to the 
wild hyacinth and to the harebell. 

BLUEBERRY, an American species 
of whortleberry. 

BLUEBIRD, a small bird, very com¬ 
mon in the U. States. The upper part 
of the body is blue, and the throat and 
breast of a dirty red. It makes its nest 
in the hole of a tree or in the box that 
is so commonly provided for its use by 
the friendly farmer. The bluebird is 
the harbinger of spring; its song is cheer- 



The bluebird. 


ful, continuing with little interruption 
from March to October, but is most 
frequently heard in the serene days of 
the spring. It is also called blue robin 
or blue redbreast, and is regarded with 
the same sort of sentiments as the robin 
of Europe. 

BLUE-BOOKS, the official reports, 
papers, and documents printed for the 
British government and laid before the 
Houses of Parliament. They are so 
called simply from being stitched up in 
dark-blue paper wrappers, and include 
bills presented to and acts passed by the 
houses; all reports and papers moved 
for by members or granted by govern¬ 
ment on particular subjects; the reports 
of committees; statistics of the trade, 
etc., of the country and of the colonies; 
and ambassadorial and consular reports 
from foreign countries and ports. 

BLUE-BOTTLE FLY, a large blue 
species of blow-fly. 










BLUEFISH 


BOCCACCIO 


BLUEFISH, a species of sea-fish 
widely distributed on the U. States 
coasts and highly prized as an article of 
diet. The size of the fish varies from 
3 to 25 pounds, 10 pounds being con¬ 
sidered a heavy fish. The color is 
reenish or bluish. The production of 
luefish runs up into millions of pounds 
annually. 

BLUE-GRASS, a species of grass of 
the same order as meadow grass. It is 
common in the U. States, Europe, and 
Asia. It grows to its greatest perfection 
in Kentucky and Tennessee and is often 
called, for that reason, Kentucky blue- 
grass. 

BLUE-GRASS REGION, a part of 
Kentucky famous for its excellent 
pastures of blue-grass and its fine horses. 

BLUE LAWS, a term applied to cer¬ 
tain Puritan enactments, particularly 
in Connecticut, and concerned with 
Sabbath breaking. The term is now 
generally applied to any stringent laws 
of religious or moral force. 

BLUE LIGHT, a brilliant light used 
for signaling at sea. It is produced by 
the ignition of a fine powder composed 
principally of antimony. For that 
reason the fumes of the combustion are 
poisonous when inhaled in considerable 
quantity. 

BLUE RIDGE, the most' easterly 
ridge of the Alleghany or Appalachian 
Mountains. The most elevated sum¬ 
mits are the peaks of Otter (4000 feet) 
in Virginia. 

BLUESTOCKING, a literary lady: 
applied usually with the imputation of 
pedantry. The term arose in connection 
with certain meetings held by ladies in 
the days of Dr. Johnson for conversation 
with distinguished literary men. One of 
these literati was a Mr. Benjamin Still- 
ingfleet, who always wore blue stockings, 
and whose conversation at these meet¬ 
ings was so much prized that his absence 
at any time was felt to be a great loss, 
so that the remark became common, 
“We can do nothing without the blue 
stockings”; hence these meetings were 
sportively called blue-stocking clubs, 
and the ladies who attended them blue¬ 
stockings. 

BLUEWING, a genus of American 
ducks, so called from the color of the 
wing-coverts. One species is brought 
in great quantities to market, the flesh 
being highly esteemed for its flavor. 

BLUFFS, the name in America for the 
steep banks of a stream or lake forming 
prominent headlands, and often extend¬ 
ing inland as plateau •. 

BLUN'DERBUSS, a short gun with a 
very wide bore, capable of holding a 
number of slugs or bullets, and intended 
to do execution at a limited range with¬ 
out exact aim. 

BLUSHING, a physiological process 
by which the blood flows in larger 
quantities to certain parts of the body, 
as the breast, face, and neck. It is 
customarily produced by some mental 
shock, as of shame, modesty, chagrin, 
etc., and its connection with the brain 
is not understood. It is known, how¬ 
ever, that such mental shocks cause a 
a sudden dilation of the small blood¬ 
vessels in the parts mentioned. 

BOA, a genus of serpents having the 
jaws so constructed that these animals 


can dilate the mouth sufficiently to 
swallow bodies thicker than themselves. 
They are also distinguished by having 
a hook on each side of the vent; the tail 
prehensile; the body compressed and 
largest in the middle, and with small 
scales, at least on the posterior part of 
the head. The genus includes some of 
the largest species of serpents, reptiles 
endowed with immense muscular power. 
They seize sheep, deer, etc., and crush 
them in their folds, after which they 
swallow the animal whole. The boas 
are peculiar to the hot parts of S. 
America. The Boa constrictor is not 
one of the largest members of the genus, 
rarely exceeding 20 feet in length; but 
the name boa or boa constrictor is often 
given popularly to any of the large ser¬ 
pents of similar habits, and so as to 
include the Pythons of the Old World 
and the Anaconda and other large 
serpents of America. 

BOADICE'A, Queen of the Iceni, in 
Britain, during the reign of Nero. 
Having been treated in the most igno¬ 
minious manner by the Romans, she 
headed a general insurrection of the 
Britons, attacked the Roman settle¬ 
ments, reduced London to ashes, and 
put to the sword all strangers to the 
number of 70,000. Suetonius, the 
Roman general, defeated her in a de¬ 
cisive battle (a.d. 62), and Boadicea, 
rather than fall into the hands of her 
enemies, put an end to her own life by 
poison. 

BOAR, the male of swine not cas¬ 
trated. See Hog. 

BOARD, a number of persons having 
the management, direction, or superin¬ 
tendence of some public or private office 
or trust; often an office under the con¬ 
trol of an executive government, the 
business of which is conducted by offi¬ 
cers specially appointed for that purpose. 

BOARD OF EDUCATION, a depart¬ 
ment of a city government which has 
control of primary, secondary, and 
high school education. 

BOARD OF TRADE. See Trade, 
Board of. 

BOARDING-HOUSE, a private busi¬ 
ness concern which feeds and lodges 
guests but which differs from a hotel or 
inn because the proprietor reserves the 
right to reject applicants for keep. The 
keeper is responsible for the goods of 
his guest and in common law has no 
lien for debt on those goods. 

BOAT, a small open vessel or water 
craft usually moved by oars or rowing. 
The forms, dimensions, and uses of 
boats are very various, and some of 
them carry a light sail. Large vessels, 
whether ships of war or merchantmen, 
carry with them a number of boats; 
and since steam has become so common 
as a propelling power, it has also been 
employed in ships’ boats. A ship of 
war has now usually several large boats 
propelled by steam, with others that 
are rowed, as a barge, pinnace, yawl, 
cutter, jolly-boat and gig. 

BOAT'SWAIN (commonly pronounced 
bo'sn), a warrant-officer in the navy 
who has charge of the sails, rigging, 
colors, anchors, cables, and cordage. 
His office is also to summon the crew 
to their duty, to relieve the watch, 
etc. In the merchant service one of 


the crew who has charge of the rigging 
and oversees the men. 

BOB'BIN, a reel or other similar con¬ 
trivance for holding thread. It is often 
a cylindrical piece of wood with a head, 
on which thread is wound for making 
lace; or a spool with a head at one or 
both ends, intended to have thread or 
yarn wound on it, and used in spinning 
machinery (when it is slipped on a 
spindle and revolves therewith) and in 
sewing-machines (applied within the 
shuttle)._ 

BOBBINET, a machine-made cotton 
net, originally imitated from the lace 
made by means of a pillow and bobbins. 

BOBOLINK, one of the most inter¬ 
esting song-birds of North America, 
found wherever plains, prairie meadows, 
or cultivated fields offer it a suitable 
home. The length is about 7 inches, of 



The bobolink. 


which 2J inches go to the tail; the spring 
or breeding plumage of the adult male 
is black, with the hindhead and nape, 
scapulars, rump, and upper tail-coverts 
buff, inclining to ochraceous on the neck 
and ashy toward the tail; the female is 
protectively denied this gay suit, and is 
clothed in neutral yellowish brown, much 
streaked; and the young of both sexes 
wear a similar dress until the males ma¬ 
ture. The female constructs on the 
ground a nest of grasses in which are 
laid four or five eggs, dull white, fleck¬ 
ed and marbled with Vandyke brown, 
upon which she sits very closely for 
about a fortnight. 

During the nuptial season — from 
May until mid-July—the male is driv¬ 
ing from the vicinity every intruder 
he can frighten away, especially 
rivals of his own kind. 

BOBRUISK, a fortified town of 
Russia, gov. Minsk. Pop. 58,056. 

BOCCACCIO (bok-k&t'cho), Giovanni, 
Italian novelist and poet, was bom 
1313, in Certaldo, died there 1375. In 
1341 Boccaccio fell in love with Maria, 
an illegitimate daughter of King Robert, 
who returned liis passion with equal 













BOCIIUM 


BOHEMIA 


ardor, and was immortalized as Fiam- 
metta in many of his best creations. 
In 1344 he returned to Naples, where 
Giovanna, the granddaughter of Robert, 
who had succeeded to the throne, re¬ 
ceived him with distinction. Between 
1344 and 1350 mos* of the stories of 
the Decameron were composed at her 
desire or at that of Fiammetta. This 
work, on which his fame rests, consists 
of 100 tales represented to have been 
related in equal portions in ten days by 
a party of ladies and gentlemen at a 
country house near Florence while the 
plague was raging in that city. The 
stories in this wonderful collection range 
from the highest pathos to the coarsest 
licentiousness. On the death of his 
father Boccaccio returned to Florence, 
where he was greatly honored, and 
was sent on several public embassies. 
Among others he was sent to Padua to 
communicate to Petrarch the tidings of 
his recall from exile and the restoration 
of his property. From this time an 
intimate friendship grew up between 
them which continued for life. They 
both contributed greatly to the revival 
of the study of classical literature. In 
1373 he was chosen by the Florentines 
to occupy the chair which was estab¬ 
lished for the exposition of Dante’s 
Divina Commedia. His lectures con¬ 
tinued till his death. 

BOCHUM (bo/i'um), a Prussian town, 
prov. of Westphalia, 5 miles e.n.e. of 
Essen; manufactories of iron, 6teel, 
hardware, etc. Pop. 65,554 

BOCK, BOCKBIER, a variety of Ger¬ 
man beer made with more malt and less 
hops than ordinary German beer, and 
therefore sweeter and stronger. 

BODLEIAN LIBRARY at Oxford, 
founded by Sir Thomas Bodley in 1598, 
opened 1602. It claims a copy of all 
works published in Britain, and for 
rare works and MSS. it is said to be 
second only to the Vatican. It contains 
about 500,000 books. 

BODLEY, Sir Thomas, the founder of 
the Bodleian Library at Oxford, was 
born at Exeter in 1544, died in London 
1612. He was educated partly at 
Geneva, whither his parents, who were 
Protestants, had retired in the reign of 
Queen Mary. On the accession of Eliza¬ 
beth they returned home, and he com¬ 
pleted his studies at Magdalen College, 
Oxford. He traveled much on the Con¬ 
tinent, and was employed in various 
embassies to Denmark, Germany, 
France, and Holland. In 1597 he re¬ 
turned home, and dedicated the re¬ 
mainder of his life to the reestablish¬ 
ment and augmentation of the public 
library at Oxford. He expended a very 
large sum in collecting rare and valuable 
books, besides leaving an estate for the 
support of the library. He was knighted 
at tne accession of James I. 

BODY-SNATCHING, an ancient prac¬ 
tice in vogue previous to the recogni¬ 
tion by law of the science of anatomy 
and the legal provision of material for 
dissection. Body-snatching, or grave- 
robbing, is a general offense in com¬ 
mon law, no matter what may be the 
purpose of the theft. It is seldom 
practiced nowadays except in the com¬ 
mission of crime. Jerry Cruncher, in 


Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities, was a pro¬ 
fessional body-snatcher. 

BCECFTIA, a division of ancient 
Greece, lying between Attica and Phocis, 
had an area of 1119 sq miles. The 
whole country is surrounded by moun¬ 
tains. The country originally had a 
superabundance of water, but artificial 
drainage works made it one of the most 
fertile districts of Greece. The inhabi¬ 
tants were of the ^Eolian race, most of 
the towns formed a kind of republic, of 
which Thebes was the chief city. 
Epaminondas and Pelopidas raised 
Thebes for a time to the highest rank 
among Grecian states. Refinement and 
cultivation of mind never made such 
progress in Bcetia as in Attica, and the 
term Boeotian was used by the Athenians 
as a synonym for dulness, but somewhat 
unjustly, since Hesiod, Pindar, the 
poetess Corinna, and Plutarch were 
Boeotians. Boeotia now forms a nomar- 
chy of the kingdom of Greece, with a 
population of 57,091; capital, Livadia. 

BOERS (borz), the farmers of Dutch 
origin in South Africa. In 1836-37 many 
Boers, being dissatisfied with the 
British government in Cape Colony, 
migrated beyond the Orange river, and 
a number found their way to what is 
now Natal. Here there had been British 
settlements for some years, and the 
British formally annexed the country 
in 1843. Subsequently the Boers were 
allowed to establish the Orange Free 
State as an independent republic, and 
several other small republics, which 
finally were combined into one—the 
South African Republic, or Transvaal. 
In 1877 the Transvaal was annexed by 
Britain, according to the wish of many 
of the people, but war broke out in 1880, 
British forces suffered more than one 
defeat, and in 1881 the country was 
accorded a modified independence. 
Henceforth it was a common feeling 
among the Boers that they and not the 
British must be predominant in South 
Africa, and in October, 1899, after an 
insolent ultimatum, the united forces 
of the Transvaal and Orange State 
invaded Natal. The war which followed 
with Britain was concluded by the final 
surrender of the Boers in May, 1902; 
the two states having been declared 
British territory in 1900. See Transvaal, 
Natal, etc. 

BOG, a piece of wet, soft, and spongy 
ground, where the soil is composed 
mainly of decaying and decayed vege¬ 
table matter. Such ground is valueless 
for agriculture until reclaimed, but often 
yields abundance of peat for fuel. 

BOGAR'DUS, James, an American 
inventor, born in 1800, died in 1874. 
Among nis inventions were the “ring- 
flyer” or “ring-spinner” used in cotton 
manufacture (1828), the eccentric mill 
(1829), an engraving machine (1831), 
and the first dry gas-meter (1832). In 
1839 he gained the reward offered for 
the best plan for carrying out the penny 
postage system by the use of stamps. 
In 1847 he built the first complete cast- 
iron structure in the world, and the first 
wrought-iron beams were made from 
his design. His delicate pyrometer and 
deep-sea sounding machine were valua- 
able additions to scientific instru¬ 
ments. 


BOGOTA', a city of South America, 
capital of Colombia and of the state or 
department of Cundinamarce, and seat 
of an archbishopric, situated on an 
elevated plain 8863 feet above the sea, 
at the foot of two lofty mountains, 
with a healthful though moist climate, 
and a temperature rarely exceeding 59° 
Fahr. Bogota being subject to earth¬ 
quakes, the houses are low, and strongly 
built of sun-dried brick. The inhabi¬ 
tants are mostly Creoles. Bogota is an 
emporium of internal trade, and has 
manufactures of soap, cloth, leather, 
etc., not of great importance. It was 
founded in 1538. Pop. about 100,000. 

BO'GUS, an Americanism meaning 
counterfeit, and applied to any spurious 
or counterfeit object; as, a bogus gov¬ 
ernment, a bogus law. The origin of the 
term is uncertain. 

BOHE'MIA, a province with the title 
of kingdom belonging to the Austro- 
Hungarian monarchy, bounded by Ba¬ 
varia, Saxony, the Prussian province 
of Silesia, Moravia, and the archduchy 
of Austria; area, 20,223 sq. miles; pop. 
6,318,280, of whom more than 2,000,000 
are Germans, the rest mostly Czechs. 
The prevailing religion is the Roman 
Catholic, the country being an arch¬ 
bishopric with three bishoprics. The 
language of the country is the Czech 
dialect of the Slavonic (see Czech lan¬ 
guage); in some districts, and in most 
of the cities, German is spoken. Bo¬ 
hemia is surrounded on all sides by 
mountains, and has many large forests. 
The chief rivers are the Elbe and its 
tributary the Moldau, which is even 
larger. All sorts of grain are produced 
in abundance, as also large quantities of 
potatoes, pulse, sugar-beet, flax, hops 
(the best in Europe), and fruits. The 
raising of sheep, horses, swine, and 
poultry is carried on to a considerable 
extent. The mines yield silver, copper, 
lead, tin, zinc, iron, cobalt, arsenic, 
uranium, antimony, alum, sulphur, 
plumbago, and coal. There are numer¬ 
ous mineral springs, but little salt. 
Spinning and weaving of linen, cotton, 
and woolen goods are extensively carried 
on; manufactures of lace, metal, and 
wood work, machinery, chemical, prod¬ 
ucts, beet-root sugar, pottery, porce¬ 
lain, etc., are also largely developed. 
Large quantities of beer (Pilsener) are 
exported. The glassware of Bohemia, 
which is known all over Europe, em¬ 
ploys 50,000 workers. The trade, partly 
transit, is extensive, Prague, the capital, 
being the center of it. The largest 
towns are Prague, Pilsen, Reichenberg, 
Budweis, Teplitz, Aussig, and Eger. 
The educational establishments include 
the Prague University and upward of 
4000 ordinary schools. The province 
sends 92 representatives to the Austrian 
parliament; the provincial diet consists 
of 241 members. 

Bohemia was named after a tribe of 
Gallic origin, the Boii, who were expelled 
from this region by the Marcomans at 
the commencement of the Christian era. 
The latter were in turn obliged to give 
lace to the Germans, and these to the 
zechs, a Slavic race who had estab¬ 
lished themselves in Bohemia by the 
middle of the 5th century, and still form 
the bulk of the population. The country 







BOIES 


BOLEYN 


was at first divided into numerous 
principalities. Christianity was intro¬ 
duced about 900. In 1092 Bohemia w T aa 
finally recognized as a kingdom under 
Wratislas II. In 1230 the monarchy, 
hitherto elective, became hereditary. 
The monarchs received investiture from 
the German emperor, held one of the 
great offices in the imperial court, and 
were recognized as among the seven 
electors of the empire. Frequently at 
strife wfth its neighbors, Bohemia was 
successively united and disunited with 
Hungary, Silesia, Moravia, etc., accord¬ 
ing to the course of wars and alliances. 

BOIES, Horace, an American states¬ 
man, born in New York in 1827. He 
settled in Iowa and was elected governor 
of that state in 1889 and 1891. He is 
well known for his opposition to pro¬ 
tective tariff: 

BOIL, to heat a fluid up to the point 
at which it is converted into vapor. 
The conversion takes place chiefly at 
the point of contact with the source of 
heat, and the bubhles of vapor rising 
to the surface, and breaking there, pro¬ 
duce the commotion called ebullition. 
At the ordinary atmospheric pressure 
ebullition commences at a temperature 
which is definite for each liquid. The 
escape of the heated fluid in the form of 
vapor prevents any further rise of tem- 

E erature in an open vessel when the 
oiling-point has been reached. The 
exact definition of the boiling-point of a 
liquid is “that temperature at which the 
tension of its vapor exactly balances 
the pressure of the atmosphere." The 
influence of this pressure appears from 
experiments. In an exhausted receiver 
the heat of the human hand is sufficient 
to make water boil; while, on the con¬ 
trary, in Papin’s digester, in which it is 
possible to subject the water in the 
boiler to a pressure of three or four 
atmospheres, the water may be heated 
far above the normal boiling-point 
without giving signs of ebullition. 
From this relation between the ebulli¬ 
tion of a liquid and atmospheric pressure 
the heights of objects above sea-level 
may be calculated by comparing the 
actual boiling-point at any place with 
the normal boiling-point. (See Heights, 
Measurement of.) The boiling-point 
of water as marked on Fahrenheit’s 
thermometer is 212°; on the Centigrade, 
100°; on the Reaumur, 80°. Ether boils 
at about 96°, mercury at 662°. 

BOIL, a 6mall painful swelling of a 
conical shape on the surface of the body. 
Its base is hard, while its apex is soft 
and of a whitish color. Boils are gen¬ 
erally indicative of depressed health, 
intemperate habits, or disorder of the 
digestive organs. 

BOILER, a vessel constructed of 
wrought iron or 6teel plates riveted 
together, with needful adjuncts, in 
which steam is generated from water 
for the purpose of driving a steam- 
engine, or for other purposes. 

The shell of the boiler, or outer part, 
is of iron or steel plates. The steam 
chest or dome, on the upper side of the 
boiler, is a reservoir, whence the steam 
is supplied to the engine by the steam- 
pipe, which is fitted with a stop-valve. 
The furnace is the chamber for the com¬ 
bustion of the fuel. The flues or con¬ 


duits for the burnt gases are either 
external or internal; cylindrical metal 
flues are flue-tubes, and they are fixed 
at the ends into tube-plates. The man¬ 
hole is the entrance to the boiler for 
inspection, etc.; and it is closed by a 
manhole door or lid. Mudholes are 
placed at or near the bottom of the 



Double-flue boiler. 


boiler for the discharge of sediment, 
etc. The water Is supplied by the feed- 
apparatus; its level is indicated by a 
float. The water-gauge also shows the 
level of the water; it may be a glass tube 
at the front of the boiler, connected to 
it by two horizontal tubes, one at the 
upper end and one at the lower end of 
the glass tube; or it may be a series of 
two or three gauge-cocks, connected at 
different levels. The boiler is emptied 
by the blow-off cock; the surface of the 
water is cleared by the scum-cock. 
Brine-pumps may be used instead of 
blow-off cocks to draw off the brine from 
marine boilers. Surplus steam escapes 
by the safety-valves. Vacuum valves 
admit air into the boiler, when the 
pressure is less than that of the atmos- 

E here. Fusible plugs are inserted in the 
oiler, over the fire, which melt and 
give vent to the steam when the pressure 
and temperature of the steam in the 
boiler become excessive and dangerous. 
The degree of pressure is indicated by 
the pressure-gauge. The boiler is 
strengthened by stays, which may con¬ 
sist of rods, bolts, or gussets. The 
boiler is covered with clothing or clead- 
ing. The fire-grate carries the fuel, 
and it consists of grate-bars or fire-bars, 
usually of cast-iron, supported by cross- 
bearers or bar-frames. The mouthpiece 
is the entrance to the furnace, and it 
rests on the dead-plate. The fire-door 
or pair of fire-doors are fitted to and 
hung by it. The heating surface is the 
surface of the boiler exposed to the 
flame and burned gases from the furnace. 

Boilers are of two types: shell boilers, 
consisting of a large shell, usually cylin¬ 
drical with flat ends, containing the 
water and steam, so that the whole of 
the shell is exposed to the full pressure 
of the 6team; and water-tube boilers, in 
which the water flows through a large 
number of tubes of small diameter, 
while the products of combustion flow 
over the outsides of the tubes. 

BOISE CITY, capital of the state of 
Idaho. Pop. 5957. 

BOJOL (bo-hol'), one of the Philippine 
Islands, north of Mindanao, about 40 
miles by 30 miles. Woody and moun¬ 
tainous. Pop. 187,000. 

BOKHARA, BOCHARA, (bo-te'r&), a 
khanate of central Asia, vassal to 
Russia, bounded north by Russian 
Turkestan, west by Khiva and the 
Transcaspian Territory of Russia, south 
by Afghanistan, and east by Chinese 
Turkestan; area about 93,000 square 
miles. The country in the west is to a 


great extent occupied by deserts; in the 
east are numerous ranges of mountains 
Cultivation is mainly confined to the 
valleys of the rivers. The climate i? 
warm in summer, but severe in winter; 
there is very little rain, and artificial 
irrigation is necessary. Besides cereals, 
cotton and tobacco are cultivated, and 
also a good deal of fruit. The total 
population, about 2,000,000.—Bokhara, 
the capital of the khanate, is 8 or 9 
miles in circuit, and is surrounded by a 
mud wall. Pop 70,000. 

BOLAN' PASS, a celebrated defile in 
the Hala Mountains, n.e. of Beluchistan, 
on the route between the Lower Indus 
(Scinde) and the tableland of Afghanis¬ 
tan. It is about 60 miles long, hemmed 
in on all sides by lofty precipices, and 



In the Bolan pass. 

in parts so narrow that a regiment could 
defend it against an army. It is trav¬ 
ersed by the Bolan river. The crest of 
the pass is 5800 feet high. 

BOLAS, a form of missile used by the 
Paraguay Indians, the Patagonians, 
and especially by the Gauchos of the 
Argentine Republic. It consists of a 
rope or line having at either end a stone, 
ball of metal, or lump of hardened clay. 
When used it is swung round the head by 
one end, and then hurled at an animal 
so as to entangle it. 

BOLER'O, a popular Spanish dance 
of the ballet class for couples, or for a 
single female dancer. The music, which 
is in triple measure, is generally marked 
by rapid changes of time, and the 
dancers mostly accompany the music 
with castanets. The interest of these 
dances largely depends upon the panto- 
mine of passion, which forms an essen¬ 
tial part of them. 

BOLEYN (bul'in), Anne, second wife 
of Henry VIII. of England, eldest 
daughter of Sir Thomas Bolejm and 
Elizabeth Howard, daughter of the 
Duke of Norfolk; born, according to 
some accounts, in 1507, but more 
probably about 1501. Sne attended 
Mary, sister of Henry, on her marriage 
with Louis XII., to France, as lady of 
honor, returning to England about 1522, 
and becoming lady of honor to Queen 








BOLINGBROKE 


BOLOGNA 


Catherine. The king, who soon grew 
passionately enamored of her, without 
waiting for the official completion of his 
divorce from Catherine, married Anne 
in January, 1533, having previously 
created her Marchioness of Pembroke. 
When her pregnancy revealed the secret, 
Cranmer declared the first marriage 
void and the second valid, and Anne 
was crowned at Westminster with 



Anne Boleyn. 


unparalleled splendor. On Sept. 7, 
1533, she became the mother of Eliza¬ 
beth She was speedily, however, in 
turn supplanted by her own lady of 
honor, Jane Seymour. Suspicions of 
infidelity were alleged against her, and 
in 1536 the queen was brought before a 
jury of peers on a charge of treason and 
adultery. Smeaton, a musician, who 
was arrested with others, confessed that 
he had enjoyed her favors, and on May 
17 she was condemned to death. The 
clemency of Henry went no further than 
the substitution of the scaffold for the 
stake, and she was beheaded on May 
19, 1536. Whether she was guilty or 
not has never been decided; that she 
was exceedingly indiscreet is certain. 

BO'LINGBROKE, Henry St. John, 
Viscount, English statesman and politi¬ 
cal writer, born in 1678 at Battersea, 
London; educated at Eton and at Ox¬ 
ford, where he had a reputation both 
for ability and libertinism. In 1700 he 
married a considerable heiress, the 
daughter of Sir Henry Winchcomb, but 
they speedily separated. In 1701 he 
obtained a seat in the House of Com¬ 
mons, attaching himself to Harley and 
the Tories. He at once gained influence 
and became secretary of war in 1706, 
though he retired with the ministry in 
1708. He continued, however, to 
maintain a constant intercourse with 
the queen, who preferred him to her 
other counselors, and on the overthrow 
of the Whig ministry in 1710, after the 
Sacheverell episode, he became one of 
the secretaries of state. In 1712 he was 
called to the House of Lords by the 
title of Viscount Bolingbroke, and in 
1713. against much popular opposition, 
concluded the Peace of Utrecht. Queen 
Anne, provoked by Oxford, dismissed 
him, and made Bolingbroke prime- 
minister, but died herself four days 
later. Bolingbroke, dismissed by King 
George while yet in Germany, fled to 
Prance in March, 1715, to escape the 
inevitable impeachment by which, in 


the autumn of that year, he was deprived 
of his peerage and banished. In 1723 
he was permitted to return to England. 
In 1735 a return to France became 
prudent, if not necessary. In 1742, on 
the fall of Walpole, he came back in the 
expectation that his allies would admit 
him to some share of power; but, being 
disappointed in this respect, he with¬ 
drew entirely from politics and spent the 
last nine years of his life in quietude at 
Battersea, dying in 1751 He was 
clever and versatile, but unscrupulous 
and insincere 

BOLIVAR (bo-le'var), Simon, the 
liberator of Spanish South America, 
was born at Caracas, July 24, 1783. 
He finished his education in Europe, 
and having then joined the patriotic 
party among his countrymen he shared 
in the first unsuccessful efforts to throw 
off the Spanish yoke. In 1812 he joined 
the patriots of New Granada in their 
struggle, and having defeated the 
Spaniards in several actions he led a 
small force into his own country (Vene¬ 
zuela), and entered the capital, Caracas, 
as victor and liberator, Aug. 4, 1813. 
But the success of the revolutionary 
party was not of long duration. Bolivar 
was beaten by General Boves, and before 
the end of the year the royalists were 
again masters of Venezuela. Bolivar 
next received from the Congress of New 
Granada the command of an expedition 
against Bogota, and after the successful 
transfer of the seat of government to 
that city retired to Jamaica. Having 
again returned to Venezuela he was able 
to rout the royalists under Morillo, and, 
after a brilliant campaign, effected in 
1819 a junction with the forces of the 
New Granada republic. The battle of 
Bojaca which followed gave him posses¬ 
sion of Santa F6 and all New Granada, 
of which he was appointed president 
and captain-general. A law was now 
passed by which the Republics of Vene¬ 
zuela and New Granada were to be 
united in a single state, as the Republic 
of Colombia; and Bolivar was elected 
the first president. In 1822 he went to 
the aid of Peru, and was made dictator, 
an office held by him till 1825, by which 
time the country had been completely 
freed from Spanish rule. In 1825 he 
visited Upper Peru, which formed itself 
into an independent republic named 
Bolivia, in honor of Bolivar. In Colom¬ 
bia a civil war arose between his adher¬ 
ents and the faction opposed to him, 
but Bolivar was confirmed in the presi¬ 
dency in 1826, and again in 1828, and 
continued to exercise the chief authority 
until May, 1830, when he resigned. He 
died at Carthagena on the 17th Decem¬ 
ber, 1830.—One of the departments of 
Colombia is named after him, as are also 
a state of the republic Venezuela, and 
the town Ciudad Bolivar. 

BOLIVTA, formerly called Upper 
Peru, a republic of South America, 
bounded n. and e by Brazil, s. by the 
Argentine Republic and Paraguay, and 
w. by Peru and Chile. Estimates of its 
area vary from 471,788 to 800,000 6q. 
miles. The total pop. is about 2,300,000. 
An unascertained proportion of the 
inhabitants belong to aboriginal races 
(the Aymaras and the Quichuas); the 
larger portion of the remainder be¬ 


ing Mestizos or descendants of the 
original settlers by native women. The 
largest town is La Paz, but the executive 
government has its seat at Sucre or 
Chuquisaca; other towns are Potosi, 
Oruro, and Cochabamba. The broadest 
part of the Andes, where these moun¬ 
tains, encompassing Lakes Titicaca 
(partly in Bolivia) and Aullagas, divide 
into two chains, known as the Eastern 
and Western Cordilleras, lies in the 
western portion of the state. Here are 
some of the highest summits of the 
Andes, as Sorata, Illimani, and Sajama. 
The two chains inclose an extensive 
tableland, the general elevation of 
which is about 12,500 feet, much of it 
being saline and barren, especially in 
the south. 

The climate, though ranging between 
extremes of heat and cold, is very 
healthful, and cholera and yellow fever 
are unknown. The elevated regions are 
cold and dry, the middle temperate and 
delightful, the lower valleys and plains 
uite tropical. Among animals are the 
ama, alpaca, vicuna, chinchilla, etc.; 
the largest bird is the condor. Bolivia 
has long been famed for its mineral 
wealth, especially silver and gold. The 
celebrated Potosi was once the richest 
silver district in the world. The coun¬ 
try is capable of producing every product 
known to South America, but cultiva¬ 
tion is in a very backward state. Coffee, 
coca, cacao, tobacco, maize, and sugar¬ 
cane are grown, and there is an inex¬ 
haustible supply of india-rubber. The 
chief exports are silver (two-thirds of 
the whole) cinchona or Peruvian bark, 
cocoa, coffee, caoutchouc, alpaca wool, 
copper, tin, and other ores. 

By its constitution Bolivia is a demo¬ 
cratic republic. The executive power is 
in the hands of a president elected for 
four years, and the legislative belongs 
to a congress of two chambers, both 
elected by universal suffrage. The 
religion is the Roman Catholic, and 
public worship according to the rites of 
any other church is prohibited. Educa¬ 
tion is at an exceedingly low ebb. 

Bolivia under the Spaniards long 
formed part of the viceroyalty of Peru, 
latterly it was joined to that of La Plata 
or Buenos Ayres. Its independent 
history commences with the year 1825, 
when the republic was founded. The 
constitution was drawn up by Bolivar, 
in whose honor the state was named 
Bolivia; and was adopted by congress 
in 1826. It has since undergone im- 
ortant modifications. But the country 
as been almost continually distracted 
by internal and external troubles, and 
can scarcely be 6aid to have had any 
definite constitution. 

BOLOGNA (bo-lon'y&). one of the 
oldest, largest, and richest cities of 
Italy, capital of the province of same 
name, in a fertile plain at the foot of 
the Apennines, between the rivers Reno 
and Savena, surrounded by an unforti¬ 
fied brick wall. It is the see of an 
archbishop, and has extensive manufac¬ 
tures of silk goods, velvet, artificial 
flowers, etc. The leaning towers Degli 
Asinelli and Garisenda, dating from 
the 12th century, are among the most 
remarkable objects in the city; and the 
market is adorned with the colossal 






BOLOMETER 


BOMBAY 


bronze Neptune of Giovanni da Bologna. 
An arcade of 640 arches leads to the 
church of Madonna di S. Lucca, situated 
at the foot of the Apennines, near 
Bologna, and the resort of pilgrims 
from all parts of Italy. Bologna has 
long been renowned for its university, 
claiming to have been founded in 1088, 
and having a library, at one time in the 
care of Cardinal Mezzofanti, which 



The AsinelU and Garisenda towers, Bologna. 


numbers over 200,000 volumes and 
9000 MSS. The Instituto delle Scienze 
has a library which numbers about 
160,000 volumes, with 6000 manu¬ 
scripts. The Church of San Domenico 
has a library of 120,000 volumes. The 
Academy of Fine Arts has a rich col¬ 
lection of paintings by native artists, 
such as Francia, and the later Bolognese 
school, of which the Caraccis, Guido 
Reni, Domenichino, and Albano were 
the founders.—Bologna was founded 
by the Etruscans under the name of 
Felsina; became in 189 b.c. the Roman 
colony Bononia; was taken by the 
Longobards about 728 a.d.; passed 
into the hands of the Franks, and was 
made a free city by Charlemagne. In 
the 12th and 13th centuries it was one 
of the most flourishing of the Italian 
republics; but the feuds between the 
different parties of the nobles led to its 
submission to the papal see in 1513. 
Several attempts were made to throw 
off the papal yoke, one of which, in 
1831, was for a time successful. In 1849 
the Austrians obtained possession of it. 
In 1860 it was annexed to the domin¬ 
ions of King Victor Emmanuel. Pop. 
130,000.—The province of Bologna, 
formerly included in the papal terri¬ 
tories, forms a rich and beautiful tract; 
area, 1390 sq. miles; pop. 527,000. 

BOLOM'ETER, a most sensitive elec¬ 
trical instrument that is employed for 
the measurement of radiant heat. 

BOLSTER, a nautical term applied 
to a piece of wood covered with canvas 
upon which rests the topmost rigging 
to prevent injury to the rigging. 

BOLT, a piece of metal used to bind 
machinery together, or to fasten, tem¬ 
porarily or permanently, any kind of 


structure. The manufacture of bolts 
requires very complicated machinery, 
especially bolts to which are attached 
nuts to hold the bolt in place. Various 
kinds of bolts are called eye-bolts, 
through-bolts, blunt-bolts, Lewis bolts, 
track-bolts (for railroad track), etc. 

BOLTING-CLOTH, a fabric of silk 
used in the manufacture of flour to 
separate the fine parts of the product 
from the coarse. 

BOLTON, a large manufacturing 
town and municipal, pari., and county 
borough of Lancashire, England, lying 
10 miles n.w. from Manchester, and con¬ 
sisting mainly of two divisions, Great 
Bolton and Little Bolton, separated 
from each other by the river Croal. 
In manufacturing industries it is now 
surpassed by few places in Britain, and 
it contains some of the largest and 
finest cotton-mills in the world. There 
are large engineering works, besides 
collieries, paper-mills, foundries, chemi¬ 
cal works, etc. Pop. 168,205. 

BOMB (bom), a large, hollow iron 
ball or shell, filled with explosive ma¬ 
terial and fired from a mortar. The 
charge in the bomb is exploded by 
means of a fuse filled with powder and 
other inflammable materials, which are 
ignited by the discharge of the mortar. 
Conical shells shot from rifled cannon 
have largely supplanted the older bomb. 
The use of bombs and mortars is said to 
have been invented in the middle of the 
15th century. 

BOM'BARD, a kind of cannon or 
mortar formerly in use, generally loaded 
with stone instead of iron balls. Hence 
the term bombardier. 

BOMBARDIER (-der'), an artillery 
soldier whose special duties are con¬ 
nected with the loading and firing of 
shells, grenades, etc., from mortars or 
howitzers. 

BOMBARDIER BEETLE, a name 
given to beetles of the family Carabidae, 
because of the remarkable power they 
possess of being able to defend them¬ 
selves by expelling from the anus a 
pungent acrid fluid, which explodes 
with a pretty loud report on coming 
in contact with the air. 

BOMBARD'MENT, an attack with 
bombs or shells upon a fortress, town, 
or any position held by an enemy, gen¬ 
erally carried out from the sea. 

BOMBARDON, a large musical in¬ 
strument of the trumpet kind, in tone 
not unlike an ophicleide. Its compass 
is from F on the fourth ledger-line below 
the bass-staff to the lower D of the 
treble-staff. It is not capable of rapid 
execution. 

BOMBASIN. See Bombazine. 

BOMBAY', chief seaport on the west 
coast of India, and capital of the presi¬ 
dency of the same name, stands at the 
southern extremity of the island of 
Bombay. Bombay has many hand¬ 
some buildings, both public and private, 
as the cathedral, the university, the 
secretariat, the new high court, the post 
and telegraph offices, etc. Various in¬ 
dustries, such as dyeing, tanning, and 
metal working, are carried on, and there 
are large cotton factories. The com¬ 
merce is very extensive. The harbor is 
one of the largest and safest in India, 
and there are commodious docks. There 


is a large traffic with steam-vessels 
between Bombay and Great Britain, 
regular steam communication with 
China, Australia, Singapore, Mauritius, 
etc The island of Bombay is about 11 
miles long and 3 miles broad. After 
Madras, Bombay is the oldest of the 
British possessions in the East, having 
been ceded by the Portuguese in 1661. 
Pop. 776,006. 



Bombardon. 


BOMBAY', one of the three presi¬ 
dencies of British India, between lat. 
14° and 29° n., and Ion. 66° and 77° e. 
It stretches along the west of the Indian 
peninsula, and is irregular in its outline 
and surface, presenting mountainous 
tracts, low barren hills, valleys, and 
high tablelands. It is divided into a 
northern, a central, and a southern 
division, the Sind division, and the 
town and island of Bombay. The 



northern division contains the districts 
of Ahmedabad, Kaira, Panch Mahals, 
Broach, Surat, Thana, Kolaba; the 
central, Khandesh, Nasik, Ahmednagar, 
Poona, Sholapur, Satara; the southern, 
Belgaum, Dharwar, Kaladgi, Kanara, 
Ratnagiri. Total area, 123,064 sq. 
miles; pop. 18,559,561, including the 
city and territory of Aden in Arabia, 80 
sq. miles (pop. 43,974). The native or 






















BOMBAZINE 


BONE 


feudatory states connected with the 
presidency (the chief being Kathiawar) 
nave an area of 65,761 sq. miles and a 
pop. of 6,908,648. The Portuguese 
possessions Goa, Daman, and Diu 
geographically belong to it. Many 
parts, the valleys in particular, are 
fertile and highly cultivated; other dis¬ 
tricts are being gradually developed by 
the construction of roads and railroads. 
The southern portions are well supplied 
with moisture, but a great part of Sind 
is the most arid portion of India. The 
climate varies, being unhealthful in the 
capital Bombay and its vicinity, but at 
other places, such as Poonah, very 
favorable to Europeans. The chief 
productions of the soil are cotton, rice, 
millet, wheat, barley, dates, and the 
cocoa - palm. The manufactures are 
eotton, silk, leather, etc. The great 
export is cotton. The administration 
is in the hands of a governor and 
council. 

BOMBAZINE (-zen') is a mixed tissue 
of silk and worsted, the first forming the 
warp and the second the weft. It is fine 
and light in the make, and may be of 
any color, though black is now most in 
use. 

BOMB-PROOF, a quality of fortifica¬ 
tion which enables the fortification to 
resist injury from bombs or shells cast 
upon it. Gibraltar, cut from the solid 
rock, and certain forts of exceedingly 
massive walls are bomb-proof. 

BONA FIDES, BONA FIDE (fl'dez, fl' 
de), a term derived from the Roman 
jurists, implying the absence of all fraud 
or unfair dealing. 

BONAN'ZA, a term applied in the U. 
States to an abundance of precious 
metal or rich ore in a mine. 

BONAPARTE (bon'a-part), the 
French form which the great Napoleon 
was the first to give to the original 
Italian name Buonaparte, borne by his 
family in Corsica. 

BONAPARTE, Jerome, youngest 
brother of Napoleon I., was born at 
Ajaccio in 1784. In 1801 he was sent 
out on an expedition to the West Indies, 
but the vessel being chased by English 
cruisers, was obliged to put into New 
York. During his sojourn in America 
Jerome Bonaparte became acquainted 
with Miss Elizabeth Patterson, of Balti¬ 
more, and though still a minor, married 
her in spite of the protests of the French 
consul on 24th December, 1803. The 
emperor, his brother, after an ineffectual 
application to Pope Pius VII. to have it 
dissolved, issued a decree declaring it to 
be null and void. After considerable 
services both in the army and navy, in 
1807 he was created King of Westphalia, 
and married Catherine Sophia, princess 
of Wtirtemberg. After the election of 
his nephew, Louis Napoleon, to the 
presidentship of the French Republic, 
in 1848, be became successively gov¬ 
ernor-general of Les Invalides, a mar¬ 
shal of France, and president of the 
senate. He died in 1860. Of the three 
children that were born to Jerome 
Bonaparte from his second marriage 
one was Prince Napoleon Joseph, who 
assumed the name of Jerome, and was 
well known by the nickname “Plon- 
Plon.” He died in 1891, having married 
Clotilde, daughter of King Victor 
P. E.—11 


Emmanuel of Italy. He had three 
children: Victor (born 18th July, 1862), 
Louis, and Marie Letitia. The first of 
these, since the death of Napoleon III.’s 
son, the Prince Imperial, is generally 
recognized by the Bonapartist party as 
the heir to the traditions of the dynasty. 
He had to leave France in 1886, a law 
being passed expelling pretenders to the 
French throne and their eldest sons. 

BONAPARTE, Joseph, the eldest 
brother of Napoleon I., was bom in 
Corsica in 1768. In 1796, with the rise 
of his brother to fame after the brilliant 
campaign of Italy, Joseph began a 
varied diplomatic and military career. 
At length, in 1806, Napoleon, having 
himself assumed the imperial title in 
1804, made Joseph king of Naples, and 
two years afterward transferred him 
to Madrid as King of Spain. His posi¬ 
tion here, entirely dependent on the 
support of French armies, became 
almost intolerable. He was twice 
driven from his capital by the approach 
of hostile armies, and the third time, 
in 1813, he fled, not to return. After 
Waterloo he went to the U. States, and 
lived for a time near Philadelphia, 
assuming the title of Count de Survil- 
liers. He subsequently came to England, 
finally repaired to Italy, and died at 
Florence in 1844. 

BONAPARTE, Letizia Ramolino, the 
mother of Napoleon I., and, after 
Napoleon’s assumption of the imperial 
crown, dignified with the title of Madame 
M&re, was bom at Ajaccio in 1750, and 
was married in 1767 to Charles Buona- 

E arte. She was a woman of much 
eauty, intellect, and force of character. 
Left a widow in 1785, she resided in 
Corsica till her son became first consul, 
when an establishment was assigned 
to her at Paris. On the fall of Napoleon 
she returned to Rome, where she died 
in 1836. 

BONAPARTE, Louis, second younger 
brother of the Emperor Napoleon I., 
and father of Napoleon III., was born 
in Corsica in 1778. He accompanied 
Napoleon to Italy and Egypt, and sub¬ 
sequently rose to the rank of a brigadier- 
general. In 1802 he married Hortense 
Beauharnais, Josephine’s daughter, and 
in 1806 was compelled by his brother 
to accept, very reluctantly, the Dutch 
crown. He exerted himself in promoting 
the welfare of his new subjects, and 
resisted as far as in him lay the tyranni¬ 
cal interference and arbitrary procedure 
of France; but disagreeing with his 
brother in regard to some measures of 
the latter, he abdicated in 1810 and 
retired to Gratz under the title of the 
Count of St. Leu. He died at Leghorn 
in 1846. He was the author of several 
works which show considerable literary 
ability. 

BONAPARTE, Louis. See Napoleon 
III. 

BONAPARTE, Lucien, Prince of 
Canino, next younger brother of Napo¬ 
leon I., was born at Ajaccio in 1775. 
Shortly after Napoleon’s return from 
Egypt in 1799 he was elected President 
of the Council, in which position he con¬ 
tributed greatly to the fall of the Direc¬ 
tory and the establishment of his 
brother’s power, on the famous 18th 
Brumaire (9th Nov.). Next year, as 


Napoleon began to develop his system 
of military despotism, Lucien, who still 
held to his republican principles and 
candidly expressed his disapproval of 
his brother’s conduct, fell into disfavor 
and was sent out of the way as ambassa¬ 
dor to Spain. Eventually, when Napo¬ 
leon had the consulate declared heredi¬ 
tary, Lucien withdrew to Italy, settling 
finally at Rome, where he devoted him¬ 
self to the arts and sciences, and lived 
in apparent indifference to the growth 
of his brother’s power. In vain Napo¬ 
leon offered him the crown, first of 
Italy and then of Spain; but he came to 
France and exerted himself on his 
brother’s behalf, both before and after 
Waterloo. Returning to Italy, he spent 
the rest of his life in literary and scien¬ 
tific researches, dying in 1840. Pope 
Pius VII. made him Prince of Canino. 

BONAPARTE, Napoleon. [See Na¬ 
poleon I. 

BONAVENTURE, St., otherwise John 
of Fidanza, one of the most renowned 
scholastic philosophers, was born in 
1221 in the Papal States; became in 
1243 a Franciscan monk; in 1253 teacher 
of theology at Paris, where he had 
studied, in 1256 general of his order, 
which he ruled with a prudent mixture 
of gentleness and firmness. In 1273 
Gregory X. made him a cardinal, and 
he died in 1274 while papal legate at the 
Council of Lyons. He was canonized in 
1482 by Sixtus IV. 

BOND, an obligation in writing to pay 
a sum of money, or to do or not to do 
some particular thing specified in the 
bond. The person who gives the bond 
is called the obligor, the person receiving 
the bond is called the obligee. A bond 
stipulating either to do something 
wrong in itself or forbidden by law, or 
to omit the doing of something which is 
a duty, is void. No person who cannot 
legally enter into a contract, such as an 
infant or a lunatic, can become an 
obligor, though such a person may 
become an obligee. No particular form 
of words is essential to the validity of a 
bond. A common form of bond is that 
on which money is lent to some com- 

E any or corporation, and by which the 
orrowers are bound to pay the lender 
a certain rate of interest for the money. 
Goods liable to customs or excise duties 
are said to be in bond when they are 
temporarily placed in vaults or ware¬ 
houses under a bond by the importer or 
owner that they will not be removed 
till the duty is paid on them. Such 
warehouses are called bonded ware¬ 
houses. 

BONE, a hard materia! constituting 
the framework of Mammalia, birds, 
fishes, and reptiles, and thus protecting 
vital organs such as the heart and lungs 
from external pressure and injury. In 
the foetus the bones are formed of car¬ 
tilaginous (gristly) substance, in different 
points of which earthy matter—phos¬ 
phates and carbonates of lime—is 
gradually deposited till at the time of 
birth the bone is partially formed. After 
birth the formation of bone continues, 
and, in the temperate zones, they reach 
their perfection in men between the 
ages of twenty and twenty-five. From 
this age till fifty they change but 
slightly; after that period they grow 





BONE-ASH 


BOOKKEEPING 


thinner, lighter, and more brittle. 
Bones are densest at the surface, which 
is covered by a firm membrane called 
the periosteum; the internal parts are 
more cellular, the spaces being filled 
with marrow, a fatty tissue, supporting 
fine blood-vessels. Bone consists of 
nearly 34 per cent organic material and 
of 66 per cent inorganic substances, 
chiefly phosphate, carbonate, and fluor¬ 
ide of lime, and phosphate of mag¬ 
nesium. The organic material is con¬ 
verted into gelatine by boiling. It is 
this which makes bones useful for yield¬ 
ing stock for soup. The inorganic 
substances may be dissolved out by 
steeping the bone in dilute hydrochloric 
acid. Bones, from the quantity of 
phosphates they contain, make excellent 
manure. 

BONE-ASH, BONE-EARTH, the 

earthy or mineral residue of bones that 
have been calcined so as to destroy the 
animal matter and carbon. It is com¬ 
posed chiefly of phosphate of lime, and 
is used for making cupels in assaying, 
etc 

BONE BLACK, IVORY BLACK, or 
ANIMAL CHARCOAL, is obtained by 
heating bones in close retorts till they 
are reduced to small coarse grains of a 
black carbonaceous substance. This 
possesses the valuable property of arrest¬ 
ing and absorbing into itself the coloring 
matter of liquids which are passed 
through it. Hence it is extensively 
used in the process of sugar-refining, 
when cylinders of large dimensions 
filled with this substance are used as 
filters. After a certain amount of 
absorption the charcoal becomes satu¬ 
rated and ceases to act. It has then to 
be restored by reheating or other 
methods. Bone black has also the 
property of absorbing odors, and may 
thus serve as a disinfectant of clothing, 
apartments, etc. 

BONE-DUST, bones ground to dust 
to be used as manure. 

BONE MANURE, one of the most 
important fertilizers in agriculture. 
The value of bones as manure arises 
chiefly from the phosphates and nitrog¬ 
enous organic matters they contain; 
and where the soil is already rich in 
phosphates bone is of little use as 
manure. It is of most service therefore 
where the soil is deficient in this respect, 
or in the case of crops whose rapid 
growth or small roots do not enable 
them to extract a sufficient supply of 
phosphate from the earth, turnips, for 
instance, or late-sown oats and barley. 
There are several methods for increasing 
the value of bones as manure, by boil¬ 
ing out the fat and gelatine, for instance, 
the removal of which makes the bones 
more readily acted on by the weather 
and hastens the decay and distribution 
of their parts, or by grinding them to 
dust, or dissolving them in sulphuric 
acid, by which latter course the phos¬ 
phates are rendered soluble in water. 

BONFIRE, a large fire lighted out of 
doors in celebration of some event; 
originally a fire in w T hich bones were 
burned. 

BONHEUR (bo-neur), Rosa, a dis¬ 
tinguished French artist and painter of 
animals, born at Bordeaux 22d March, 
1822. She died in 1899. 


BONIFACE, the name of nine popes. 
Boniface I., elected 418. He was the 
first to assume the title of the First 
Bishop of Christendom. He died 422.— 
Boniface II., elected 530, died in 532. 
He acknowledged the supremacy of the 
secular sovereign in a council held at 
Rome. — Boniface III. chosen 607, 
died nine months after his election.— 
Boniface IV., elected 608. He con¬ 
verted the Pantheon at Rome into a 
Christian church.—Boniface V., 619 to 
625. He endeavored to diffuse Chris¬ 
tianity among the English. — Boniface 
VI., elected 896, died a fortnight after.— 
Boniface VII., elected 947, during the 
lifetime of Benedict VI., and therefore 
styled antipope. Expelled from Rome 
in 984, he returned and deposed and 
put to death Pope John XIV. He died 
985. — Boniface VIII. (1294-1303), 
Benedict Cajetan, one of the ablest and 
most ambitious of the popes. His idea 
was, like that of Gregory VII., to raise 
the papal chair to a sort of universal 
monarchy in temporal as well as spirit¬ 
ual things.—Boniface IX. (1389-1404), 
elected during the schism in the church 
while Clement VII. resided at Avignon. 
He died in 1404. 

BONN, an important German town 
in the Rhenish province of Prussia, on 
the left bank of the Rhine. It is chiefly 
important for its famous university 
founded in 1777 by Elector Maximilian 
Frederick of Cologne. Enlarged and 
amply endowed by the King of Prussia 
in 1818, it is now one of the chief seats 
of learning in Europe, with a library of 
more than 200,000 volumes, an anatom¬ 
ical hall, mineralogical and zoological 
collections, museum of antiquities, a 
botanical garden, etc. Bonn was long 
the residence of the Electors of Cologne, 
and finally passed into the hands of 
Prussia by the arrangements of the 
Congress of Vienna in 1815. Pop. 
50,737. 

BONNER, Robert, an American editor 
and publisher, born in Ireland in 1824, 
died in New York in 1899. He pub¬ 
lished the Ledger, in the columns of 
which appeared stories, articles, and 
poems by numerous literary men of 
England and America. 

BON'NET, a covering for the head, 
now especially applied to one worn by 
females. In England the bonnet was 
superseded by the hat as a head-dress two 
or three centuries ago, but continued to 
be distinctive of Scotland to a later 
period. 

BONNET-ROUGE (bo-na-rozh), the 
emblem of liberty during the French 
Revolution, and then worn as a head¬ 
dress by all who wished to mark them¬ 
selves as sufficiently advanced in dem¬ 
ocratic principles: also called cap of 
liberty. 

BONNEVILLE, Benjamin L. E., an 
American engineer, born in France in 
1795, died in 1878. He graduated at 
West Point, explored the Rocky Moun¬ 
tains, and built a military road in Mis¬ 
sissippi. He served in the Florida, 
Mexican, and civil wars, and became 
a brigadier-general in 1865. 

BO'NUS, something given over and 
above what is required to be given, 
especially an extra dividend to the 
shareholders of a Joint-stock company, 


holders of insurance policies, etc., out 
of accrued profits. 

BONY PIKE, or GARFISH, a remark¬ 
able genus of fishes inhabiting N. Amer¬ 
ican lakes and rivers,, and one of the few 
living forms that now represent the 
order of ganoid fishes so largely de¬ 
veloped in previous geological epochs. 
The body is covered with smooth 
enameled scales, so hard that it is im¬ 
possible to pierce them with a spear. 
The common garfish attains the length 
of 5 feet, and is easily distinguished by 
the great length of its Jaws. 

BONZES, the name given by Euro¬ 
peans to the priests of the religion of 
Fo or Buddha in eastern Asia, par¬ 
ticularly in China, Burmah, Tonquin, 
Cochin-China, and Japan. They do not 
marry, but live together in monasteries. 
There are also female bonzes, whose 
position is analogous to that of nuns in 
the Roman Catholic Church. 

BOOBY, a swimming bird nearly 
allied to the gannet, and so named from 
the extraordinary stupidity with which, 
as the older voyagers tell, it would 
allow itself to be knocked on the head 
without attempting to fly. The booby 
lives on fish, which it takes, like the 
gannet, by darting down upon them 
when swimming near the surface of the 

W8it6r 

BOODHA. See Buddha. 

BOOK, the general name applied 
to a printed volume. In early times 
books were made of the bark of trees; 
hence the Latin liber means bark and 
book, as in English the words book and 
beech may be connected. The materials 
of ancient books were largely derived 
from the papyrus, a plant which gave 
its name to paper. The use of parch¬ 
ment, prepared from skins, next fol¬ 
lowed, until it was supplanted in Europe 
by paper in the 12th century, though 
paper was made in Asia long before this. 

BOOK'BINDING, the art of making 
up the sheets of a book into a volume 
with a substantial case or covering. In 
the middle ages the work of binding the 
manuscripts then used was done by the 
monks, in a heavy and excessively solid 
style. With the invention of printing, 
and the consequent multiplication of 
books, binding became a great mechani¬ 
cal art, in which the Italians of the 15th 
and 16th centuries took the lead. Later 
on the French binders enjoyed a well- 
deserved supremacy for delicate and 
elegant work, and it was not till almost 
the opening of the 19th century that 
English bookbinding began to take the 
foremost place. 

BOOK'KEEPING is the art or method 
of recording mercantile or pecuniary ‘ 
transactions, so that at any time a per¬ 
son may be able to ascertain the details 
and the extent of his business. It is 
divided, according to the general 
method pursued, into bookkeeping by 
single or by double entry. Bookkeep¬ 
ing by single entry is comparatively 
little used, except in retail businesses of 
small extent, where only the simplest 
record is required. 

Bookkeeping by double entry, a 
system first adopted in the great trading 
cities of Italy, gives a fuller and more 
accurate record of the movement of a bus¬ 
iness, and is necessary in all extensive 





BOOK OF MORMON 


BOOTH 


mercantile concerns. The chief feature 
of double entry is its system of checks, 
by which each transaction is twice 
entered, to the Dr. side of one account 
and then to the Cr. side of another. An 
important feature of the system con¬ 
sists in adopting, in addition to the per¬ 
sonal accounts of debtors and creditors 
contained in the ledger, a series of what 
are called book accounts, which are 
systematic records in the form of debtor 
and creditor of particular classes of 
transactions. For every debt incurred 
some consideration is received. This 
consideration is represented under a 
particular class or name in the ledger, 
as the debtor in the transaction in which 
the party from whom the consideration 
is received is the creditor. Thus A buys 
goods to the value of $500 from B. He 
enters these in his journal—Stock Acct. 
Dr. $500 (for goods purchased) ordinary 
To B, $500. The first $500 appears in the 
Dr. column of the journal, and is posted 
in the ledger to the debit of Stock Ac¬ 
count; the second appears in the Cr. 
column, and is posted in the ledger to the 
Cr. of B. In like manner, when the goods 
are paid, Cash, for which an account is 
opened in the ledger, is credited with 
$500, and B is debited with the same. 
When the goods are sold (for cash) 
Stock is credited and Cash is debited. 
If the amount for which they sell is 
reater than that for which they were 
ought, there will be a balance at the 
debit of Cash, and a balance at the credit 
of Stock. The one balance represents 
the cash actually on hand (from this 
transaction), the other the cause of its 
being on hand. If there is a loss on the 
transaction, the balance will be on the 
other side of these accounts. Ulti¬ 
mately the balance thus arising at Dr. 
or Cr. of Stock is transferred to an 
account called Profit and Loss, which 
makes the stock account represent the 
present value of goods on hand, and the 
profit and loss account, when complete, 
the result of the business. In this sys¬ 
tem the risk of omitting any entry, 
which is a very common occurrence in 
single bookkeeping, is reduced to its 
smallest, as, unless a particular trans¬ 
action is omitted in every step of its 
history, the system will inexorably 
require that its whole history should be 
given to bring the different accounts 
into harmony with each other. 

BOOK OF MORMON, the bible of the 
Mormons, first published in 1830 by 
Joseph Smith, who claimed it was 
written on gold plates, buried in a 
sacred hill, and disclosed to Smith by an 
angel. The plates disappeared, but a 
translation (the original characters 
were Egyptian) was made by the 
finder, who, upon it, founded the Mor¬ 
mon faith. 

BOOK-PLATE, a label pasted on the 
inside of the first cover of a book, giving 
the name of the owner. Book-plates 
are a very ancient usage and some of 
them, especially rare ones, or those from 
the books of famous persons, are very 
valuable. Sir Wollasten Franks made a 
i collection of 200,000 book-plates, which 
I is now in the British Museum. Many 
noted artists, such as Hogarth, for 
example, drew book-plates for distin¬ 
guished patrons. 


BOOKS, Censorship of, the super¬ 
vision of books by some authority so as 
to settle what may be published. After 
the invention of printing the rapid 
diffusion of opinions by means of books 
induced the governments in all countries 
to assume certain powers of supervision 
and regulation with regard to printed 
matter. The popes were the first to 
institute a regular censorship. By a 
bull of Leo X. in 1515 the bishops and 
inquisitors were required to examine 
all works before they were printed, with 
a view to prevent the publication of 
heretical opinions. As this decree could 
not be carried out in countries which had 
accepted the reformed religion, they 
prepared a list of prohibited books 
(Index Librorum Prohibitorum), books, 
that is, which nobody was allowed to 
read under penalty of the censure of the 
church. This index continues to be 
reprinted and revised down to date, as 
well as another index commonly called 
the Index Expurgatorius, containing 
the works which may be read if certain 
expurgations have been made. In 
England the censorship was established 
by act of parliament in 1662, but before 
that both the well-known Star-chamber 
and the parliament itself had virtually 
performed the functions. In 1694 the 
censorship in England ceased entirely. 
In France the censorship, like so many 
other institutions, was annihilated by 
the revolution. During the republic 
there was no formal censorship, but the 
supervision of the directory virtually 
took its place, and at length in 1810 
Napoleon openly restored it under 
another name (Direction de l’lmpri- 
merie). After the restoration it under¬ 
went various changes, and was re¬ 
established by Napoleon III. with new 
penalties. In the old German empire 
the diet of 1530 instituted a severe 
superintendence of the press, but in the 
particular German states the censure 
was very differently applied, and in 
Protestant states especially it has never 
been difficult for individual authors to 
obtain exemption. In 1849 the censorial 
laws were repealed, but were again 
gradually introduced, and still exist in 
a modified form in most of the German 
states. The censorship was abolished 
in Denmark in 1770, in Sweden in 1809, 
in the Netherlands in 1815. In Russia 
and Austria there is a despotic censor¬ 
ship. See Press, Liberty of the. 

BOOM, a long pole or spar run out 
from various parts of a ship or other 
vessel for the purpose of extending the 
bottom of particular sails. Also a strong 
beam, or an iron chain or cable, fastened 
to spars extended across a river or the 
mouth of a harbor, to prevent an enemy’s 
ships from passing. 

BOO'MERANG, a missile instrument 
used by the Australian aborigines, and 
by some peoples of India, made of hard 
wood, about the size of a common 
reaping-hook, and of a peculiar curved 
shape, sometimes resembling a rude and 
very open V. The boomerang, w T hen 
thrown as if to hit some object in ad¬ 
vance, instead of going directly forward, 
slowly ascends in the air, whirling round 
and round to a considerable height, and 
returns to the position of the thrower. 
If it hits an object of course it falls. 


The Australians are very dexterous 
with this weapon, and can make it go in 
almost any direction, sometimes mak¬ 
ing it rebound before striking. 



BOONDEE', or BUNDI, a principality, 
Hindustan, in Rajputana, under British 
protection; area, 2300 sq. miles. Pop. 
295,675. Boondee is the capital. Pop. 
22,544. 

BOONE, Daniel, an American pioneer 
of civilization, born 1735, died 1820. 
In 1769 with five companions he went 
to explore the little known region of 
Kentucky, and was taken prisoner by 
the Indians. In 1775 he built a fort on 
the Kentucky river, where Boones- 
borough now is, and settled there. In 



1778 he was taken prisoner by the 
Indians, and was retained and adopted 
into the family of a Shawanese chief, 
but at length he effected his escape. 
In the end of the century he removed 
from Kentucky into Missouri. From 
him a number of places in the U. States 
take the name of Boone, Booneville, 
etc., all of small importance. 

BOOT, an article of dress, generally 
of leather, covering the foot and extend¬ 
ing to a greater or less distance up the 
leg. Hence the name was given to an 
instrument of torture made of iron, or 
a combination of iron and wood, fast¬ 
ened on to the leg, between which and 
the boot wedges were introduced and 
driven in by repeated blows of a mallet, 
with such violence as to crush both 
muscles and bones. The special object 
of this form of torture was to extort a 
confession of guilt from an accused 
person. 

BOOTH, Agnes, an American actress, 
born in Sydney, Australia, in 1843. 
She was born Marion Agnes Land 
Rookes, and made her d6but in San 
Francisco when very young, playing 
Shakespearian parts. In 1867 she 






BOOTH 


BORDELAIS WINES 


married Junius Brutus Booth and until 
1891 was prominent on the American 
stage. After the death of her husband 
she married (1885) John B. Schoeffel. 

BOOTH, Ballington, an American 
religious leader, son of William Booth, 
founder of the Salvation Army. In 
1896 he disagreed with his father and 
founded the American Volunteers, an 
organization of a kind with the Salva¬ 
tion Army. 

BOOTH, Edwin Thomas, an American 
actor, son of Junius Brutus Booth, 
regarded as the most finished actor 
produced by the American stage. He 
was born at Belair, Md., in 1833, and 
died at New York in 1893. Booth made 
his d6but in Boston in 1849. In 1851 he 
appeared in Richard III. at New York, 
married Mary Devlin in 1860, who died 
three years later. Among the roles 
played with excellent success by Booth 
were Shylock, Hamlet, Richard III., 
Richelieu, and Cassius. He built 
Booth’s Theater, New York, in 1869, 
played in Europe in 1880 and 1882, 
toured the U. States with Lawrence 
Barrett in 1891, and retired soon after¬ 
ward. Booth’s Hamlet was regarded 
as unapproachable by many critics. 

BOOTH, James Curtis, an American 
chemist, bom at Philadelphia in 1810, 
died 1888. He was a specialist in the 
chemistry of mining and was superin¬ 
tendent of the United States Mint at 
Philadelphia from 1849 till his death. 

BOOTH, John Wilkes, brother of 
Edwin Booth, and the assassin of 
Abraham Lincoln, born 1839, killed in 
1865 by his pursuers. Booth was a 
highly sensitive man, and an intense 
secessionist. For a time he had been an 
actor, but the civil war, it is believed, 
turned his brain. He organized a con¬ 
spiracy to assassinate the president, 
vice-president, and cabinet, and succeed¬ 
ed in the first part of his plan when he 
shot Lincoln on the night of April 14, 
1865, at Ford’s Theater in Washington. 
He was overtaken April 26 at Bowling 
Green, Va., and, refusing to surrender, 
was shot. Four of his accomplices, 
including Mrs. Surratt, were hanged. 

BOOTH, Junius Brutus, a British 
actor of great ability, born in 1796, died 
in 1852. He appeared first in London 
in 1813 and subsequently became noted 
on the British stage. Coming to 
America in 1821 he settled in this coun¬ 
try. His principal r61es were Sir Giles, 
Hamlet, Richard, and Iago. He threw 
so much passion into his work that his 
mimic antagonists in stage duels were 
often in serious danger of being injured. 

BOOTH, Maude Ballington, a leader 
of the American Volunteers, wife of 
Ballington Booth. She was born in 
London in 1865 and entered the Salva¬ 
tion Army at the age of seventeen. In 
1896 she seceded with her husband from 
the Salvation Army. 

BOOTH, William, founder of the Sal¬ 
vation Army, born in England in 1829. 
He was formerly a Methodist Episcopal 
minister, but in 1865 began an independ¬ 
ent mission movement in London, which 
gradually developed into the Salvation 
Army, which name it was given in 1878. 
He is the author of numerous books, 
among them In Darkest England and 
The Way Out (1890). 


BOOTH-TUCKER, Emma Moss, a 
leader of the Salvation Army, daughter 
of William Booth and wife of Com¬ 
mander Booth-Tucker. She was born 
in England in 1860 and for many years 
has been head of the Salvation Army 
in the U. States jointly with her hus¬ 
band. 

BOOTH - TUCKER, Frederick St. 
George de Latour, chief of the Salvation 
Army organization in the U. States. 
He was born in India in 1853, and 
occupied an official position in the 
Indian civil service, which he resigned 
in 1881 to join the Salvation Army. In 
1896 he was appointed commander of 
the army in America, with headquarters 
in New York. 

BORACIC ACID, BORIC ACID, a com¬ 
ound of the element boron, with 
ydrogen and oxygen. Boracic acid is 
found as a saline incrustation in some 
volcanic regions, is an ingredient in 
many minerals, and is contained in the 
steam which, along with sulphureous 
exhalations, issues from fissures in the 
soil in Tuscany. The steam from the 
fumaroles here is now an important 


source of the acid, a system of condensa¬ 
tion and evaporation being employed. 
The acid forms white, shining, scaly 
crystals, which on heating melt into a 
transparent [mass, when cooled resem¬ 
bling glass. It dissolves in water, and 
has a slight acid taste; it colors blue 
litmus purple, and the yellow coloring 
matter turmeric brown. The chief use 
of the acid is as a source of borax, the 
biborate of sodium. See Borax. 

BORAX, biborate of sodium. Native 
borax has long been obtained under the 
name of tincal, from India, the main 
source, being not India but a series of 
lakes in Thibet. As imported it is in 
small pieces of a dirty yellowish color, 
and is covered with a fatty or soapy 
matter. Tincal, which contains various 
impurities, was formerly the only source 
of borax; but besides Tuscany other 
sources of boracic acid, more particu¬ 
larly in North and South America, and 
the salt mines at Stassfurt, etc., in Ger¬ 
many, have been rendered available. 
The U. States yields large quantities, 
there being rich deposits of borax and 
boracic minerals on the Pacific slope. 


Pure borax forms large transparent 
six-sided prisms, which dissolve readily 
in water, effloresce in dry air, and when 
heated melt in their water of crystalli¬ 
zation, swell up, and finally fuse to a 
transparent glass. Borax has a variety 
of uses. In medicine it is employed in 
ulcerations and skin diseases. It has 
valuable antiseptic and disinfecting 
properties, and is now much used for the 
preservation of meat, fish, and milk. 
It is also employed in soldering metals, 
and in making fine glaze for porcelain 
as it renders the materials more fusible. 
It is used in enameling, and in making 
beads, glass, and cement. 

BORDEAUX (bor-do'), one of the 
most important cities and ports of 
France, capital of the dep. of Gironde, 
on the Garonne, about 70 miles from 
the sea. In the old town are the Cathe¬ 
dral of Saint-Andr6, St. Michael’s 
Church, with its superb front of florid 
Gothic, the Hotel de Ville, and the 
Palais de Justice. There are extensive 
and finely-planted promenades. Its 
position gives it admirable facilities for 
trade, and enables it to rank next after 


Marseilles and Havre in respect of the 
tonnage employed. Large vessels sail 
up to the town and there is ready com¬ 
munication by railway or river with the 
Mediterranean, Spain, and the manu¬ 
facturing centers of France. The chief 
exports are wine and brandy; sugar and 
other colonial produce and wood are the 
chief imports. Ship-building is the 
chief industry, and there are sugar- 
refineries, woolen and cotton mills, 
potteries, soap-works, distilleries, etc. 

BORDELAIS WINES, the wines of 
Bordeaux and district, the name of 
vin de Bordeaux being generally given 
to the wines made in the eleven depart¬ 
ments of the southwest of France, 
Gironde, Landes, Lot, Tam et Garonne, 
etc., though it is in the Gironde alone 
that the famous growths are found. 
The soil of M6doc (a sandy and calcare¬ 
ous loam) produces such famous wines 
as Ch&teau-Margaux, Ch&teau-Lafitte, 
and Ch&teau-Latour. The wines of this 
country are the best which France pro¬ 
duces. Their characteristics are fine 
bouquet, velvety softness on the palate, 
and the faculty of acting beneficially 



Bordeaux—Quay of Louis XVIII. 

























BORDER RUFFIANS 


BORON 


on the stomach without mounting too 
readily to the head. Besides the red 
wines of the Bordelais, known under 
the general name of claret, there are 
also white wines, of which the finest 
growths are Sauterne, Preignac, Barsac, 
etc. 

BORDER RUFFIANS, a term applied 
to certain pro-slavery men who went to 
Kansas from Missouri in 1853 to turn 

t np plppti'nn a 

BORDER STATES, a term applied to 
certain states which were on the border 
of the free states. Under this head are 
classified usually. Maryland, Delaware, 
Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mis¬ 
souri, and Arkansas. 

BORDER WAR, the war waged 
between the pro- and anti-slavery men 
in Kansas some years previous to the 
civil war. 

BO'REAS, the name of the north 
wind as personified by the Greeks and 
Romans. 

BORER, a name given to the larvae 
of certain insects which bore holes in 
trees and thus injure them. 

BORGIA, Cesare (che'za-re bor'ja), 
the natural son of Pope Alexander VI., 
and of a Roman lady named Vanozza, 
born in 1478. He was made Due de 
Valentinois by Louis XII. In 1499 he 
married a daughter of King John of 
Navarre. He carried on a series of 
petty wars, made himself master of the 
Romagna, attempted Bologna and 
Florence, and had seized Urbino when 
Alexander VI. died, 1503. Enemies 
now rose against him on all sides, one 
of the most bitter of whom was the new 
pope, Julius II. Borgia w r as arrested 
and carried to Spain. He at length 
made his escape to his brother-in-law 
the King of Navarre, and was killed 
before the castle of Viana, March 12, 
1507. He was charged with the murder 
of his elder brother, of the husband of 
his sister Lucretia, and the stiletto or 
secret poisoning was freely used against 
those who stood in his way. With all 
his crimes he was a patron of art and 
literature. 

BORGIA, Lucretia, daughter of Pope 
Alexander VI., and sister of Cesare 
Borgia. She was accused by contem¬ 
poraries of incest, poisoning, and almost 
every species of enormous crime; but 
several modern writers defend her, 
maintaining that the charges which have 
been made against her are false or much 
exaggerated. She was a patroness of 
art and literature. Born 1480, died 
1523. 

BORING, the process of perforating 
wood, iron, rocks, or other hard sub¬ 
stances by means of instruments 
adapted for the purpose. For boring 
wood the tools used are awls, gimlets, 
augers, and bits of various kinds, the 
latter being applied by jneans of a 
crank-shaped instrument called a brace, 
or else by a lathe, transverse-handle, or 
drilling-machine. Boring in metal is 
done by drills or boring-bars revolved 
by boring-machines. Boring in the 
earth or rock for mining, geologic, or 
engineering purposes is effected by 
means of augers, drills, or jumpers, 
sometimes wrought by hand, but now 
usually by machinery driven by steam 
or frequently by compressed air. In 


ordinary mining practice a bore-hole 
is usually commenced by digging a small 
pit about 6 feet deep, over which is set 
up a shear-legs with pulley, etc. The 
boring-rods are from 10 to 20 feet in 
length, capable of being jointed together 
by box and screw, and having a chisel 
inserted at the lower end. A lever is 
employed to raise the bore-rods, to 
which a slight twisting motion is given 
at each stroke, when the rock at the 
bottom of the hole is broken by the 
repeated percussion of the cutting-tool. 
Various methods are employed to clear 
out the triturated rock. The work is 
much quickened by the substitution of 
steam-power, water-power, or even 
horse-power for manual labor. Of the 
many forms of boring-machines now in 
use may be mentioned the diamond 
boring-machine, invented by Leschot, 
a Swiss engineer. In this the cutting- 
tool is of a tubular form, and receives 
a uniform rotatory motion, the result 
being the production of a cylindrical 
core from the rock of the same size as 
the inner periphery of the tube. The 
boring-bit is a steel thimble, about 4 
inches in length, having two rows of 
Brazilian black diamonds firmly em¬ 
bedded therein, the edges projectign 
slightly. The diamond teeth are the 
only parts which come in contact with 
the rock, and their hardness is such that 
an enormous length can be bored with 
but little appreciable wear. 

BORN, Bertrand de, French trouba¬ 
dour and warrior, born about the middle 
of the 12th century in the castle of Born, 
P4rigord; died about 1209. He dispos¬ 
sessed his brother of his estate, whose 
part was taken by Richard Cceur de 
Lion in revenge for De Bom’s satirical 
lays. Dante places him in the Inferno 
on account of his verses intensifying the 
quarrel between Henry II. and his sons. 

BOR'NEO, one of the islands of the 
Malay Archipelago, and the third largest 
in the world. Greatest length 780, 
greatest breadth, 690 miles; area 283,- 
358 sq. miles. There are several chains 
of mountains ramifying through the 
interior, the culminating summit (13,- 
698 feet) being Kini-Balu, near the north¬ 
ern extremity. The rivers are very 
numerous, and several of them are 
navigable for a considerable distance by 
large vessels. There are a few small 
lakes. Borneo contains immense forests 
of teak and other trees, besides produc¬ 
ing various dye-woods, camphor, rattans 
and other canes, gutta-percha and india- 
rubber, honey and wax, etc. Its fauna 
comprises the elephant, rhinoceros, 
tapir, leopard, buffalo, deer, monkeys 
(including the orang-outang), and a 
great variety of birds. The mineral pro¬ 
ductions consist of gold, antimony, iron, 
tin, quicksilver, zinc, and coal, besides 
diamonds. It is only portions of the 
land on the coast which are well culti¬ 
vated. Among cultivated products are 
sago, gambier, pepper, rice, tobacco, 
etc. Edible birds’-nests and treparig 
are important articles of trade. The 
climate is not considered unhealthful. 
The pop. is estimated at about 1,700,- 
000, comprising Dyaks (the majority of 
the inhabitants), Malays, Chinese, and 
Bugis. The southwestern, southern, 
and eastern portions of the island are 


possessed by the Dutch, under whom 
are a number of semi-independent 
princes. On the n.w. coast is the Malay 
kingdom of Borneo or Bruni. Its chief 
town is Bruni, on the river of the same 
name, a place of considerable trade, and 
the residence of the sultan. British 
North Borneo has an area of about 31,- 
000 sq. miles (slightly greater than Scot¬ 
land), several splendid harbors, a fertile 
soil, and a good climate. At present the 
population is sparse, and a large part of 
the territory consists of virgin forests. 
The soil is believed to be well adapted 



Dyaks of Borneo. 


for coffee, sago, tapioca, sugar, tobacco, 
cotton, etc. Probably there are valu¬ 
able mineral deposits also, gold having 
been already found. The chief settle¬ 
ment is Sandakan, the capital, on San- 
dakan Bay. The revenue is from cus¬ 
toms and excise dues, licenses, etc. 
Birds’-nests, rattans, gutta-percha, tim¬ 
ber, etc., are exported, the trade being 
chiefly with Singapore and Hong-Kong. 
Pop. estimated at 150,000. North Bor¬ 
neo, Bruni, and Sarawak are all under 
British protection. 

BOR'NU, a negro kingdom of the 
central Sudan, on the w. side of Lake 
Chad, with an area of about 79,000 sq. 
miles, and a pop. estimated at 5,000,- 
000. Kuka, the capital (pop. 60,000), 
near the western shore of Lake Chad, is 
one of the greatest markets in central 
Africa, a large trade being done in 
horses, the breed of -which is famed 
throughout the Sudan. Another large 
town, on the shore of the lake, is Ngornu. 
Bornu is now under British and German 
protection. 

BOROGLYCERIDE, a compound of 
boracic acid with glycerine, represented 
by the formula. It is a powerful anti¬ 
septic, and being perfectly harmless is 
as useful in the preservation of food as 
in surgery, etc. 

BORON, the element from which all 
boracic compounds are derived, is a 
dark brown or green amorphous powder, 
which stains the skin, has no taste or 
odor, and is only slightly soluble in 
water. It also crystallizes into darkish 
brilliant crystals nearly as hard as dia- 










BORROMEO 


BOSTON 


mond, which, in the form of dust, are 
used for polishing. It is one of the few 
elements which combine direct with 
nitrogen. 

BORROME'O, Carlo, Count, a cele¬ 
brated Roman Catholic saint and car¬ 
dinal, born 1538, at Arona, on Lago 
Maggiore, died at Milan 1584. Immedi¬ 
ately after his death miracles were said 
to be wrought at his tomb, and his 
canonization took place in 1610.—His 
nephew. Count Federigo Borromeo, also 
cardinal and Archbishop of Milan, 
equally distinguished for the sanctity 
of his life and the benevolence of his 
character, was born at Milan in 1564, 
and died in 1631. He is celebrated 
as the founder of the Ambrosian Li¬ 
brary. 

BOR'ROW, George, English writer, 
born 1803, died 1881. He had a passion 
for foreign tongues, stirring scenes, and 
feats of bodily prowess. He associated 
much with the gypsies, and acquired an 
exact knowledge of their language, man¬ 
ners, and customs. As agent of the 
British and Foreign Bible Society he 
traveled France, Germany, Russia, and 
the East; spent five years in Spain, and 
published The Gypsies in Spain (1841), 
and The Bible in Spain (1842), the best 
known of his works. Other works are 
Lavengro, largely autobiographical 
(1850), The Romany Rye (1857), Wild 
Wales (1862), and Dictionary of the 
Gypsy Language (1874). 

BORROWING, the act of taking 
something with agreement to return 
the identical thing or its equivalent, or 
its equivalent plus compensation to the 
lender. The first kind of contract is 
called in law commodatum, the second 
locatio. Unless a time for return is set 
the borrowed thing is returnable at the 
demand of the lender. 

BOS'NIA, a Turkish province in the 
northwest of the Balkan Peninsula, 
west of Servia, by the Treaty of Berlin 
(1878) to be administered for an unde¬ 
fined future period by the Austrian 
government; area (including Herze¬ 
govina and Novi-bazar), 23,570 sq. 
miles (of which Bosnia Proper occupies 
16,200), with 1,568,092 inhabitants, 
mostly of Slavonian origin. In 1708 
Bosnia was annexed by Austria. 

BOS'PORUS, or BOSPHORUS, the 
strait, 19 miles long, joining the Black 
Sea with the Sea of Marmora, called also 
the Strait of Constantinople. It is de¬ 
fended by a series of strong forts; and by 
agreement of the European powers no 
ship of war belonging to any nation 
shall pass the Bosporus without the 
permission of Turkey. 

BOSS, a word used to designate a 
master of some kind, generally of a 
lower order. It is derived from the 
Dutch baas, which means the same thing. 
In the U. States the word is used collo¬ 
quially to designate a man of influence 
and importance in almost any occupa¬ 
tion, such as labor boss, railroad boss, 
political boss. The last mentioned 
term is applied to politicians who have 
acquired the power to influence the 
action of conventions, etc. In very 
recent years it has lost much of its 
opprobrious signification, and is now 
applied to any politician who controls 
a large number of followers. 


BOSS, Lewis, an American astron¬ 
omer, born at Providence, R. I., in 
1846. He is chief of the Dudley Ob¬ 
servatory at Albany, N. Y., and in 1878 
published a list of declinations of fixed 
stars, and 1890 a catalogue of 8241 
stars. He observed the transit of 
Venus in 1882 for the U. States govern¬ 
ment. 


BOSSUET (bos-u-a), Jacques B6- 
nigne, illustrious French preacher and 
theologian, was born in 1627, died in 
1704. He was unrivaled as a pulpit 
orator, and greatly distinguished for his 
strength and acumen as a controversial¬ 
ist. The great occupation of his life was 
controversy with the Protestants. 

BOSTON, the capital of Massachusetts, 
metropolis of New England, situated on 
Massachusetts Bay, 232 miles from New 
York, and 450 miles from Washington. 
It is the center of a vast suburban popu¬ 
lation, and is unique among American 
cities for its external resemblance to the 
cities of Europe. Pop. 622,000 

Boston was founded in 1630, and 
derives its name from the English city 
Boston. It figured prominently in the 
American revolution, was evacuated 
by the British March 17, 1776, was 



almost wiped out by fire in 1872, and 
was rebuilt with vast improvement 
within two years. Washington street, 
extending from Haymarket Square to 
and through the Roxbury district, has 
always been the main thoroughfare. 
Tremont street, from Scollay Square 


also to Roxbury, is another important 
artery. State street is the financial 
center. Atlantic avenue, 100 feet wide, 
extends along a portion of the water¬ 
front at the head of the principal 
wharves. Many of the old streets have 
been straightened, widened, and ex¬ 
tended at enormous expense; and in 
place of the waters of the Back Bay has 


grown up the “Back Bay quarter,” a 
region of broad streets and stately 
avenues, costly and often elegant dwell¬ 
ings, noble churches, fine public and 
private buildings, famous institutions, 
great hotels and apartment-houses; 
remarkable especially for the taste 
displayed in its embellishment and the 
richness and variety of its architecture. 
Beacon street, sweeping over Beacon 
Hill, for years the finest residential 
quarter, is now continued across the 
Back Bay into the Brighton district 
as a broad boulevard. Commonwealth 
avenue, 250 feet wide, with a mall in the 
center, also extending through the Back 
Bay section to and through the Brighton 
district, is one of the finest boulevards 
in the world. Near the heart of Boston 
proper is the Common, set apart for 
public use by the first settlers, a rare old 
ark, with broad malls and pleasant 
3 '-paths shaded by elms, lindens, and 
other graceful trees; and beyond, 
separated from it by a single street, 
is the Public Garden, the gateway to 
the Back Bay quarter. In these parks 
and other public places are numerous 
statues and monuments. The greater 
public-park system consists of a chain 
of parks beginning with the Back Bay 
Fens, and extending through parkways 
to the Arboretum and Franklin Park 
in the West Roxbury district, and along 
the shores of Dorchester Bay to the 
Marine Park at South Boston. 

The Subway, an underground road¬ 
way, carries the street-car traffic 
through portions of the heart of the city, 
It was built by the municipality, under 
the direction of a Transit Commission, 
in 1897-99, at a cost of $4,400,000, and 
leased to the local street railway com¬ 
pany for a period of twenty j^ears at a 
rental of 4| per cent of its cost. An 
elevated system between the Roxbury 



View in the Bosporus. 





























BOSTON MASSACRE, THE 


BOTANY 


and Charlestown districts, completed 
in 1901, is connected with the Subway. 
The steam railways radiating from the 
city, formerly 5, subsequently consoli¬ 
dated into 3 great systems, connect 
Boston with all parts of New England, 



The city hall Boston. 

and the far West,'South, and East. They 
enter two great stations, the Union 
Station at the north, and the South, or 
Terminal Station, at the south. The 
system of public schools comprises 
kindergarten, primary, grammar, high, 
Latin, normal, and special schools, in 
which 86,719 pupils are taught by 1970 
teachers. There are 226 schoolhouses. 
The Boston Public Library, opened in 
1854, is wholly free, and is supported 
by the city at an annual expense of 
about $255,000. It is the largest 
library in the world for free circulation. 
With its 10 branches it contains 746,383 
volumes, and the annual circulation is 
over 1,250,000 volumes. Its executive 
force consists of 140 persons. A new 
ubhc library building on Copley 
quare, Back Bay, costing upward of 
$2,225,000, was built in 1888-95. It is 
a monumental structure, of elegant 
proportions, the interior especially en¬ 
riched by some of the best of modern 
decorative work. Among other notable 
libraries are those of the Boston 



State capitol, Boston. 

Athenaeum, the Massachusetts Histori¬ 
cal Society, the N. E. Historic-Genea¬ 
logical Society, and the State Library. 
Conspicuous among the higher institu¬ 
tions for instruction are the Massa¬ 


chusetts Institute of Technology, the 
Boston University, the Boston College 
(Roman Catholic), the medical and 
dental schools connected with Harvard 
University, the Massachusetts Normal 
Art School, and the New England Con¬ 
servatory of Music. 

The first bank in America was estab¬ 
lished in Boston in 1686, and the first 
savings institution in 1816. There are 
43 national banks with a total capital 
of $38,500,000; 13 trust companies, 
$8,500,000; and 17 savings-banks. The 
valuation of taxable property in Boston 
is $1,129,175,832; the tax levy, $16,- 
928,136; the tax rate, $14.70. 

BOSTON MASSACRE, THE, the kill¬ 
ing of several citizens of Boston by 
British troops in a riot on March 5, 
1770, which was the culmination of 
much quarreling between the soldiery 
and the people. Seven soldiers were 
tried for murder, but were acquitted. 
The occurrence helped to produce the 
American revolution, and, in fact, has 
been called “the first drama of the 
revolution.” 

BOSTON PORT BILL, a law passed in 
March, 1774, by the British parliament 
closing the harbor of Boston for having 
destroyed the famous tea cargo on 
December 16th previously. It reacted 
by hurrying on the revolution. See 
Boston Tea Party. 

BOSTON TEA PARTY, a name given 
the throwing of 350 chests of tea into 
Boston harbor by a mob of citizens 
disguised as Indians on Dec. 16, 1773. 
It was as a protest to the importation 
of tea following the policy of taxation 
without representation. See Boston 
Port Bill, The. 

BOSTON UNIVERSITY, founded in 
1869, at Boston, supporting schools 
of medicine, law, and theology. It has 
an endowment of $1,500,000, a college of 
liberal arts, and a college of agriculture. 
It offers sixty-four free scholarships, 
200 general scholarships, and two fellow¬ 
ships. It has a registration of 1324 
students, 134 instructors, and a library 
of 30,000 volumes. 

BOS'WELL, James, the friend and 
biographer of Dr. Johnson. He was 
born at Edinburgh in 1740, and died 
in London in 1795. In 1763 he became 
acquainted with Johnson — a circum¬ 
stance which he himself calls the most 
important event of his life. He after¬ 
ward visited Voltaire at Ferney, Rous¬ 
seau at Neufch&tel, and Paoli in Cor¬ 
sica, with whom he became intimate. 
In 1785 he settled at London, and was 
called to the English bar. Being on 
terms of the closest intimacy with 
Johnson, he at all times diligently noted 
and recorded his sayings, opinions, and 
actions, for future use in his contem¬ 
plated biography. In 1773 he accom¬ 
panied him on a tour to the Scottish 
Highlands and the Hebrides, and he 
published an account of the excursion 
after their return. His Life of Samuel 
Johnson, one of the best pieces of biog¬ 
raphy in the language, was published 
in 1791. 

BOTANY is the science which treats 
of the vegetable kingdom. 

Plants may be studied from several 
different points of view. The considera¬ 
tion of their general form and structure, 


and the comparison of these in the 
various groups from the lowest to the 
highest, constitutes morphology. Anat¬ 
omy and histology treat respectively 
of the bulkier and the more minute 
internal structure of the parts, and 
physiology of their functions. Sys¬ 
tematic botany considers the arrange¬ 
ment of plants in groups and sub¬ 
groups according to the greater or less 
degree of resemblance between them. 
Geographical botany tells of their dis¬ 
tribution on the earth’s surface, and 
strives to account for the facts observed, 
while pakeobotany bears the same 
relation to distribution in the successive 
geological strata which make up the 
earth’s crust. Economic botany com¬ 
prises the study of the products of the 
vegetable kingdom as regards their use 
to man. 

The simplest plants are very minute, 
and can only be studied by use of the 
compound microscope. A little rain¬ 
water which has been standing some 
time when thus examined is found to 
contain a number of roundish green 
objects, each of which is an individual 
plant, consisting of one cell only. In¬ 
creased complexity of structure is 
exemplified in many of the ordinary 
seaweeds, the stalk and more or less 
flattened expansions of which are sev¬ 
eral to many cells thick, the external 
cell-layers differing somewhat in struc¬ 
ture from the internal. 

Going a step higher we reach the 
Mosses, where, for the first time, we 
distinguish a clear differentiation of the 
part of the plant above ground into a 
stem and leaves borne upon it. The 
stem is attached to the soil by delicate 
colorless hairs — root-hairs. Its struc¬ 
ture is, however, very simple, and the 
leaves are merely thin plates of cells. 
Microscopical examination of sections 
of stem, leaf, or root, shows great dif¬ 
ferences in structure between various 
groups of cells; there is, in fact, marked 
differentiation of tissues. A tissue is a 
layer, row, or group of cells which have 
all undergone a similar development; 
by differentiation of tissues we mean 
that various layers, rows, or groups 
have developed in different ways, so 
that we can make out and mark by 
distinctive names the elements of which 
a stem or leaf is built up. 

Phanerogams, or Flowering-plants, 
represent the highest group of plants: 
Seed-plants would be a better name, as 
their main distinction from those al¬ 
ready described is the production of a 
seed. The much greater variety in form 
and structure seen in them as com¬ 
pared with the ferns justifies us in 
regarding them as the highest group 
in the vegetable kingdom. They are 
divided into two classes: (1) those in 
which the seed is developed on an open 
leaf, termed a carpel, and called there¬ 
fore Gymnosperms; and (2) those in 
which the seed is developed in a closed 
chamber, formed by the folding together 
of one or more carpels, and called ac¬ 
cordingly Angiosperms. To the former 
belong the Conifers—pines and firs— 
and Cycads; to the latter the rest of our 
trees and the enormous number of 
field and garden plants which are not 
ferns or mosses. 






























BOTANY BAY 


BOTHWELL 


The embryo, or rudimentary plant 
contained in the seed, consists of a very 
short axis or stem, bearing one (in 
Monocotyledons), two (in Dicotyledons), 
or several (in many Gymnosperms) 
primary leaves, the cotyledons, above 
which it terminates in a little bud or 
plumule, while below them the axis 
passes into the primary root or radicle. 
When the seed germinates the radicle 
is the first to protrude between the 
separating seed-coats, and growing 
downward fixes itself in the soil. Then 
the plumule grows out accompanied or 
not, as the case may be, by the cotyle¬ 
dons, which have hitherto concealed 
and protected it, and by rapid growth 
soon develops into a stem bearing leaves. 
The stem continues growing in length 
at its apex throughout the life of the 
plant; at a short distance below the 
apex growth in length ceases; but while 
in Gymnosperms and Dicotyledons it 
also continually increases in thickness 
through its whole length, Monocotyle¬ 
dons are distinguished by the fact that 
when once the stem has been formed 
its diameter remains unchanged. The 
same rule applies to the branches. 

Branches proceed from buds which 
are formed in the autumn in the axils 
of the leaves, that is, at the point where 
the leaf or leaf-stalk is joined on to the 
stem; they remain dormant through the 
winter, and grow out into new shoots 
in the spring. 

The leaf is borne on the stem; its 
tissues, epidermal, cortical, and vascu¬ 
lar, are continuous with those of the 
stem; but it is distinguished by the fact 
that its growth is limited, it soon reaches 
the normal size and stops growing. 

In Dicotyledons and Gymnosperms 
the primary root or radicle after emerg¬ 
ing from the seed continues to grow 
vigorously, often with copious lateral 
branching, forming an extensive root- 
system; but in Monocotyledons it soon 
perishes, and its place is taken by roots 
developed from the base of the stem, 
such roots are called adventitious. Ad¬ 
ventitious roots occur also in Dicoty¬ 
ledons, as in creeping stems like the 
strawberry, which bears buds at inter¬ 
vals from which new shoots are formed 
and roots given off. The clinging roots 
of the ivy are also adventitious. There 
are many forms of roots: some are large 
and woody, as those of trees; others 
fibrous, as in grasses; or they may be 
greatly swollen, forming the fleshy 
globose root of the turnip, or the conical 
one of the carrot. Such fleshy develop¬ 
ments are due to the plant storing up a 
quantity of reserve food-material in the 
first year on which to draw in the sec¬ 
ond, when it will want to expand all its 
energy in flowering and fruiting. The 
potato, which is a swollen stem, answers 
the same purpose. The mistletoe and 
other parasites give off sucker-like roots 
which penetrate into the tissues of their 
host. 

As to their reproduction, plants may 
be asexual, that is, not requiring the 
cooperation of two distinct (male and 
female) elements to produce a new in¬ 
dividual; or sexual, when two such ele¬ 
ments are necessary, and a process of 
fertilization takes place in which the 
female cell is impregnated by one or 


more male cells, and the cell resulting 
from the fusion of the two gives rise by 
very extensive growth and division to a 
new individual. In the very lowest 
plants, like Protococcus, only asexual 
reproduction is known, but in most 
Thallophytes both forms occur. In the 
asexual method numbers of small cells 
called spores are produced which on 
germination give rise to a plant similar 
to that which bore them. In the sexual 
process the contents of a male organ, 
escape and impregnate the oosphere, or 
female cell contained in the female organ. 
The fertilized oosphere is termed an 
oospore, and by growth and division 
gives rise to a plant like that on which 
it was produced. 

The flower of a seed-plant is a shoot 
modified for purposes of reproduction. 
A buttercup, for instance, consists of a 
number of modified leaves borne in sev¬ 
eral whorls on the somewhat expanded 
top of the stalk, the receptacle or thala¬ 
mus. Disseptionof the flower shows (1) 
An outer whorl of five green leaves, very 
like ordinary foliage leaves; these are the 
sepals, and together make up the calyx. 
(2) An inner whorl of five yellow leaves, 
composing the corolla, each leaf being 
a petal. (3) More or less protected by 
the petals are a great number of sta¬ 
mens, each consisting of a slender stalk 
or filament capped by an anther, a little 
case containing the dry powdery pollen. 
The stamens are really much modified 
leaves; collectively they form the 
androecium. (4) The rest of the recep¬ 
tacle right up to the apex is also covered 
by very much modified leaves, the car¬ 
pels, forming the pistil or gyncecium. 
Each carpel consists of a basal portion, 
the ovary, in which is contained an 
ovule, and of a terminal beak-like por¬ 
tion, the style. The androecium and 
gynoecium, being the parts directly con¬ 
cerned in reproduction, are distin¬ 
guished, as the essential organs of the 
flower, from the calyx and corolla, which 
are only indirectly so concerned, though 
of great importance in the process. 

An important characteristic is the 
fruit, which is the result of fertilization 
on the ovary. 

Many flowers contain both stamens 
and pistil, these are termed bisexual or 
hermaphrodite («); while others con¬ 
tain stamens or pistil only, such are said 
to be unisexual. When both male (<j) 
and female ( 9 ) flowers occur on the 
same plant the species is monoecious, 
like the hazel; while it is dioecious if the 
separate sexes are borne on different 
individuals, as is the case in the hop. 

Plants which, like the sunflower, pass 
through all the stages from germination 
to production of fruit and seed in one 
season, and then perish, are called an¬ 
nuals; if two years are required, as with 
the turnip and onion, they are biennials; 
while perennials last several to many 
years, during which they may flower 
and seed many times. 

A plant is built up chiefly of four ele¬ 
ments: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and 
nitrogen, with small quantities of sul¬ 
phur and phosphorus and some mineral 
matter. Substances containing these 
must therefore form the food. A green 
plant can take up its carbonaceous food 
in a very simple form by means of the 


green chlorophyll contained especially 
in its leaves. This absorbs some of the 
sun’s rays, and by virtue of the energy 
represented by the light so absorbed it 
can obtain the carbon from the carbonic 
acid gas present in the atmosphere. An 
animal, having no chlorophyll, has to 
use more complex carbon-containing 
compounds, in fact those which have 
already been worked up in the vegetable 
kingdom. The other items of the food 
are obtained from the water and mineral 
salts in the soil, the salts being brought 
into solution and absorbed with large 
quantities of water by the roots. The 
leaves are the laboratory where the 
food is worked up into the complex 
compounds which form the plant sub¬ 
stance, and to raise the crude material 
from the absorbing roots to the leaves 
there is an upward current of liquid 
through the stem. This is known as the 
transpiration current; it travels in the 
wood-cells. A much larger quantity of 
water is absorbed than is required as 
food; this is got rid of by transpiration, 
that is, by the giving off of water-vapor 
from the leaves. This is evident if a 
plant be placed under a glass shade in 
the sunlight, the vapor given off becom¬ 
ing condensed on the glass. The com¬ 
plex compounds elaborated in the leaves 
are returned to all parts of the plant 
where growth, or storage of reserve- 
material, is taking place, by means of 
the other constituent of the vascular 
bundle, the bast tissue. 

BOTANY BAY, a bay in New South 
Wales, so called by Captain Cook on 
account of the great number of new 
plants collected in its vicinity. The 
English penal settlement, founded in 
1788, and popularly known as Botany 
Bay, was established on Port Jackson, 
some miles to the northward, near 
where Sydney now stands. 

BOT-FLY, a fly the maggots of 
which are developed from the egg in 
the intestines of horses or under the 
skins of oxen; a gadfly. 

BOTHNIA, GULF OF, the northern 
part of the Baltic Sea, which separates 
Sweden from Finland. Length about 
450 miles, breadth 90 to 130, depth from 
20 to 50 fathoms. Its water is but 
slightly salt, and it freezes in the win¬ 
ter, so as to be passed by sledges and 
carriages. 

BOTH'WELL, James Hepburn, Earl 
of, known in Scottish history by his 
marriage to Queen Mary, was born 
about 1526. It is believed that he was 
deeply concerned in the murder of 
Darnley, Mary’s husband, and that he 
was even supported by the queen. He 
was charged with the crime and tried, 
but, appearing along with 4000 follow¬ 
ers, was readily acquitted. He was now 
in high favor with the queen, and with 
or without her consent he seized her at 
Edinburgh, and carrying her a prisoner 
to Dunbar Castle prevailed upon her to 
marry him after he had divorced his 
own wife. But by this time the mind 
of the nation was roused on the subject 
of Bothwell’s character and actions. A 
confederacy was formed against him, 
and in a short time Mary was a prisoner 
in Edinburgh, and Bothwell had been 
forced to flee to Denmark, where he 
died in 1576. 




BOTTICELLI 


BOURBON 


BOTTICELLI (bot-te-chel'le), Sandro 
(for Alessandro), an Italian painter of 
the Florentine school, born in 1447, 
died 1515. Working at first in the shop 
of the goldsmith Botticello, from whom 
he takes his name, he showed such talent 
that he was removed to the studio of the 
distinguished painter Fra Lippo Lippi. 
From this master he took the fire and 
passion of his style, and added a fine 
fantasy and delicacy of his own. He 
painted flowers, especially roses, with 
incomparable skill. In his later years 
Botticelli became an ardent disciple of 
Savonarola, and is said by Vasari to 
have neglected his painting for the 
study of mystical theology. 

BOTTLE, a vessel of moderate or 
small size, and with a neck, for holding 
liquor. By the ancients they were made 
of skins or leather; they are now chiefly 
made of glass or earthenware. The 
common black bottles of the cheapest 
kind are formed of the most ordinary 
materials, sand with lime, and some¬ 
times clay and alkaline ashes of any 
kind, such as kelp, barilla, or even wood 
ashes. This glass is strong, hard, and 
less subject to corrosion by acids than 
flint-glass. 

BOTTLE-CHART, a chart which 
shows the course traveled by a sealed 
bottle thrown into the sea. It had its 
origin in the custom of throwing into 
the sea sealed bottles containing intelli¬ 
gence from travelers on long or dis¬ 
astrous voyages. The chart represents 
the travels of various bottles. It is 
used chiefly by hydrographers. Charts 
of this kind are made at the U. States 
hydrographic office. 

BOTTLE-FLOWER. See Blue-bottle. 

BOTTLE-GOURD, a kind of gourd, 
the dried fruits of which, when the pulp 
is removed, are used in warm countries 
for holding liquids. 

BOTTLE-NOSE, a kind of whale, of 
the dolphin family, 20 to 28 feet long, 
with a beaked snout and a dorsal fin, a 
native of northern seas. The caaing 
whale is also called bottle-nose. 

BOTTLE-TREE, a tree of north¬ 
eastern Australia, with a stem that 



Bottle-tree. 


bulges out into a huge rounded mass. 
It abounds in a nutritious mucilaginous 
substance 

BOTTLiNG, the art of placing liquid 
in bottles, corking, and otherwise seal¬ 
ing them. Special apparatus has been 
designed for this work by which the 
bottles are cleaned, filled, corked, and 
sealed. One machine will clean 75 
dozen bottles a day. Self-feeding cork¬ 


ing machines will each cork 2000 bottles 
an hour. A wiring machine will wire 
1000 bottles an hour, and these can be 
labeled by machinery at the rate of 
12,000 a day. The liquids bottled on 
the largest scale are all kinds of bever¬ 
ages, alcoholic and otherwise. 

BOT'TOMRY is a contract by which 
a ship is pledged by the owner or master 
for the money necessary for repairs to 
enable her to complete her voyage. The 
freight and even the cargo may be 
pledged as well as the ship. The condi¬ 
tions of such a contract usually are that 
the debt is repayable only if the ship 
arrives at her destination. As thejender 
thus runs the risk of her loss, he is en¬ 
titled to a high premium or interest on 
the money lent. The latest bottomry 
bond takes precedence of all previous 
ones. 

BOUCHES-DU-RHONE (bosh-dQ- 
ron), a dep. in the s. of France, in 
ancient Provence. Chief town, Mar¬ 
seilles. Area, 1,267,088 acres, of which 
about one-half is under cultivation. 
The Rhone is the principal river. The 
manufactures are principally soap, 
brandy, olive-oil, chemicals, vinegar, 
scent, leather, glass, etc. The fisheries 
are numerous and productive. Pop. 
737,112. 

BOUCICAULT (bo'si-k6), Dion, dra¬ 
matic author and actor, born at 
Dublin Dec. 20, 1822. He was intended 
for an architect, but the success of a 
comedy, the well-known London Assur¬ 
ance, which he wrote when only nineteen 
years old, determined him for a career 
in connection with the stage. Bouci- 
cault being a remarkably facile writer, 
in a few years had produced quite a 
lengthy list of pieces, both in comedy 
and melodrama, and all more or less 
successful. He produced a new style of 
drama, dealing largely in sensation, but 
with more heart in it than his earlier 
work. The Colleen Bawn and Arrah- 
na-Pogue are the best examples. In¬ 
deed the best Mr. Boucicault could do 
was such pictures of Irish life and 
manners. He died in 1890. 

BOUDOIR (bo'dwar), a small room, 
elegantly fitted up, destined for retire¬ 
ment. The boudoir is the peculiar 
property of the lady, where only her 
most intimate friends are admitted. 

BOUGUER (bo-ga), Pierre, a French 
mathematician and astronomer, born 
in 1698. He was associated with Godin 
and La Condamine in an expedition to 
the South American equatorial regions to 
measure the length of a degree of the 
meridian. The main burden of the task 
fell upon Bouguer, who performed it with 
great ability, and published the results 
in his Thdorie de la Figure de la Terre. 
He also invented the heliometer, and 
his researches about light laid the foun¬ 
dation of photometry. He died in 1758. 

BOUILLON, Godfrey. See Godfrey of 
Bouillon. 

BOULDER (bol'der), a rounded water- 
worn stone of some size; in geol. applied 
to ice worn and partially smoothed 
blocks of large size lying on the surface 
of the soil, or embedded in clays and 
gravels, generally differing in composi¬ 
tion from the rocks in their vicinity, 
a fact which proves that they must have 
been transported from a distance, prob¬ 


ably by ice. When lying on the surface 
they are known as erratic blocks. The 
boulder-clay in which these blocks are 
found belongs to the post-tertiary or 
quaternary period. It occurs in many 
localities, consists of a compact clay 
often with thin beds of gravel and sand 
interspersed, and is believed to have 
been deposited from icebergs and gla¬ 
ciers in the last glacial period. 

BOULEVARD (bol-var), a French 
word formerly applied to the ramparts 
of a fortified town, but when these were 
leveled, and the whole planted with 
trees and laid out as promenades, the 
name boulevard was still retained. 
Modern usage applies it also to many 
streets which are broad and planted with 
trees, although they were not originally 
ramparts. The most famous boulevards 
are those of Paris. 

BOULOGNE (bo-lqn-yfe or bfi-lon), or 
BOULOGNE-SUR-MER, a fortified sea¬ 
port of France, dep. Pas de Calais, at the 
mouth of the Liane. In the castle, 
which dates from 1231, Louis Napoleon 
was imprisoned in 1840. Boulogne has 
manufactories of soap, earthenware, 
linen and woolen cloths; wines, coal, 
corn, butter, fish, linen and woolen 
stuffs, etc., are the articles of export. 
Steamboats run daily between this place 
and England, crossing over in two or 
three hours. Pop. 49,083, about a tenth 
being English. 

BOULOGNE-SUR-SEINE, a town of 
France, dep. Seine, southwest of Paris, 
of which it is a suburb. It is from this 
place that the celebrated Bois de Bou¬ 
logne gets its name. Pop. 47,168. 

BOUNTY, in political economy, is a 
reward or premium granted for the en¬ 
couragement of a particular species of 
trade or production, the idea being that 
the development of such trade or pro¬ 
duction will be of national benefit. The 
subsidies granted for carrying the 
oceanic mails are the only bounties 
now made by the English government. 
—The same name is given to a premium 
offered to induce men to enlist in the 
army and navy. 

BOUNTY JUMPER, a term applied to 
those individuals who, during the civil 
war, enlisted in the army for a reward 
and deserted at the earliest opportunity. 
This was repeated again and again, one 
man having confessed to “jumping the 
bounty” thirty times. 

BOURBON (bor-bon), an ancient 
French family which has given three 
dynasties to Europe, the Bourbons of 
France, Spain, and Naples. The first 
of the line known in history is Adhemar, 
who, at the beginning of the 10th cen¬ 
tury, was lord of the Bourbonnais 
(now the dep. of Allier). The power 
and possessions of the family increased 
steadily through a long series of Ar- 
chambaulds of Bourbon till in .1272 
Beatrix, daughter of Agnes of Bourbon 
and John of Burgundy, married Robert, 
sixth son of Louis IX. of France, and 
thus connected the Bourbons with 
the royal line of the Capets. Their son 
Louis had the barony converted into a 
dukedom and became the first Due de 
Bourbon. Two branches took their 
origin from the two sons of this Louis, 
duke of Bourbon, who died in 1341. 
The royal branch was divided by the 








BOURGEOIS 


BOWMAN 


two sons of Louis XIII., the elder of 
whom, Louis XIV., continued the chief 
branch, while Philip, the younger son, 
founded the house of Orleans as the 
first duke of that name. The kings of 
the elder French royal line of the house 
of Bourbon run in this way: Henry IV., 
Louis XIII., XIV., XV., XVI., XVII., 
XVIII., and Charles X. The last 
sovereigns of this line, Louis XVI., 
Louis XVIII., and Charles X. (Louis 
XVII., son of Louis XVI., never ob¬ 
tained the crown), were brothers, all of 
them being grandsons of Louis XV. 
Louis XVIII. had no children, but 
Charles X. had two sons, viz., Louis 
Antoine de Bourbon, duke of Angouleme, 
who was dauphin till the revolution of 
1830, and died without issue in 1844, 
and Charles Ferdinand, duke of Berry, 
who died 14th Feb., 1820, of a wound 
given him by a political fanatic. The 
Duke of Berry had two children: (1) 
Louise Marie Th6rd~e, called Made¬ 
moiselle d’Artois; and (2) Henri Charles 
Ferdinand Marie Dieudonne, born in 
1820, and at first cal.ed Duke of Bour- 
deaux, but afterward Count De Cham- 
bord, who was looked upon by his party 
until his death (in 1883) as the legitimate 
heir to the crown of France. 

The branch of the Bourbons known 
as the House of Orleans was raised to the 
throne of France by the revolution of 
1830, and deprived of it by that of 1848. 
It derives its origin from Duke Philip 
I. of Orleans (died 1701), second son of 
Louis XIII., and only brother of Louis 
XIV. 

BOURGEOIS (bur-jo'), a size of 
printing type larger than brevier and 
smaller than long-primer, used in books 
and newspapers. 

BOURGEOISIE (borzh-wa-ze), a name 
applied to a certain class in France 
in contradistinction to the nobility and 
clergy as well as to the working-classes. 
It thus includes all those who do not 
belong to the nobility or clergy, and 
yet occupy an independent position, 
from financiers and heads of great mer¬ 
cantile establishments at the one end 
to master tradesmen at the other. It 
corresponds pretty nearly with the 
English term “middle classes.” 

BOUTELLE, Charles Addison, an 
American writer and legislator, born in 
Maine in 1839, died in 1901. He was a 
delegate to several republican national 
conventions and served three terms in 
congress. 

BOUT'WELL, George Sewall, an 
American legislator, politician, and 
cabinet officer, born in Massachusetts 
in 1818. He was secretary of the 
treasury from 1869 to 1873, in which 
latter year he became a U. States sen¬ 
ator. He published several books of 
speeches and political history. He died 
in 

BOW, the name of one of the most 
ancient and universal weapons of 
offense. It is made of steel, wood, horn, 
or other elastic substance. The figure 
of the bow is nearly the same in all 
countries. The long bow was the 
favorite national weapon in England. 
The battles of Crecy (1346), Poictiers 
(1356), and Agincourt (1415) were won 
by this weapon. It was made of yew, 
ash, etc., of the height of the archer, or 


about 6 feet long, the arrow being us¬ 
ually half the length of the bow. The 
arbalist, or cross-bow, was a popular 
weapon with the Italians, and was intro¬ 
duced into England in the 13th century, 
but never was so popular as the long¬ 
bow. In England the strictest regula¬ 
tions were made to encourage and 
facilitate the use of the bow. 

BOW, in music, is the name of that 
well-known implement by means of 
which the tone is produced from violins, 
and other instruments of that kind. 

BOWDITCH’S PRACTICAL NAVI¬ 
GATOR, a compendium of information 
for navigators. It contains explana¬ 
tions of all the ordinary methods of 
determining the ship’s position at sea, 
together with all the tables necessary 
for using them; also descriptions of 
instruments used in navigation, methods 
of making hydrographic surveys, charts, 
etc. The copyright of this work was 
purchased by the United States govern¬ 
ment, and it is now published and is¬ 
sued by the hydrographic office, United 
States navy. It has been several times 
revised, and a considerable amount of 
matter has been added. 

BOWDOIN (bo'dn), James, born 1727, 
at Boston, died 1790. In 1785 was ap¬ 
pointed governor of Massachusetts, and 
he was a member of the convention 
assembled to deliberate on the adoption 
of the constitution of the United States. 
He was a friend and correspondent of 
Franklin.—Bowdoin College, Brunswick, 
Maine, was named after him. It is a 
flourishing institution, which has had 
among its students Longfellow and 
Hawthorne. 

BOWDOIN, James, an American 
public man and philanthropist, born at 
Boston in 1752, the son of Governor 
Bowdoin. He graduated at Harvard, 
studied also at Oxford, and traveled in 
Europe, returning to America soon after 
the battle of Lexington. In 1805 he 
was United States minister to Spain. 
He left to Bowdoin College 6000 acres 
of land and $5500, the reversion of the 
island of Naushon, where he had his 
summer home, a large library; and an 
extensive collection of philosophical ap¬ 
paratus. He died in 1811. 

BOWDOIN COLLEGE, chartered in 
1794 by Massachusetts, and named after 
James Bowdoin, governor of Massa¬ 
chusetts, of which state Maine was for¬ 
merly a district. The college opened 
at Brunswick, Cumberland Co., in 
1802, with Joseph McKeen, D.D., a 
Dartmouth graduate, as its first pres¬ 
ident. The present buildings of the 
college, representing a value of $600,- 
000, include King Chapel, the Walker 
Art building, the Searles Science build¬ 
ing, Memorial Hall, the Hubbard 
Library, and a gymnasium, observa¬ 
tory, and dormitories. The course of 
study leading to the degree of A.B. is 
based on a knowledge of the ancient and 
modern languages and mathematics, 
and includes such other courses as are 
usually given in smaller colleges of the 
first class. Connected with Bowdoin 
College is the Medical School of Maifie, 
organized in 1820. 

BOWER-BIRD, a name given to cer¬ 
tain Australian birds of the starling 
family from a remarkable habit they 


have of building bowers to serve as 
places of resort. The bowers are con¬ 
structed on the ground, and usually 
under overhanging branches in the most 
retired parts of the forest. They are 
decorated with variegated feathers, 



Bower-bird and Us rim. 


shells, small pebbles, bones, etc. At 
each end there is an entrance left open. 
These bowers do not serve as nests at 
all, but seem to be places of amusement 
and resort, especially during the breed¬ 
ing season. 

BOWERY, a famous street of New 
York City, running from Chatham 
Square to Cooper Union. It was for¬ 
merly a street of dangerous and low 
resorts, but recently has been invaded 
by retail business stores. 

BOWIE-KNIFE, a long kind of knife 
like a dagger, but with only one edge, 
named after Colonel James Bowie, and 
used by hunters and others. 

BOW INSTRUMENTS are all the 
instruments strung with catgut from 
which the tones are produced by means 
of the bow. The most usual are the 
double-bass, the small bass, or violon¬ 
cello, and the violin proper. In refer¬ 
ence to their construction the several 
parts are alike; the difference is in the 
size. 

BOWLINE (bo'-), in ships, a rope 
leading forward, which is fastened by 
bridles to loops in the ropes on the per¬ 
pendicular edge of the square sails. It 
is used to keep the weather-edge of the 
sail tight forward and steady when the 
ship is close-hauled to the wind. 

BOWLS, a game played with a 
variable number of wooden pins and 
a wooden ball on a smooth wooden 
runway called an alley. The alley is 
75 feet long, 41 inches wide, and flanked 
on both sides by a gutter for the return 
of the balls. The pins are “set up” at 
one end and the player tries to knock 
them down (according to rule) by rolling 
the ball along the floor from the other 
end. The game in the U. States is 
played with ten, nine, five, three, or 
other number of pins, and usually three 
rolls are permitted for each frame, the 
purpose being to knock down all the 
pins. When all the pins are knocked 
with one stroke (in tenpins) the play 
is called a “ten strike,” or “double 
spare,” meaning that the player has two 
more rolls on the next frame. A player 
who makes “ten strikes” to the end 
scores 300. The game has a very ancient 
origin. 

BOWMAN, Edward Morris, an Ameri¬ 
can musician, born at Barnard, Vt., in 
1848. In 1877 he published his Manual 
of Musical Theory, which was trans- 







BOWSPRIT 


BRADDOCK 


lated into German, and in 1881 became 
the first American associate of the Royal 
College of Organists of England. In 
1891 he became professor of music in 
Vassar College, and has done much 
toward raising the tone of popular 
musical taste in the U. States. 

BOWSPRIT (bo'-), the large boom or 
spar which projects over the stem of a 
vessel, having the foremast and foretop¬ 
mast stays and staysails attached to it, 
while extending beyond it is the jib- 
boom. 

BOW-WINDOW, a window con¬ 
structed so as to project from a wall, 
properly one that forms a segment of a 
circle. See Bay-window. 

BOX-ELDER, the ash-leaved maple, 
a small but beautiful tree of the U. 
States, from which sugar is sometimes 
made. 

BOXING, or PUGILISM, a manner of 
fighting with the fists so common in 
England as to be regarded abroad as a 
national accomplishment. The art of 
boxing consists in showing skill in deal¬ 
ing blows with the fist against one’s 
opponent, especially on the upper part 
of the body, while at the same time one 
protects one’s self. In England pro¬ 
fessional boxers, who made a livelihood 
out of their skill in the art, were at one 
time common, especially during the 
reigns of the Georges, when persons of 
the highest rank were sometimes to be 
seen at pugilistic combats, and “pro¬ 
fessors” of the art frequently had mem¬ 
bers of the nobility among their pupils. 
Byron relates in his diary that he re¬ 
ceived instruction in boxing from the 
celebrated Jackson, who made a fortune 
as a pugilist. Boxing has, however, 
fallen in a great measure into disrepute, 
and prize-fights are illegal, and both 
the principals and the spectators may 
be proceeded against. At the gladia¬ 
torial shows of the Greeks and Romans 
boxing was common, but in a more 
dangerous form, the fist being armed 
with leather appliances loaded with iron 
or lead. 

BOXING-DAY, the day after Christ¬ 
mas, which has long been held as a 
holiday in England. It is so called from 
the practice of giving Christmas boxes 
as presents on that day. 

BOXING THE COMPASS, in seaman’s 
phrase, the repetition of all the points 
of the compass in their proper order— 
an accomplishment required to be at¬ 
tained by all sailors. 

BOX-TORTOISE, a name given to 
one or two North American tortoises 
that can completely - shut themselves 
into their shell. 

BOX-TREE, a shrubby evergreen 
tree, 12 or 15 feet high, a native of Eng¬ 
land, southern Europe, and parts of 
Asia, with small oval and opposite 
leaves, and greenish, inconspicuous 
flowers, male and female on the same 
tree. The wood is of a yellowish color, 
close-grained, very hard and heavy, 
and admits of a beautiful polish. On 
these accounts it is much used by 
turners, wood-carvers, engravers on 
wood (no wood surpassing it in this 
respect), and mathematical-instrument 
makers. Flutes and other wind-instru¬ 
ments are formed of it. The box of 
commerce comes mostly from the 


regions adjoining the Black Sea and 
Caspian, and is said to be diminishing 
in quantity. 

BOYACA', in South America, one of 
the departments or provinces of Colom¬ 
bia. On the west side the country is 
traversed by a chain of the Andes, from 
which it slopes toward the east into 
immense plains or llanos, mostly uncul¬ 
tivated, and watered by the tributaries 
of the Orinoco. Area, 33,351 sq. miles; 
pop. 702,000. 

BOY'COTTING, a name given to an 
organized system of social and com¬ 
mercial ostracism employed in Ireland 
in connection with the Land League 
and the land agitation of 1880 and 1881 
and subsequently. Landlords, tenants, 
or other persons who are subjected to 
boycotting find it difficult or impossible 
to get any one to work for them, to 
supply them with the necessaries of 
life, or to associate with them in any way. 
It took its name from Captain James 
Boycott, a Mayo landlord, against whom 
it was first put in force. 

BOY'DELL, John, an English en¬ 
graver, but chiefly distinguished as an 
encourager of the fine arts. He engaged 
Reynolds, Opie, West, and other cele¬ 
brated painters to illustrate Shake¬ 
speare’s works, and from their pictures 
was produced a magnificent volume of 
plates, the Shakespeare Gallery (Lon¬ 
don, Boydell, 1803). In 1790 Boydell 
had been made lord-mayor; but the 
outbreak of war consequent on the 
French revolution injured his foreign 
trade and brought him into difficulties. 
He died in 1804. 

BOYLE LECTURES. See Boyle, 

Robert. 

BOYLE’S LAW, otherwise called 
Mariotte’s Law, a law in physics to the 
effect that the volume of a gas will vary 
inversely to the pressure to which it is 
subjected. 

BOYS’ CLUBS, associations of Ameri¬ 
can boys for various purposes, chiefly 
maintained by their parents and grown¬ 
up friends. Of these, investigation has 
shown, there are nearly 1000 in the U. 
States, the membership consisting of 
boys ranging from ten to seventeen years 
old. The character of the clubs are 
social, industrial, literary, benevolent, 
musical, hunting and fishing, athletic, 
and game playing. 

BOZZARIS (bot-sa'ris), Marko, a hero 
of the Greek war of independence 
against the Turks, born in the end of 
the 18th century. In the summer of 
1823, when he held the command-in¬ 
chief of the Greek forces at Missolonghi, 
he made a daring night attack on the 
camp of the Pasha of Scut&ri, near 
Karpenisi. The attack was successful; 
but the triumph of the Greeks was 
clouded by the fall of the heroic Boz- 
zaris. His deeds are celebrated in the 
popular songs of Greece. 

BRABANT', the central district of the 
lowlands of Holland and Belgium, ex¬ 
tending from the Waal to the sources of 
the Dyle, and from the Meuse and Lim¬ 
burg plains to the lower Scheldt. It is 
divided between the kingdoms of Hol¬ 
land and Belgium, into three provinces: 
1st, Dutch or North Brabant, area 1977 
sq. miles, pop. 559,287; 2d, the Belgian 
province of Antwerp, area 1095 sq. 


miles, pop. 837,976; and 3d, the Bel¬ 
gian province of South Brabant, area 
1276 sq. miles, pop. 1,303,064. 

BRACELET, a kind of ornament 
usually worn on the wrist, the use of 
which extends from the most ancient 
times down to the present, and belongs 
to all countries, civilized as well as un¬ 
civilized. Bracelets were in use in 
Egypt and among the Medes and Per¬ 
sians at a very remote period, and in the 
Bible the bracelet is frequently men¬ 
tioned as an ornament in use among the 
Jews, both men and women. Among 
the ancient Greeks bracelets seem to 
have been worn only by the women. 
The spiral form was preferred, and very 
often made to assume the appearance 
of snakes, which went round the arm 
twice or thrice. Among the Romans 
it was a frequent practice for a general 
to bestow bracelets on soldiers who had 
distinguished themselves by their valor. 
Roman ladies of high rank frequently 
wore them both on the wrist and on the 
upper arm. Among the ancient heathen 
Germanic tribes they formed the chief 
and almost only ornament, as is shown 
by their being so often found in old 
graves. They seem to have been used 
by the men even more than by the 
women, and were the gifts by which 
an ancient German chief attached his 
followers to himself. So, in old Anglo- 
Saxon poems, “ring-giver” is a common 
name for the lord or ruler. 

BRACES, in ships, ropes passing 
through blocks at the ends of the yards, 
used for swinging the latter round so as 
to meet the wind in any desired- direc¬ 
tion. 

BRACKET, a short piece or combina¬ 
tion of pieces, generally more or less 
triangular in outline, and projecting 
from a wall or other surface. They may 
be either of an ornamental order, as 



Bracket, 

Harlestone church, Northamptonshire. 

when ^designed to support a statue, 
a bust, or such like, or plain forms of 
carpentry, such as support shelves, etc. 
Brackets may also be used in connection 
with machinery, being attached to walls, 
beams, etc., to support a line of shafting. 

BRAD'DOCK, Edward, major-general 
and commander of the British army in 
the expedition against the French on 
the river Ohio, in 1755. In the spring 
of that year he set out from Virginia to 
invest Fort Duquesne, now Pittsburg, 
but from want of caution fell into an 
Indian ambuscade by which he lost 
nearly one-half of his troops and re¬ 
ceived himself a mortal wound. 

BRAD'DOCK, a borough in Allegheny 
Co., Pa., 10 miles east of Pittsburg, on 
the Monongahela river, and on the 








BRADFORD 


BRAHMANISM 


Pennsylvania, the Baltimore and Ohio, 
and the Pittsburg and Lake Erie rail¬ 
roads. Pop. 18,422. 

BRADFORD, a mun., pari., and 
county bor. and important manufac¬ 
turing town in W. Riding of Yorkshire, 
England. Bradford is the chief seat 
in England of the spinning and weaving 
of worsted yarn and woolens, but there 
are also manufactures of alpaca stuffs, 
plush and velvet, machine works, foun¬ 
dries, etc. Pop. 279,809. 

BRADFORD, a city in McKean Co., 
Pa., 76 miles south of Buffalo, N. Y., on 
the Pennsylvania, the Erie, the Buffalo, 
Rochester and Pittsburg, and several 
local railroads. It is in a petroleum and 
natural-gas region. Pop. 18,129. 

BRADFORD, William, one of the 
Pilgrim Fathers, born in England in 
1590, died in 1657. He came over in the 
Mayflower in 1620 and founded Plym¬ 
outh Colony. He acquired consider¬ 
able fame by his exhaustive works on the 
history of Massachusetts. 

BRADLAUGH (brad'la), Charles, Eng¬ 
lish secularist, atheist, and advocate of 
republicanism, born in London in 1833. 
He is well known by his writings and 
lectures, and more especially by his 
efforts to gain admission to parliament. 
Being elected for Northampton in 1880 
he claimed the right to make affirmation 
simply instead of taking the oath which 
members of parliament take before they 
can sit and vote, but being a professed 
atheist this right was denied him. 
Though he was repeatedly reelected by 
the same constituency, the majority of 
the House of Commons continued to 
declare him disqualified for taking the 
oath or affirming; and it was only after 
the election of a new parliament in 1885 
that he was allowed to take his 6eat 
without opposition as a representative 
of Northampton. He was editor of the 
National Reformer. He died in 1891. 

BRADLEY, Joseph P., an American 
jurist, born in New York in 1813, died 
in 1892. He was appointed associate 
justice of the United States Supreme 
court in 1870, and in 1877 was a mem¬ 
ber of the commission which decided 
the election of 1876 in favor of Ruther¬ 
ford B. Hayes. 



Braxton Bragg. 


BRAGG, Braxton, an American sol¬ 
dier. He was born in North Carolina 
in 1817 and died in 1876. During the 


Mexican war he served under Taylor 
and took part in the engagements of 
Fort Pickens, Shiloh, Corinth, Perry- 
ville, Murfreesboro, Chattanooga, and 
other battles during the civil war. He 
fought against Sherman in Georgia and 
was under the command of General 
Johnston until the peace. After the 
war he devoted himself to civil en¬ 
gineering. 

BRAGG, Edward Stuyvesant, an 
American legislator, born in New York 
in 1827. He served in the civil war as 
one of the “iron brigade” of Wisconsin, 
and has been prominent in democratic 
national politics. In 1902 he became 
consul general to the Cuban republic. 

BRAH'MA, a Sanskrit word signify¬ 
ing (in its neuter form) the Universal 
Power or ground of all existence, and 
also (in its masculine form with long 
final syllable) a particular god, the first 



Brahma—Bronze, Indian museum. 


person in the Triad (Brahma, Vishnu, 
and Siva) of the Hindus. The personal 
god Brahma is represented as a red or 
golden-colored figure with four heads 
and as many arms, and he is often 
accompanied by the swan or goose. He 
is the god of the fates, master of life and 
death, yet he is himself created, and is 
merely the agent of BrahmS,, tne Uni¬ 
versal Power. His moral character is 
no better than that of the Grecian Zeus. 

BRAH'MANISM, a religious and social 
system prevalent among the Hindus, 
and so called because developed and 
expounded by the sacerdotal caste 
known as the Brahmans (from brahman, 
a potent prayer; from root brih or vrih, 
to increase). It is founded on the an¬ 
cient religious writings known as the 
Vedas and regarded as sacred revela¬ 
tions, of which the Brahmans as a body 
became custodians and interpreters, 
being also the officiating priests and the 
general directors of sacrifices and re¬ 
ligious rites. As the priestly caste in¬ 
creased in numbers and power they 
went on elaborating the ceremonies, and 
added to the Vedas other writings tend¬ 
ing to confirm the excessive pretensions 
of this now predominant caste, and give 
them the sanction of a revelation. The 
earliest supplements to the Vedas are 
the Brahmanas, more fully explaining 
the functions of the officiating priests. 
Both together form the revealed Scrip¬ 
tures of the Hindus. In time the caste 
of Brahmans came to be accepted as a 
divine institution, and an elaborate sys¬ 
tem of rules defining and enforcing by 


the severest penalties its place as well 
as that of the inferior castes was promul¬ 
gated. Other early castes were the 
Ivshattriyas or warriors, and the Vaisyas 
or cultivators, and it was not without a 
struggle that the former recognized the 
superiority of the Brahmans. It was by 
the Brahmans that the Sanskrit liter¬ 
ature was developed; and they were not 
only the priests, theologians, and philos¬ 
ophers, but also the poets, men of 
science, lawgivers, administrators, and 
statesmen of the Aryans of India. 

The sanctity and inviolability of a 
Brahman are maintained by severe 
penalties. The murder of one of the 
order, robbing him, etc., are inexpiable 
sins; even the killing of his cow can only 
be expiated by a painful penance. A 
Brahman should pass through four 
states: First, as Brahmachari, or novice, 
he begins the study of the sacred Vedas, 
and is initiated into the privileges and 
the duties of his caste. He has a right 
to alms, to exemption from taxes, and 
from capital and even corporal punish¬ 
ment. Flesh and eggs he is not allowed 
to eat. Leather, skins of animals, and 
most animals themselves are impure 
and not to be touched by him. When 
manhood comes he ought to marry, and 
as Grihastha enter the second state, 
which requires more numerous and 
minute observances. When he has be- 
gotten a 6on and trained him up for 
the holy calling he ought to enter the 
third state, and as Vanaprastha, or in¬ 
habitant of the forest, retire from the 
world for solitary praying and medita¬ 
tion, with severe penances to purify the 
spirit; but this and the fourth or last 
state of a Sannyasi, requiring a cruel 
degree of asceticism, are now seldom 
reached, and the whole scheme is to be 
regarded as representing rather the 
Brahmanical ideal of life than the actual 
facts. 

The worship represented in the oldest 
Vedic literature is that of natural ob¬ 
jects: the sky, personified in the god 
Indra; the dawn, in Ushas; the various 
attributes of the sun, in Vishnu, Surya, 
Agni, etc. These gods were invoked for 
assistance in the common affairs of life, 
and were propitiated by offerings which, 
at first few and simple, afterward be¬ 
came more complicated and included 
animal sacrifices. In the later Vedic 
hymns a philosophical conception of 
religion and the problems of being and 
creation appears struggling into exist¬ 
ence; and this tendency is systematically 
developed by the supplements and com¬ 
mentaries known as the Brahmanas and 
the Upanishads. In some of the Upan- 
ishads the deities of the old Vedic creed 
are treated as symbolical. Brahma, the 
supreme soul, is the only reality, the 
world is regarded as an emanation from 
him, and the highest good of the soul is 
to become united with the divine. The 
necessity for the purification of the soul 
in order to its reunion with the divine 
nature gave rise to the doctrine of 
metempsychosis or transmigration. 

This philosophical development of 
Brahmanism gave rise to a distinct 
separation between the educated and 
the vulgar creeds. While from the fifth 
to the first century b.c. the higher 
thinkers among the Brahmans were 





BRAIN 


BRAKE 


developing a philosophy which recog¬ 
nized that there was but one god, the 
popular creed had concentrated its ideas 
of worship round three great deities— 
Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva—who now 
took the place of the confused old Vedic 
Pantheon. Brahma, the creator, though 
considered the most exalted of the three, 
was too abstract an idea to become a 
popular god, and soon sank almost out 
of notice. Thus the Brahmans became 
divided between Vishnu, the preserver, 
and Siva, the destroyer and reproducer, 
and the worshipers of these two deities 
now form the two great religious sects 
of India. Siva, in his philosophical 
significance, is the deity mostly wor¬ 
shiped by the conventional Brahman, 
while in his aspect of the Destroyer, or 
in one of his female manifestations, he 
is the god of the low castes, and often 
worshiped with degrading rites. But 
the highly cultivated Brahman is still 
a pure theist, and the educated Hindu 
in general professes to regard the special 
deity he chooses for worship as merely 
a form under which the One First Cause 
may be approached. 

The sharp division of the people of 
India into civilized Aryans and rude 
non-Aryans has had a great influence 
upon Brahmanism, and thus the spirit¬ 
ual conceptions of the old Vedic creed 
have been mixed in modern Hinduism 
with degrading superstitions and cus¬ 
toms belonging to the so-called aborig¬ 
inal races. Suttee, for example, or the 
burning of widows, has no authority 
in the Veda, but like most of the darker 
features of Hinduism is the result of a 
compromise which the Brahmanical 
teachers had to make with the barba¬ 
rous conceptions of non-Aryan races 
in India. The Buddhist religion has 
also had an important influence on the 
Brahmanic. 

The system oi caste originally no 
doubt represented distinctions of race. 
The early classification of the people 
was that of “twice-born” Aryans 
(priests, warriors, husbandmen) and 
once-born non-Aryans (serfs); but inter¬ 
marriages, giving rise to a mixed 
progeny, and the variety of employ¬ 
ments in modern times, have pro¬ 
foundly modified this simple classifica¬ 
tion. Innumerable minor distinctions 
have grown up, so that among the 
Brahmans alone there are several hun¬ 
dred castes who cannot intermarry or 
eat food cooked by each other. 

The Brahmans represent the highest 
culture of India, and as the result of 
centuries of education and self-restraint 
have evolved a type of man distinctly 
superior to the castes around them. 
They have still great influence, and 
occupy the highest places at the courts 
of princes. Many, however, are driven 
by need or other motives into trades 
and employments inconsistent with the 
original character of their caste. 

BRAIN, the center of the nervous 
system, and the seat of consciousness 
and volition in man and the higher 
animals. It is a soft substance, partly 
gray and partly whitish, situated in the 
skull, penetrated by numerous blood¬ 
vessels, and invested by three mem¬ 
branes or meninges. The outermost, 
called the dura mater, is dense and 


elastic. The next, the tunica arach- 
noidea, is very thin, and is really double. 
The third, the pia mater, covers the 
whole surface of the brain, and is full 
of blood-vessels. The brain consists of 
two principal parts, connected by bands 
of fibers. The one, called the cere¬ 
brum, occupies, in man, the upper part 
of the head, and is seven or eight times 
larger than the other, the cerebellum, 
lying behind and below it. The surface 
of the brain exhibits the appearance of 
a series of ridges and furrows, forming 
what are called the convolutions. The 
cerebrum is divided into two portions, 
the right and left hemispheres, by the 
longitudinal fissure, the hemispheres 
being at the same time transversely con- 



Brain and spinal cord 


nected by a band of nervous matter 
called the corpus callosum. The ex¬ 
ternal or grayish substance of the brain 
is softer than the internal white sub¬ 
stance. The cerebellum lies below the 
cerebrum, in a peculiar cavity of the 
skull. It is divided into a right and a 
left hemisphere, connected by a bridge 
of nervous matter called the pons 
Varolii, under which is the medulla 
oblongata or continuation of the spinal 
marrow. Like the cerebrum, it is gray 
on the outside and whitish within. At 
the base of the brain are several masses 
of nervous matter or ganglia known as 
the corpora striata (two), optic thalami 
(two), and corpora quadrigemina (four); 
and there are in it certain cavities or 
ventricles. Every part of the brain is 


exactly symmetrical with the part 
opposite. Twelve pairs of nerves pro¬ 
ceed from the base of the brain, includ¬ 
ing the nerves for the organs of smell, of 
sight, of hearing, and of taste, also those 
for the muscles of the face, those for the 
cavity of the mouth and for the larynx. 
When compared with the brain of other 
animals, the human brain presents 
striking differences. Even the brain of 
the higher classes of the inferior verte¬ 
brate animals differs from that of man, 
especially in the degree of development; 
while among the lower grades there is 
sometimes, properly speaking, no brain 
at all, but only nerve ganglia, which 
correspond to the brain. In size, also, 
the brain of the lower animals, although 
sometimes (as in the elephant) actually 
greater, is always much less when com¬ 
pared with the size of the whole body, 
and it is found that the size of the brain 
proportionally to the size of the body 
is a direct measure of the intelligence of 
different animals. In man the brain 
weights from 2 to 4 lbs., the average 
weight in male European adults being 
49 to 50 oz., or about ^th of the weight 
of the body; in the dog the average 
weight is about -j^th of the animal; in 
the horse ^r^th; and in the sheep y^th. 
The heaviest brain yet known was that 
of Cuvier—64J oz. The brain of females 
weighs 5 oz. less on the average than 
that of males. The brain attains its 
highest degree of development earlier 
any other part of the body. In old age 
it loses both in bulk and in weight. 
Comparatively little is known of the 
functions of the separate parts of the 
brain, but, speaking generally, the parts 
lying in front have functions connected 
with the intellectual part of man’s 
nature; while the parts lying nearer the 
back of the head belong more to our 
merely animal or organic nature. As 
the central organ of the nervous system 
the brain is sympathetically affected in 
nearly all cases of acute disease. Dis¬ 
eases of the brain fall into two classes, 
according as they exhibit mental char¬ 
acteristics alone, or also anatomical dis¬ 
turbances. To the former class belong 
hypochondria, mania, etc. Among the 
latter may be mentioned meningitis, 
or inflammation of the membranes of 
the brain, which seldom occurs without 
affecting also the substance of the brain, 
and thus giving rise to phrenitis; hydro¬ 
cephalus, or water in the head, caused 
by pressure of water in the cavities of 
the brain; softening of the brain, fre¬ 
quently the result of chronic inflamma¬ 
tion; and plethora, or poverty of blood 
in the brain, which, though opposite 
diseases, may cause the same symptoms 
of giddiness and headache. 

BRAINARD, David Legge, an Ameri¬ 
can traveler and explorer, born in New 
York in 1856. He was sergeant of the 
Franklin Bay Expedition in 1881, and 
won latitude 83° 24' 30" north in that 
enterprise, which was the record for thir¬ 
teen years. In 1900 he was sent to the 
Philippines as major in the regular 
army. 

BRAKE, a contrivance for retarding 
or arresting motion by means of friction. 
In machinery it generally consists of a 
simple or compound lever, that may be 
pressed forcibly upon the periphery of 





BRAKE, AIR 


' BRAZIL 


s wheel, fixed upon a shaft or axis. A 
similar contrivance is attached to road 
and railway carriages, but continuous 
brakes applied to every pair of wheels 
in a railway train, and operated by air 
either by the compression or vacuum 
method, are now generally used on rail¬ 
ways. By the first method, of which 
the Westinghouse brake is an example, 
the air is compressed by a pump on the 
locomotive and conveyed by pipes and 
tubes to cylinders which are under each 
car, and the pistons of which act on the 
brake-levers. In the vacuum method, 
exemplified in the Loughridge brake, 
the air is exhausted from the device 
beneath the car, and the pressure of the 
atmosphere operates the brake-levers. 

BRAKE, AIR. See Air-brake. 

BRAM'BLE, the name commonly 
applied to the bush with trailing prickly 
stems which bears the well-known berries 
usually called in Scotland brambles, 
and in England blackberries. It is 
similar to the raspberry, and belongs 
to the same genus. It is rarely culti¬ 
vated, but as a wild plant it grows in 
great abundance. The flowers do not 
appear till late in the summer, and the 
fruit, which is deep purple or almost 
black in color, does not ripen till autumn. 

BRAN, the husky part of wheat 
separated by the bolter from the flour. 
Its components are: water, 13; gluten, 
19‘5; fatty matter, 5; husk with starch, 
55; and ashes, 7'5; but the results of 
different analyses vary considerably. 
It is employed in feeding cattle, and 
has also been found useful as a manure. 

BRAN'DENBURG, a province of 
Prussia, surrounded mainly by Mecklen¬ 
burg and the provinces of Pomerania, 
Posen, Silesia, and Prussian Saxony. 
The soil consists in many parts of barren 
6ands, heaths, and moors; yet the prov¬ 
ince produces much grain, as well as 
fruits, hemp, flax, tobacco, etc., and 
supports many sheep. The forests are 
very extensive. The principal streams 
are the Elbe, the Oder, the Havel, 
and the Spree. Berlin is locally in 
Brandenburg. Area, 15,600 sq. miles; 
pop. 3,108,554. Most of the inhabitants 
are Lutherans.—The town Brandenburg 
is on the Havel, 35 miles w.s.w. of Berlin. 
Pop. 49,263. 

BRAND'ING, a form of punishment 
once in use in England for various 
crimes, but abolished in 1822. It was 
performed by means of a red-hot iron, 
and the part which was branded was 
the cheek, the hand, or some other part 
of the body. Even after branding had 
been abolished in all other cases, a 
milder form of it was for a long time 
retained in the army as a punishment 
for desertion, the letter D being marked 
with ink or gunpowder on the left side 
of a deserter 2 inches |below the armpit. 
This also has been abolished. 

BRANDY, the liquor obtained by the 
distillation of wine, or of the refuse of 
the wine-press. It is colorless at first, 
but usually derives a brownish color 
from the casks in which it is kept or 
from coloring matters added to it. The 
best brandy is made in France, particu¬ 
larly in the Cognac district in the de¬ 
partment of Charente. Much of the 
so-called brandy sold in Britain and 
America is made there from more or 


less coarse whisky, flavored and colored 
to resemble the real article; and France 
itself also exports quantities of this stuff. 
Brandy is often used medicinally as a 
stimulant, stomachic, and restorative, 
or in mild diarrhoea. In America various 
distilled liquors get the name of brandy, 
as cider brandy, peach brandy. 

BRANDYWINE CREEK, a small river 
which rises in the state of Pennsylvania, 
passes into the state of Delaware, and 
Joins Christiana Creek near Wilming¬ 
ton. It gives its name to a battle fought 
near it, Sept. 11, 1777, between the 
British and Americans, in which the 
latter were defeated. 

BRANK, or BRANKS, an instrument 
formerly in use in Scotland, and to some 
extent also in England, as a punishment 
for scolds. It consisted of an iron frame 



Brank. 


which went over the head of the offender, 
and had in front an iron plate which 
was inserted in the mouth, where it was 
fixed above the tongue, and kept it 
perfectly quiet. 

BRANT, Joseph, a chief of the Mo¬ 
hawk tribe of Indians, born in 1742, 
died in 1807. His native name was 
Thayendanega. He became a convert 
to Christianity and helped the British 
in several of the Indian wars, and fought 
against the Americans during the 
revolution. His alleged exploits are 
recounted by Campbell in his Gertrude 
of Wyoming. 

BRASS is an alloy of copper and zinc, 
of a bright-yellow color, and hard, 
ductile, and malleable. The best brass 
consists of two parts by weight of copper 
to one of zinc; but any degree of varia¬ 
tion may be obtained by altering the 
proportions; thus by increasing the 
quantity of zinc we may form tombac 
and pinchbeck, and with nearly a 
seventh more of zinc than copper the 
compound becomes brittle and of a 
silver-white color. By increasing the 
copper, on the other hand, the com¬ 
pound increases in strength and tenacity. 
Brass which is to be turned or filed is 
made workable by mixing about 2 per 
cent of lead in the alloy, which has the 
effect of hardening the brass and pre¬ 
venting the tool being clogged. For 
engraving purposes a little tin is usually 
mixed with the brass. Brass is used 
for a vast variety of purposes, both 
useful and ornamental. 

BRASSES, SEPULCHRAL or MONU¬ 
MENTAL, large plates of brass inlaid 
in polished slabs of stone, and usually 
exhibiting the figure of the person 
intended to be commemorated, either 
in a carved outline on the plate or in 
the form of the plate itself. In place of 


the figure we sometimes find an orna¬ 
mented cross. The earliest example of 
these monumental slabs now existing 
is that on the tomb of Sir John D’Aber- 



Brass—Westminster abbey. 


non (died 1277) at Stoke D’Abernon in 
Surrey, England. These brasses are cf 
great value in giving us an exact picture 
of the costume of the time to which they 
belong. 

BRASSEY, Thomas, an English rail¬ 
way contractor, born 1805, died 1870. 
His operations were on an immense 
scale, and extended to most of the Euro- 

? ean countries, as well as to America, 
ndia, and Australia, one of his greatest 
works being the Grand Trunk Railway 
of Canada, with the great bridge over 
the St. Lawrence at Montreal. He left 
a very large fortune. His son, Thomas, 
born 1836, now Lord Brassey, has been 
admiralty secretary and civil lord, gov¬ 
ernor of Victoria, and writes on naval 
matters, etc. His first wife (died 1888) 
wrote Voyage of the Sunbeam and other 
books. 

BRAVO (bra'vo), an Italian adjective 
used as exclamation of praise in theaters, 
meaning “well done! excellent!” The 
correct usage is to say bravo to a man, 
brava to a woman, bravi to several 
persons. 

BRAZIL', United States of, a republic 
in S. America, occupying nearly one- 
half of that continent; greatest length, 
e. to w., 2630 miles, greatest length, 
n. to s., 2540 miles; area estimated at 
3,124,000 square miles, or about one- 
sixth smaller than Europe. It is 
bounded s.e., e. and n.e. by the Atlantic 
Ocean, n. by French, Dutch, and British 
Guiana, and Venezuela; w\ and s.w. by 















































































BRAZIL 


BRAZIL 


Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, the 
Argentine Republic, and the Republic 
of Uruguay. Brazil is divided politically 
into a federal district and twenty states. 
Pop. 14,333,915. 

The coast has few indentations of 
importance—the chief being the estua¬ 
ries of the Amazon and Para in the north 
—and good harbors are comparatively 
few. As a whole the country may be 
regarded as having three natural divi¬ 
sions, namely, one belonging to the 
basin of the Amazon, another belonging 
to the La Plata basin, and a third con¬ 
sisting of the eastern portion watered 
by a number of streams directly enter¬ 
ing the Atlantic. The Amazon valley 
is bounded by elevated tablelands 
which, in the lower course of the river, 
approach within a comparatively short 
distance of each other. The character¬ 
istic feature of this region is its immense 
low-lying, forest-covered plains, inter¬ 
sected by innumerable water-courses, 
and in many parts subject to annual 
inundation, the vegetation being of the 
most luxuriant character, from the heat 
and frequent rains. The greater part 
of this vast region is unpopulated except 
by Indians, and as yet of little com¬ 
mercial importance. The climate, not¬ 
withstanding the tropical heat and 
moisture, is comparatively healthful, 
and the facility for commerce given by 
thousands of miles of great navigable 
streams must in time attract numerous 
settlers. This northern part of Brazil 
is unequaled in the number and magni¬ 
tude of the streams which compose its 
river system and connect it with Vene¬ 
zuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and 
Bolivia. On the north side the chief 
affluents of the Amazon are the Rio 
Negro and the Japura, the former giving 
through the Cassiquiare continuous 
water communication with the Orinoco. 
Among the southern affluents which are 
important as water highways into the 
interior of Brazil are the Xingu, the 
Tapajos, the Maderia the Purus, and 
the Jurua; the Madeira being the most 
important, and forming a navigable 
waterway into Bolivia, except that it is 
interrupted by falls about 200 miles 
below where it enters Brazil. The 
Tocantins is another large stream from 
the south, which enters the Para estuary 
and hardly belongs to the Amazon basin. 
The forest region of the Amazon 
occupies about one-fourth of the em¬ 
pire; the rest is made up of undulating 
tablelands 1000 to 3000 feet above the 
sea, mountain ranges rising to 10,000 
feet, and river valleys. 

The great streams belonging to the 
La Plata basin, in the south, are the 
Paraguay and Parana. The water-shed 
between this and the Amazonian basin, 
near the western boundary of Brazil, 
is only about 500 feet g,bove sea-level, 
and here a canoe can be hauled across 
from a head-stream of the Madeira to be 
launched on one belonging to the Para¬ 
guay. It would thus be easy to connect 
the one system with the other by means 
of a canal, and so connect the La Plata 
with the Orinoco. The water-shed 
rises gradually from west to east. The 
southern part of Brazil is characterized 
by its low plains or pampas, covered 
with grass or scrub. Its vegetation is 


of a much less tropical character than 
in the Amazon basin, and its climate 
more variable. In many parts of this 
region there is an admirable field for 
future colonization, though it is as yet 
defective in means of transport. Near 
the coast, in the provinces of S. Paulo, 
Rio Grande, and Parana, there is already 
a considerable population, much aug¬ 
mented by German and Italian immi¬ 
gration, and mostly occupied in cattle¬ 
raising and agriculture. Railways also 
have been constructed and have given a 
great stimulus to trade. 

The most important river in eastern 
Brazil is the San Francisco, which is the 
great waterway into its interior, and 
after a course of 1800 miles discharges 
its waters into the Atlantic at San 
Antonio. The three greatest cities of 
Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, Pernambuco, 
and Bahia, are all endeavoring to de¬ 
velop a traffic in connection with this 
river. A state line has now been con¬ 
structed round the falls of Pedro Affonso 
on its lower course, and thus brought 
the traffic of the upper river into com¬ 
munication with the lower. Eastern 
Brazil exhibits a great variety in surface, 
climate, and productions, and though 
large tracts consist of arid and sandy 
tablelands, it contains within itself the 
greater part of the population, wealth, 
and industry of the empire. 

The chief mountain ranges are near 
the southeastern coast. The Serra do 
Mar or Maritime range commences in 
the far south, and travels close to the 
coast-line in a northeasterly direction 
till it reaches Rio de Janeiro and Cape 
Frio, where it culminates in the Serra 
dos Orgaos, or Organ Mountains, from 
7000 to 8000 feet above the sea, and 
forming the noblest element in the 
marvelous scenery of the bay of Rio 
de Janeiro. West of the Serra do Mar 
lies the Serra Mantequeira, which 
farther north is known as the Serra do 
Espinha?o. Here are the loftiest sum¬ 
mits in Brazil, Itatiaia-Assu, the highest 
of all, being 10,040 feet above the sea. 
Between the sources of the Tocantins 
and Parana are the Montes Pyreneos, 
the second most elevated ridge in 
Brazil, some of its heights being esti¬ 
mated at nearly 8000 and 10,000 feet 
above the level of the sea. 

As almost the whole of Brazil lies s. 
of the equator, and in a hemisphere 
where there is a greater proportion of sea 
than land, its climate is generally more 
cool and moist than that of countries 
in corresponding latitudes in the north¬ 
ern hemisphere. In the s. parts of 
Brazil, in consequence of the gradual 
narrowing of the continent, the climate 
is of an insular character—cool summers 
and mild winters. The quantity of 
rain differs widely in different localities. 
The n. provinces generally are subject 
to heavy rains. At Rio, where the 
climate has been much modified by the 
clearing away of the forests in the 
neighborhood, the mean temperature 
of the year is 74°. At Pernambuco the 
temperature rarely exceeds 82°; in 
winter it descends to 68°. Generally 
the climate of Brazil is delightful. 

Only an insignificant portion of Brazil 
is as yet under cultivation. The pas¬ 
tures are of vast extent, and support 


great herds of horned cattle, one of the 
principal sources of the wealth of the 
country. The chief food - supplying 
plants are sugar, coffee, cocoa, rice, 
tobacco, maize, wheat, manioc (or 
cassava), beans, bananas, ginger, yams, 
lemons, oranges, figs, etc.—the two 
first, sugar and coffee, being the staple 
products of the empire. As much 
coffee, indeed, is produced in Brazil as 
in all the rest of the world together. 
In its forests Brazil possesses a great 
source of wealth. They yield dyewoods 
and fancy woods of various kinds, 
including Brazil-wood, rosewood, fustic, 
cedar, mahogany, and a variety of 
others, as also Brazil-nuts, coconuts, 
vegetable ivory, india-rubber, copaiba, 
arnotto, piassava fiber, etc. Other 
vegetable products are vanilla, sarsapa¬ 
rilla, ipecacuanha, cinnamon, and cloves. 

The principal domestic animals of 
Brazil are horned cattle and horses. 
Sheep are kept only in some parts, 
chiefly in the south. Goats and hogs 
are abundant. The wild animals com¬ 
prise the puma, jaguar, sloth, porcu¬ 
pine, etc. Monkeys are numerous. 
Among the feathered tribes are the 
smallest, the humming-bird, and one of 
the largest, the rhea, parrots in great 
variety, tanagers, toucans, and the 
harpy eagle. The reptiles consist of the 
boa-constrictor and other species of 
serpents, some of them venomous, alli¬ 
gators, and fresh-water turtle, the eggs 
of which yield a valuable oil. The 
insects are, many of them, remarkable 
for the beauty of their colors and their 
size, especially the butterflies. Among 
minerals the diamonds and other 
precious stones of Brazil—emeralds, 
sapphires, rubies, beryls, etc. Gold also 
is procured in considerable quantities. 
Other minerals are quicksilver, copper, 
manganese, iron, lead, tin, antimony, 
and bismuth. The shores and rivers 
abound with fish. 

The population of Brazil consists of 
whites, Indians, negroes, and people of 
mixed blood. The negroes are over 
2,000,000 in number, and till 1888 were 
partly slaves. Of the Indians some are 
semi-civilized, but others (estimated 
at 600,000) roam about in a wild state, 
and are divided into a great many 
tribes speaking different languages. The 
state language is Portuguese. Primary 
education is gratuitous, but the great 
majority of the people are illiterate, 
though education is now compulsory 
in some provinces. 

The principal imports are cottons, 
linens, woolens, machinery, hardware 
and cutlery, wheat, flour, wine, coals, 
etc., the manufactured articles and coals 
being largely from Britain. The exports 
consist of coffee, sugar, cotton, hides, 
cabinet and dye woods, drugs, caout¬ 
chouc, and diamonds. 

The prevailing religion of Brazil is the 
Roman Catholic, but all religions are 
now on an equal footing. Previous to 
1889 the government was monarchical, 
but in that year a revolution took place 
and a republic was established. By the 
new constitution of 1891 each of the 
old provinces forms a state, having its 
own local government, with representa¬ 
tion in a congress appointed by popular 
vote, and consisting of a senate and a 




BRAZIL-NUT 


BREAD 


chamber of deputies. The standing 
army numbers about 30,000. The navy 
comprises eleven iron-clads, besides other 
vessels. 

Brazil was discovered in 1499 by Vin¬ 
cente Yanez Pinion, one of the com- 
anions of Columbus in the service of 
pain, and next year was taken posses¬ 
sion of by Pedro Alvares de Cabral on 
behalf of Portugal. The first governor- 
general was Thome de Sousa, who in 
1549 arrived in the Bay of Bahia and 
established the new city of that name, 
making it the seat of his government. 
The usurpation of the crown of Portugal 
by Philip II. left Brazil in a defenseless 
and neglected condition, and the Eng¬ 
lish, French, and Dutch made successive 
attempts to obtain a footing. The 
Dutch were the most persevering, and 
for a time almost divided the Brazilian 
territory with the Portuguese. The 
tyranny of the Dutch governors, how¬ 
ever, incited their native and Portuguese 
subjects to revolt, and after a sanguinary 
war, in 1654 the Dutch were driven out 
and the Portuguese remained masters 
of an undivided Brazil. The value of 
Brazil to Portugal continued steadily 
to increase after the discovery of the 
gold mines in 1698 and the discovery 
of the diamond mines in 1728. The 
vigorous policy of the Portuguese gov¬ 
ernment under the administration of 
the Marquis de Pombal (1760-77) did 
much to open up the interior of Brazil, 
though his high-handed modes of pro¬ 
cedure left among the Brazilians a dis¬ 
content with the home government 
which took shape in the abortive revolt 
of 1789. On the invasion of Portugal 
in 1808 by the French the sovereign of 
that kingdom, John VI., sailed for 
Brazil, accompanied by his court and 
a large body of emigrants. He raised 
Brazil to the rank of a kingdom, and 
assumed the title of King of Portugal 
and Brazil. But on his return to Portu¬ 
gal in 1820 he found the Portuguese 
Cortes unwilling to grant civil and 
political equality to the Brazilians—a 
fact which raised such violent convul¬ 
sions in Rio Janeiro and other parts of 
Brazil that Dom Pedro, the king’s son, 
was forced to head the party resolved 
to make Brazil independent, and in 
1822 a national assembly declared the 
separation of Brazil from Portugal, and 
appointed Dom Pedro the constitutional 
emperor. In 1864 began a severe strug¬ 
gle between Brazil and Paraguay, 
caused principally by the arbitrary 
conduct of Lopez, the dictator of Para¬ 
guay. Brazil, though joined by Uru¬ 
guay and the Argentine Confederation, 
had to bear the brunt of the war, which 
terminated only with the death of Lopez 
in 1870. This struggle was attended 
with an immense expenditure of men 
andjmoney to Brazil, but it established 
her reputation as a great power, and 
secured the freedom of the navigation 
of the La Plata river-system. In 1871 
an act was passed for the gradual eman¬ 
cipation of slaves, and in 1888 slavery 
was finally abolished. In 1889 took 
place the revolution and establishment 
of the republic. The proceedings of the 
president, Fonseca, led to a revolution¬ 
ary movement in 1891, which was not 
quelled without difficulty. 


BRAZIL-NUT, the fruit of a South 
American tree, native to Guiana, Vene¬ 
zuela, and Brazil. The fruit is nearly 
round, about 6 inches in diameter, has 
a hard shell, and contains a number of 
seeds, from twenty to twenty-four, 
wrinkled, triangular and which are 
pleasant to the taste and are used as 
a dessert. An oil is also extracted 
from them. 

BRAZIL-WOOD, a kind of wood 
yielding a red dye, obtained from sev¬ 
eral trees, natives of the West Indies 
and Central and South America. The 
wood is hard and heavy, and as it 
takes on a fine polish it is used by 
cabinet-makers for various purposes, 
but its principal use is in dyeing red. 
The dye is obtained by reducing the 
wood to powder and boiling it in water, 
when the water receives the red coloring 
principle, which is a crystallizable sub¬ 
stance called brazilin. The color is not 
permanent unless fixed by suitable 
mordants. 

BRAZOS (bra'zos), a large river, 
in Texas, rising in the n.w. part of the 
state, and flowing into the Gulf of 
Mexico, after a course of 900 miles, 40 
miles w.s.w. Galveston. During the 
rainy season, from February to May 
inclusive, it is navigable by steamboats 
for about 300 miles. 

BREACH, the aperture or passage 
made in the wall of any fortified place 
by the ordnance of the besiegers for the 
purpose of entering the fortress.— 
Breaching batteries are batteries of 
heavy guns intended to make a breach. 

BREACH, in law, any violation of a 
law, or the non-performance of a duty 
imposed by law.-—Breach of Peace is an 
offense against the public safety or 
tranquillity either personally or by 
inciting others. Breaches of peace are 
such as affrays, riots, routs, and unlaw¬ 
ful assemblies, forcible entry or detainer 
by violently taking or keeping posses¬ 
sion of lands or tenements with menaces, 
force, and arms; riding, or going, armed 
with dangerous or unusual weapons, 
terrifying people; challenging another 
to fight, or bearing such a challenge, 
besides certain other offenses.—Breach 
of Promise (of marriage), the failure to 
implement one’s promise to marry a 
particular person, in consequence of 
which that person may raise an action 
for damages, though it is only the 
woman as a rule that gains damages.— 
Breach of Trust is a violation of duty 
by a trustee, executor, or any other 
person in a fiduciary position, as, for 
instance, when a trustee manages an 
estate entrusted to him for his own ad¬ 
vantage rather than for that of the 
trust. 

BREAD is the flour or meal of grain 
kneaded with water into a tough and 
consistent paste and baked. There are 
numerous kinds of bread, according to 
materials and methods of prepara¬ 
tion; but all may be divided into two 
classes: fermented, leavened, or raised, 
and unfermented, unleavened, not 
raised. The latter is the simplest, and 
no doubt was the original kind, and is 
still exemplified by biscuits, the oat 
cakes of Scotland, the corn-bread of 
America, the dampers of the Australian 
colonies, and the still ruder bread of 


savage races. It was probably by 
accident that the method of bringing 
the paste into a state of fermentation 
was found out, by which its toughness 
is almost entirely destroyed, and it 
becomes porous, palatable, and digesti¬ 
ble. All the cereals are used in making 
bread, each zone using those which are 
native to it. Thus maize, millet, and 
rice are used for the purpose in the 
hotter countries, rye, barley, and oats 
in the colder, and wheat in the inter¬ 
mediate or more temperate regions. In 
the most advanced countries bread is 
made from wheat, which makes the 
lightest and most spongy bread. The 
fermentation necessary for the ordinary 
loaf-bread is generally produced by 
means of leaven or yeast. The chemical 
changes that take place during the proc¬ 
ess of making bread may be explained 
in the following way: An average qual¬ 
ity of flour consists of gluten 12, starch 
70, sugar 5, gum 3, water 10; total, 100. 
When water is added to the flour, in the 
first operation of baking, it unites with 
the gluten and starch, and dissolves the 
gum and sugar. The yeast or barm 
added acts now upon the dissolved 
sugar, especially at an elevated tem¬ 
perature, and produces the vinous fer¬ 
mentation, forming alcohol and setting 
free carbonic acid as a consequence of 
the transformation of the elements of 
the sugar. The gaseous carbonic acid 
is prevented from escaping by the gluten 
of the mass, and if the mixing or knead¬ 
ing has been propedy performed it re¬ 
mains very equally diffused through 
every part of the dough. The alcohol 
and carbonic acid are carried into the 
oven with the dough, and the former 
partially escapes, while the latter gas, 
being expanded by the heat, produces 
the lightness and sponginess of the loaf. 

It may be produced in bread-making 
by other means than fermentation, as 
by some of those well-known prepara¬ 
tions called “baking powders,” which 
usually contain bicarbonate of potash 
or of soda, with tartaric acid. Aerated 
bread is so called because made with 
aerated water—that is, water strongly 
impregnated with carbonic acid under 
pressure, the dough being also worked 
up under pressure and caused to expand 
by the carbonic acid when the pressure 
is removed. 

The several qualities of flour used for 
bread-making are known by the names 
of firsts or whites, seconds or households, 
and thirds, according to the degree of 
fineness resulting from the process of 
bolting or dressing. The latter two con¬ 
tain a certain proportion of the bran. 
Brown or whole-flour bread is considered 
to be very wholesome. It is made from 
undressed wheat, and consequently con¬ 
tains the bran as well as the flour. 

Various adulterations are found in 
bread, such as chalk, starch, potatoes, 
etc.; but the commonest is alum, which 
enables the baker to give to bread of 
inferior flavor the whiteness of the best 
bread, and also to keep in the loaf an 
undue quantity of water, which, of 
course, increases its weight. Boiled rice 
also is used for the same purpose. In 
the making of bread the flour or meal 
of wheat, barley, rye, oats, buckwheat, 
Indian corn, rice, beans, peas, and 






BREADFRUIT 


BREEDING 


potatoes may be used, along with 
salt, eggs, water, milk, and leaven or 
yeast of any kind; but any other in¬ 
gredient is regarded as an adulteration. 

BREADFRUIT, a large globular fruit 
of a pale-green color, about the size 
of a child’s head, marked on the sur¬ 
face with irregular six-sided depres¬ 
sions, and containing a white and some¬ 
what fibrous pulp, which when ripe be- 



Breadfruit. 


comes juicy and yellow. The tree that 
produces it grows wild in Otaheite and 
other islands of the South Seas, whence 
it was introduced into the West Indies 
and S. America. It is about 40 feet high, 
with large and spreading branches, and 
has large bright-green leaves deeply 
divided into seven or nine spear-shaped 
lobes. The fruit is generally eaten im¬ 
mediately after being gathered, but is 
also often prepared so as to keep for 
some time either by baking it whole in 
close underground pits or by beating it 
into paste and storing it underground, 
when a slight fermentation takes place. 
The eatable part lies between the skin 
and the core, and is somewhat of the 
consistence of new bread. Mixed with 
cocoanut milk it makes an excellent 
pudding. The inner bark of the tree is 
made into a kind of cloth. The wood is 
used for the building of boats and for 
furniture. 

BREADNUTS, the seeds of a tree of 
the same order as the breadfruit. The 
breadnut tree is a native of Jamaica. 
Its wood, which resembles mahogany, 
is useful to cabinet-makers, and its nuts 
make a pleasant food, in taste not un¬ 
like hazelnuts. 

BREAK'WATER, a work constructed 
in front of a harbor to serve as a protec¬ 
tion against the violence of the waves. 
The name may also be given to any 
structure which is erected in the sea 
with the object of breaking the force of 
the waves without and producing a 
calm within. Breakwaters are usually 
constructed by sinking loads of un¬ 
wrought stone along the line where they 
are to be laid, and allowing them to find 
their angle of repose under the action of 
the waves. When the mass rises to the 
surface, or near it, it is surmounted with 
a pile of masonry, sloped outward in 
such a manner as will best enable it to 
resist the action of the waves. 

BREAMING, a nautical term mean¬ 
ing the operation of clearing a ship’s 
bottom by means of fire of the shells, 
seaweeds, barnacles, etc., that have 

P. E.—12 


become attached to it. It is performed 
by holding to the hull kindled furze, 
reeds, or such like light combustibles, 
so as to soften the pitch and loosen the 
adherent matters, which may be then 
easily swept off. 

BREAST, The female, is of a glan¬ 
dular structure, containing vesicles for 
the secretion of milk, and excretory 
ducts, which open by small orifices in 
the nipple, and discharge the secreted 
fluid for the nourishment of the child. 
At the center of each breast there is a 
small projection, the nipple, and this is 
surrounded by a dark ring termed the 
areola. The breast is liable to many 
diseases, from irritation during nursing, 
bruises of the part, undue pressure from 
tight clothes, and from constitutional 
causes. Among the most common of 
these is inflammation arising from a 
superabundant secretion of milk during 
nursing. 

BREASTPLATE, a piece of defensive 

armor covering the breast, made of 
leather, brass, iron, steel, or other 
metals. Among the ancient Jews the 
name was given to a folded piece of rich, 
embroidered stuff worn by the high- 
priest. It was set with twelve precious 
stones bearing the names of the tribes. 

BREAST-WHEEL, a water-wheel in 
which the water driving it is delivered 
to the float-beards between the top and 



the water acts partly by impulse, partly 
by weight. 

BREASTWORK, in the military art, 
a hastily-constructed parapet made for 
protection against the shot of the enemy, 
generally of earth. 

BREATH, the air which issues from 
the lungs during respiration through 
the nose and mouth. A smaller portion 
of oxygen and a larger portion of car¬ 
bonic acid are contained in the air which 
is exhaled than in that which is inhaled. 
There are also aqueous particles in the 
breath, which are precipitated by the 
coldness of the external air in the form 
of visible vapor; likewise other sub¬ 
stances which owe their origin to secre¬ 
tions in the mouth, nose, windpipe, and 
lungs. These cause the changes in the 
breath which may be known by the 
smell. A bad breath is often caused by 
local affections in the nose, the mouth, 
or the windpipe; viz., by ulcers in the 
nose, cancerous polypi, by discharges 
from the mouth, by sores on the lungs, 
or peculiar secretions in them. It is 
also caused by rotten teeth, by im¬ 
purities in the mouth, and by some 
kinds of food. The remedies of course 


vary. Frequent washing, gargles of 
chlorine-water, charcoal, etc., are pre¬ 
scribed according to the disease. 

BREATHING. See Respiration. 

BRECKENRIDGE, John Cabell, an 
American soldier, statesman, and poli¬ 
tician, born in Kentucky in 1821, died 
in 1875. He was elected vice-president 
of the U. States with Buchanan, and 
in 1860 was nominated by the southern 
section of the democracy for president, 
but, with Douglas, was defeated by 
Lincoln. Elected to the senate, he 
resigned, entered the Confederate mili¬ 
tary service, and fought at many of the 
principal battles of the civil war, sub¬ 
sequently becoming a member of the 
cabinet of Jefferson Davis. After the 
war he practiced law. 

BREECH, BREECH-LOADING. The 
breech is the solid mass of metal behind 
the bore of a gun, and that by which the 
shock of the explosion is principally 
sustained. In breech-loading arms the 
charge is introduced here, there being 
a mechanism by which the breech can 
be opened and closed. In small arms 
the advantages of breech-loading for 
rapidity of fire, facility of cleaning, 
etc., recommended it to general use, 
and its efficacy for military purposes 
was effectively demonstrated by the 
Prussian campaigns against Denmark 
and Austria in 1864 and 1866. Since 
that time every government has 
adopted the new system, both in small- 
arms and heavy ordnance, while breech¬ 
loading sporting-arms are also in general 
use. The chief difficulty in breech¬ 
loading is to close the breech so as to 
prevent the escape of the highly elastic 
gas to which the force of the explosion 
is due, but the appliances of modern 
science and mechanical art may be said 
to have effectually met this difficulty. 
See Cannon, Musket, etc. 

BREECHES, an article of clothing 
for the legs and lower part of the body 
in use among the Babylonians and 
other ancient peoples as well as among 
the moderns. In Europe we find them 
first used among the Gauls; hence the 
Romans called a part of Gaul breeched 
Gaul. Trousers are longer and looser 
than the breeches that used to be worn. 

BREECHING, a rope used to secure 
a ship’s gun and prevent it from recoil¬ 
ing too much in battle. 

BREEDING, the art of improving 
races or breeds of domestic animals, or 
modifying them in certain directions, by 
continuous attention to their pairing, 
in conjunction with a similar attention 
to their feeding and general treatment. 
Animals (and plants no less) show great 
susceptibility of modification under 
systematic cultivation; and there can 
be no doubt that by such cultivation 
the sum of desirable qualities in par¬ 
ticular races has been greatly increased, 
and that in two ways. Individual 
specimens are produced possessing more 
good qualities than can be found in any 
one specimen of the original stock; and 
from the same stock many varieties are 
taken characterized by different per¬ 
fections, the germs of all of which may 
have been in the original stock but could 
not have been simultaneously developed 
in a single specimen. But when an 
effort is made to develop rapidly, or to 

















BREEZE 


BREWING 


its extreme limit, any particular quality, 
it is always made at the expense of some 
other quality, or of other qualities gen¬ 
erally, by which the intrinsic value of 
the result is necessarily affected. High 
speed in horses, for example, is only 
attained at the expense of a sacrifice 
of strength and power of endurance. 
So the celebrated merino sheep are the 
result of a system of breeding which 
reduces the general size and vigor of the 
animal, and diminishes the value of the 
carcass. Much care and judgment, 
therefore, are needed in breeding, not 
only in order to produce a particular 
effect, but also to produce it with the 
least sacrifice of other qualities. 

Breeding, as a means of improving 
domestic animals, has been practiced 
more or less systematically wherever 
any attention has been paid to the care 
of live stock. Quantity of meat, small¬ 
ness of bone, lightness of offal; in cows, 
yield and quality of milk; in sheep, 
weight of fleece and fineness of wool, 
have all been studied with remarkable 
effects by modern breeders. 

BREEZE, BREEZE-FLY, a name 
given to various flies, otherwise called 
gadflies, horseflies, etc. 

BREEZES, Sea and Land. See Wind. 

BREMEN (bra'men), a free city of 
Germany, an independent member of 
the empire, one of the three Hanse towns, 
on the Weser, about 50 miles from its 
mouth, in its own small territory of 
98 sq. miles, besides which it possesses 
the port of Bremerhaven at the mouth 
of the river. The manufacturing estab¬ 
lishments consist of tobacco and cigar 
factories, sugar - refineries, rice - mills, 
iron-foundries, machine - works, rope 
and sail works, and ship-building yards. 
Its situation renders Bremen the em¬ 
porium for Hanover, Brunswick, Hesse, 
and other countries, traversed by the 
Weser, and next to Hamburg it is the 
principal seat of the export and import 
and emigration trade of Germany. 
Vessels drawing 17J feet can now come 
up to the town itself; but the bulk of 
the shipping trade centers in Bremer¬ 
haven. Bremerhaven is a place of over 
16,000 inhabitants, has docks capable 
of receiving the largest vessels, and is 
connected by railway with Bremen, 
where the chief merchants and brokers 
have their offices. The chief imports are 
tobacco, cotton and cotton goods, wood 
and woolen goods, rice, coffee, grain, 
petroleum, etc., which are chiefly re¬ 
exported to other parts of Germany 
and the Continent. Pop. of town, 
163,418; of total territory (including 
Bremerhaven), 224,967. 

Bremen was made a bishopric by 
Charlemagne about 788, was afterward 
made an archbishopric, and by the end 
of the 14th century had become virtually 
a free imperial city. The constitution 
is in most repects republican. 

BREN'EMAN, Abram Adam, an Amer¬ 
ican inventor, born in Pennsylvania in 
1847. He is noted for the invention of 
a process for making iron non-corrosive. 
In 1892 Breneman was elected vice- 
president of the American Chemical 
Society. 

BRENT GOOSE, a wild goose, smaller 
than the common barnacle goose and of 
much darker plumage, remarkable for I 


length of wing and extent of migratory 
power, being a winter bird of passage in 
France, Germany, Holland, Great Brit¬ 
ain, the United States, Canada, etc. It 
breeds in high northern latitudes; it 
feeds on drifting seaweeds and saline 
plants, and is considered the most deli¬ 
cate for the table of all the goose tribe. 

BRESCIA (bra'shi-a), a city of north 
Italy, capital of the province of the same 
name, is beautifully situated at the foot 
of the Alps, and is of a quadrilateral 
form, about 4 miles in circuit. The city 
contains a museum of antiquities, 
picture-gallery, botanic garden, a fine 
public library, a theater, hospital, etc. 
An aqueduct supplies water to its nu¬ 
merous fountains. Near the town are 
large ironworks, and its firearms are 
esteemed the best that are made in 
Italy. _ It has also silk, linen, and paper 
factories, tan-yards, and oil-mills, and 
is an important mart for raw silk. Pop. 
70,618. The province has an area of 
1644 sq. miles; pop. 537,690. 

BRESLAU (bres'lou), an important 
city of the German Empire, the second 
largest in the Prussian dominions (being 
excelled in population only by Berlin), 
is the capital of the province of Silesia, 
and is situated on both sides of the Oder. 
The cathedral, built in the 12th century, 
and the Rathhaus, or town-hall, a Gothic 
structure of about the 14th century, are 
among the most remarkable buildings. 
There is a flourishing university, with a 
museum, library of 400,000 volumes, 
observatory, etc. Breslau has manu¬ 
factures of machinery, railway-carriages, 
furniture and cabinet ware, cigars, 
spirits and liquors, cotton and woolen 
yarn, musical instruments, porcelain, 
glass, etc., and carries on an extensive 
trade. Pop. 422,738. 

BREST, a seaport in the n.w. of 
France, department of Finisterre. It 
has one of the best harbors in France, 
and is the chief station of the French 
marine, having safe roads capable of 



containing 500 men-of-war in from 8 to 
15 fathoms at low water. The entrance 
is narrow and rocky, and the coast on 
both sides is well fortified. Brest stands 
on the summit and sides of a projecting 
ridge, many of the streets being exceed¬ 
ingly steep. Several of the docks have 
been cut in the solid rock, and a break¬ 
water extends far into the roadstead. 
The manufactures of Brest are incon¬ 
siderable, but it has an extensive trade 
in cereals, wine, brandy, sardines, mack¬ 
erel, and colonial goods. It is connected 
with America by a cable terminating 
near Duxbury, Mass. Pop. 81,948. 

BRET'ONS, the inhabitants of Brit¬ 
tany. 


BREV'ET, in Britain and the U. 
States applied to a commission to an 
officer, entitling him to a rank in the 
army higher than that which he holds in 
his regiment, without, however, confer¬ 
ring the right to a corresponding advance 
of pay. 

BREV'IARY, the book which’contains 
prayers or offices to be used at the seven 
canonical hours of matins, prime, tierce, 
sext, nones, vespers, and compline by 
all in the orders of the Church of Rome 
or in the enjoyment of any R. Catholic 
benefice. It is not known at what time 
the use of the breviary was first enjoin¬ 
ed, but the early offices were exhaustive 
from their great length, and under 
Gregory VII. (1073-85) their abridgment 
was considered necessary, hence the 
origin of the breviary. In 1568 Pius V. 
published that which has remained, 
with few modifications, to the present 
day. The Roman breviary, however, 
was never fully accepted by tne Gallican 
Church until after the strenuous efforts 
made by the Ultramontanes from 1840 
to 1864. The Psalms occupy a large 
place in the breviary; passages from 
the Old and New Testament and from 
the fathers have the next place. All the 
services are in Latin, and their arrange¬ 
ment is very complex. The English 
Book of Common Prayer is based on the 
Roman Breviary. 

BREVIER (bre-verO, a kind of print¬ 
ing type, in size between bourgeois and 
minion, the same as the type of this 
book. 

BREWER, David Josiah, an Ameri¬ 
can jurist, born in Smyrna, Asia Minor, 
in 1837. He was for many years a 
federal judge in Kansas, and in 1889 
was appointed an associate justice of 
the United States Supreme court. 

BREWING, the process of extracting 
a saccharine solution from malted grain 
and converting the solution into a fer¬ 
mented and sound alcoholic beverage 
called ale or beer. The preliminary proc¬ 
ess of malting (often a distinct business 
to that of brewing) consists in promoting 
the germination of the grain for the sake 
of the saccharine matter into which the 
starch of the seed is thus converted. 
The barley or other grain is steeped for 
about two days in a cistern and then 
piled in a heap, or couch, which is turned 
and re-turned until the radicle or root, 
and acrospire or rudimentary stem, 
have uniformly developed to some little 
extent in all the heap of grain. This 
treatment lasts from seven to ten days, 
by which time the grain has acquired a 
sweet taste; the life of the grain being 
then destroyed by spreading the whole 
upon the floor of a kiln to be thoroughly 
dried. At this point begins the brewing 
process proper, which in breweries is 
generally as follows: The malt is crushed 
or roughly ground in a malt-mill, whence 
it is carried to the mashing-machine, and 
there thoroughly mixed with hot water. 
The mixture is now received by the 
mash-tun—a cylindrical vessel with a 
false perforated bottom held about an 
inch from the true one. In the mash-tun 
the useful elements are extracted from 
the malt in the form of the sweet liquor 
known as wort, and the tun, therefore, 
is fitted with an elaborate system of 
revolving rakes for thoroughly mixing 










BREWSTER 


BRIDGE 


the malt with hot water. The mixing 
completed, the mash-tun is covered up 
and allowed to stand for about three 
hours, when the taps in the true bottom 
are opened and the wort or malt-extract 
run off. The wort being drained into a 
copper the hops are now added, and the 
whole boiled for about two hours, the 
boiling, like the addition of hops, tend¬ 
ing to prevent acetous and putrefactive 
fermentation. When sufficiently boiled 
the contents of the copper are run into 
the hop-back—a long rectangular vessel 
with a false bottom 8 or 9 inches from 
the true bottom. The hot wort leaving 
the spent hops in the hop-back runs 
through the perforations in the false 
bottom and thence into the cooler—a 
large flat vessel where the worts are 
cooled to about 100° Fah. From the 
cooler the liquor is admitted to the re¬ 
frigerator—a shallow rectangular vessel, 
which reduces the temperature to al¬ 
most that of the cold water, or about 58°. 
The worts are next led by pipes into the 
large wooden fermenting tuns, where 
yeast or barm is added as soon as the 
wort begins to run in from the refriger¬ 
ator. During the operation of fermen¬ 
tation, by which a portion of the sac¬ 
charine matter is converted into alcohol, 
the temperature rises considerably, and 
requires to be kept in check by means 
of a coil of copper piping with cold 
water running through it lowered into 
the beer. When the fermentation has 
gone far enough, and the liquor has been 
allowed to settle, the beer becomes com¬ 
paratively clear and bright, and may be 
run off and filled into the trade casks or 
into vats. 

BREWSTER, Benjamin Harris, an 
American lawyer, born in New Jersey 
in 1816, died in 1888. From 1881 to 
1885 he was attorney-general of the 
U. States, prosecuting the famous Star 
Route trials for fraud. 

BREW'STER, Sir David, natural phi¬ 
losopher, born in Jedburgh 1781. In 
1808 he became editor of the Edinburgh 
Encyclopaedia, and in 1819 was one of 
the founders of the Edinburgh Philo¬ 
sophical Journal, of which he was sole 
editor from 1824-32. Brewster was one 
of the founders of the British Associa¬ 
tion, and its president in 1850. In 1832 
he was knighted and pensioned, and 
both before and after this time his 
services to science obtained throughout 
Europe the most honorable recogni¬ 
tion. From 1838 to 1859 he was prin¬ 
cipal of the united colleges of St. Leon¬ 
ard’s and St. Salvador at St. Andrews, 
and in the latter year was chosen prin¬ 
cipal of the University' of Edinburgh 
—an office which he held till his 
death in 1868. Among his inventions 
were the “polyzonal lens” (introduced 
into Britisn lighthouses in 1835), the 
kaleidoscope, and the improved stereo¬ 
scope. 

BRI'AN, a famous chieftain of the 
early Irish annals, who succeeded to 
Munster in 978, defeated the Danes of 
Limerick at Waterford, attacked Mal- 
achi, nominal king of the whole island, 
and became king in his stead (1002). 
He was slain at the close of the battle 
of Clontarf, near Dublin, in 1014, after 
gaining a signal victory over the revolted 
Maelmora and his Danish allies. 


BRIAN CON (bre-an-son). A town 
and fortress of France, department of 
Hautes-Alpes, on the right bank of the 
Durance. It occupies an eminence 4284 
ft. above the sea level and is called the 
Gibraltar of the Alps. Pop. 3,579. 



Briancon. 


BRIAR, BRIER, the wild rose. The 
well-known briar-root tobacco-pipes are 
made from the root of a large kind of 
heath, a native of southern Europe, 
Corsica, Sardinia, Algeria, etc. 

BRIBE, a reward given to a public 
officer or functionary to induce him to 
violate his official duty so as to suit the 
person bribing; especially a corrupt pay¬ 
ment of money for the votes of electors 
in the choice of persons to places of 
trust under government. Bribery is in 
most countries regarded as a crime 
deserving severe punishment. 

BRICK, a sort of artificial 6tone, 
made principally of argillaceous earth 
formed in molds, dried in the sun, 
and baked by burning, or, as in many 
Eastern countries, by exposure to the 
sun. Sun-dried bricks of great antiqui¬ 
ty have been found in Egypt, Assyria, 
and Babylonia, and in the mud walls 
of old Indian towns. Under the Romans 
the art of making and building with 
bricks was brought to great perfection, 
and the impressions on Roman bricks, 
like those on the bricks of Babylonia, 
have been of considerable historic 
value. The Roman brick was afterward 
superseded in England by the smaller 
Flemish make. Of the various clays 
used in brickmaking, the simplest, con¬ 
sisting chiefly of silicates of alumina, 
are almost infusible, and are known as 
fire-clays. Of such clays fire-bricks are 
made. Clays containing lime and no 
iron burn white, the colors of others 
being due to the presence in varying 
proportions of ferric oxide, which also 
adds to the hardness of bricks. The 
clay should be dug in autumn and 
exposed to the influence of frost and 
rain. It should be worked over re¬ 
peatedly with the spade and tempered 
to a ductile homogeneous paste, and 
should not be made into bricks until 
the ensuing spring. The making of 
bricks by hand in molds is a simple 
process. After being made and dried 
for about nine or ten days they are 
ready for the burning, for which purpose 
they are formed into kilns, having 
flues or cavities at the bottom for the 
insertion of the fuel, and interstices 
between them for the fire and hot air 
to penetrate. Much care is necessary 
in regulating the fire, since too much 
heat vitrifies the bricks and too little 
leaves them soft and friable. Bricks 
are now largely made by machines of 


various construction. In one the clay 
is mixed and comminuted in a cylin¬ 
drical pug-mill by means of rotatory 
knives or cutters working spirally and 
pressing the clay down to the bottom of 
the cylinder. From this it is conveyed 
by rollers and forced through an opening 
of the required size in a solid rectan¬ 
gular stream, which is cut into bricks 
by wires working transversely. Ma¬ 
chine-made bricks are heavier, being 
less porous than hand-made bricks, and 
are more liable to crack in drying; but 
they are smoother, and, when carefully 
dried, stronger than the hand-made. 

Bricks were made in Virginia as early 
as 1612, in New England in 1647, and 
in Philadelphia in 1685. The various 
kinds of brick made in the U. States at 
present are as follows: Common brick; 
stock, or pressed, or front brick, of 
prime clay and very smooth; enameled 
or glazed brick; ornamental brick, 
variously formed; fire brick, from 
refractory clays; paving and vitrified 
brick, of specially hard quality. 

BRIDEWELL, a name given, in the 
U. States, to penal work-houses, or 
minor prisons where the prisoners are 
required to do hard labor. The name 
originates from a well in London named 
for St. Bride. The name Bridewell 
came to be applied to a palace in the 
vicinity, which was afterward used as 
a house of correction. The original 
building was destroyed in 1864. 

BRIDGE, a structure of stone, brick, 
wood, or iron, affording a passage over 
a stream, valley, or the like. The 
earliest bridges were no doubt trunks 
of trees. The arch seems to have been 
unknown among most of the nations 
of antiquity. Even the Greeks had not 
sufficient acquaintance with it to apply 
it to bridge-building. The Romans 
were the first to employ the principle of 
the arch in this direction, and after the 
construction of such a work as the great 
arched sewer at Rome, the Cloaca 
Maxima, a bridge over the Tiber would 
be of comparatively easy execution. 
One of the finest examples of the Roman 
bridge was the bridge built by Augustus 
over the Nera at Narni, the vestiges of 
which still remain. It consisted of four 
arches, the longest of 142 feet span. 
The most celebrated bridges of ancient 
Rome were not generally, however, dis¬ 
tinguished by the extraordinary size 
of their arches, nor by the lightness of 
their piers, but by their excellence and 
durability. Old London Bridge was 
commenced in 1176, and finished in 
1209. It had houses on each side like a 
regular street till 1756-58. In 1831 it 
was altogether removed, the new bridge, 
which had been begun in 1824, having 
then been finished 

Stone bridges consist of an arch or 
series of arches, and in building them 
the properties of the arch, the nature 
of the materials, and many other 
matters have to be carefully considered. 
It has been found that in the construc¬ 
tion of an arch the slipping of the stones 
upon one another is prevented by their 
mutual pressure and the friction of their 
surfaces; the use of cement is thus 
subordinate to the principle of construc¬ 
tion in contributing to the strength and 
maintenance of the fabric. 







BRIDGE 


BRIG 


The first iron bridges were erected 
from about 1777 to 1790. The same 
general principles apply to the construc¬ 
tion of iron as of stone bridges, but the 
greater cohesion and adaptability of the 
material give more liberty to the archi¬ 
tect, and much greater width of span 
is possible. At first iron bridges were 
erected in the form of arches, and the 
material employed was cast-iron; but 
the arch has now been generally super¬ 
seded by the beam or girder, with its 
numerous modifications; and wrought - 
iron or steel is likewise found to be much 
better adapted for resisting a great 
tensile strain than cast-metal. Numer¬ 
ous modifications exist of the beam or 





1, Suspension-bridge,Chelsea. 

2, Lattice bridge on railway from St. Gall to 

Appenzell. 

3, The Britannia tubular bridge. 

girder, as the lattice-girder, bow-string- 
girder, etc.; but of these none is more 
interesting than the tubular or hollow 
girder, first rendered famous from its 
employment by Robert Stephenson in 
the construction of the railway bridge 
across the Menai Strait, and connecting 
Anglesey with the mainland of North 
Wales. This is known as the Britannia 
Tubular Bridge. The Victoria Bridge 
over the St. Lawrence at Montreal, 
originally tubular, is no longer so, the 
upper portion having been reconstructed 
with an open track. It is nearly two 
miles in length, or about five and a half 
times as long as the bridge across the 
Menai Strait. A girder railway bridge 
across the Firth of Tay at Dundee was 
opened in 1887, being the second built 
at the same place, after the first had 
given way in a great storm. It is 2 
miles 73 yds. long, has 85 spans, is 77 
feet high, and carries two lines of rails. 


The bridge over the Firth of Forth, at 
Queensferry, completed in 1889, has 
two chief spans of 1710 feet, two others 
of 680 feet, fifteen of 168 feet, and seven 
small arches, and the bridge gives a 
clear headway for navigation purposes 
of 150 feet above high-water of spring- 
tides. The great spans consist of a can¬ 
tilever at either end, 680 feet long, and a 
central girder of 350 feet. Both the 
above bridges carry the lines of the N. 
British Railway. The Crumlin Railway 
Viaduct, S. Wales, having lattice-girders 
supported on open-work piers, is more 
remarkable for height than length, 
being 200 feet high. 

Suspension-bridges, being entirely in¬ 
dependent of central supports, do not 
interfere with the river, and may be 
erected where it is impracticable to 
build bridges of any other kind. The 
entire weight of a suspension-bridge 
rests upon the piers at either end from 
which it is suspended, all the weight 
being below' the points of support. Such 
bridges always swing a little, giving a 
vibratory movement which imparts a 
peculiar sensation to the passenger. 
The modes of constructing these bridges 
are various. The roadway is suspended 
either from chains or from wire-ropes, 
the ends of which require to be anchored, 
that is, attached to the solid rock or 
masses of masonry or iron. One of the 
earlier of the great suspension-bridges is 
that constructed by Telford over the 
Menai Strait near the Britannia Tubular 
Bridge, finished in 1825; the opening 
between the points of suspension is 
580 feet. The Hammersmith Chain- 
bridge, the Union Suspension-bridge 
near Berwick, and the suspension- 
bridge over the Avon at Clifton are 
other British examples. On the Euro¬ 
pean continent, the Fribourg Suspen¬ 
sion-bridge in Switzerland, span 870 
feet, erected 1834, is a celebrated work; 
as is that over the Danube connecting 
Buda with Pesth. In America the lower 
suspension-bridge over the Niagara, 7 
miles below the falls, supported by ware 
cables, is 822 feet long; it has two floors 
or roadways connected together but 15 
feet apart, the lower serving for ordinary 
traffic, the upper carrying three lines of 
rails, 245 feet above the river. Another 
bridge, close to the falls, has a span 
of 1250 feet. The Cincinnati bridge 
over the Ohio has a span of 1057 feet. 
A suspension-bridge of great magnitude, 
connecting the city of New York with 
Brooklyn, was opened in 1883. The 
central or main span is 1595J feet from 
tower to tower, and the land spans 
between the towers and the anchorages 
930 feet each; the approach on the New 
York side is 2492 feet long, and that 
on the Brooklyn side 1901 feet, making 
the total length 5989 feet. The height 
of the platform at the center is 135 feet 
above high-water, and at the ends 119 
feet. The roadway is 85 feet broad, and 
is divided into five sections, the two 
outside for vehicles, the two inner for 
tram-cars, and the middle one, 12 feet 
above the rest, for foot-passengers. Of 
recent devices the most useful is that of 
the counterpoise bridge, or jackknife 
bridge, which is lifted up from one 
end or from the middle by counter¬ 
weights. 


BRIDGE, a game of cards played by 
four players and one pack of 52 cards. 
The players are known as the leader, 
the dummy, the pone, and the dealer. 
One of the varieties of bridge is called 
bridge-whist. 

BRIDGE, Ship’s, a raised walk on 
the forward end of a ship, patrolled by 
the officer in charge. 

BRIDGE'MAN, Laura, a blind deaf- 
mute, born in Hanover, New Hampshire, 
in 1829. Till the age of two years she 
was a bright active child, when a severe 
illness deprived her of the senses of 
sight, hearing, and smell, and partly 
also of that of taste. She was put under 
the care of Dr. Howe of Boston, and the 
history of the methods by which she 
was gradually taught to read, write, and 
eventually perform most of the ordinary 
duties and even some of the accom¬ 
plishments of life, is a very interest¬ 
ing one. She became herself a teacher 
of persons similarly afflicted, and led 
an active and useful life, dying in 
1889. 

BRIDGE'PORT, a seaport of Con¬ 
necticut, 58 miles n.e. of New York, on 
an arm of Long Island Sound, with a 
large coasting trade, but chiefly sup¬ 
ported by its manufactories, including 
the large sewing-machine factories of 
Wheeler, Wilson & Co., Elias Howe, 
etc. Pop. 84,216. 

BRIDGETON (brij' tun), a city, port 
of entry, and county-seat of Cumber¬ 
land Co., N. J., 38 miles south of Phil¬ 
adelphia, at the head of navigation on 
the Cohansey river, and on the New 
Jersey Central and the West Jersey and 
Seashore railroads. Pop. 15,418. 

BRIDGETOWN, the capital of the 
island of Barbados, in the West Indies, 
extending along the shore of Carlisle 
Bay, on the s.w. coast of the island, for 
nearly 2 miles. Bridgetown is the resi¬ 
dence of the governor-general of the 
Windward Islands. Pop. 25,000. 

BRIDG'MAN, Elijah Coleman, an 
American missionary to China, born in 
Massachusetts in 1801, died in 1861. 
In 1829 he went to China as a missionary 
and founded a mission at Shanghai. 

BRIDGMAN, Frederick Arthur, an 
American painter, born at Tuskegee, 
Ala., in 1847. He exhibited in Paris 
in 1878 and was made a Chevalier of the 
Legion of Honor. In 1900 two of his 
paintings were exhibited at the Paris 
Exposition. 

BRIDGMAN, Herbert Lawrence, an 
American explorer, born in Massa¬ 
chusetts in 1844. He accompanied 
Peary in his expedition of 1894, and in 
1899 he commanded the auxiliary 
Peary expedition on the ship Diana. 

BRIEF, which comes from the Latin 
brevis, short, denotes a brief or short 
statement or summary, particularly the 
summary of a client’s case which the 
solicitor draws up for the instruction of 
counsel. A brief may also mean, in law, 
an order emanating from the superior 
courts. A papal brief is a sort of pas¬ 
toral letter in which the pope gives his 
decision on some matter which concerns 
the party to whom it is addressed. The 
brief is an official document, but of a 
less public character than the bull, 

BRIG, a sailing vessel with two masts 
rigged like the foremast and mizzen- 




























BRIGADE 


BRISTOL 


mast of a full-rigged ship. See Brigan¬ 
tine. 

BRIGADE', in general an indeter¬ 
minate number of regiments or squad¬ 
rons. A number of brigades form a 
division, and several divisions an army 
corps. A brigadier or brigadier-general 
is the officer who commands a brigade. 
See Army. 



Brig. 


BRIGADIER-GENERAL, an army 
officer who commands a brigade of 
soldiers. See Army, and Brigade. 

BRIG'ANTINE, a sailing vessel with 
two masts, the foremast rigged like a 
brig’s, the main-mast rigged like a 
schooner’s. Called also hermaphrodite 
brig. 

BRIGHT, John, a great English orator 
and politician, born at Greenbank, near 
Rochdale, Lancashire, Nov. 16, 1811. 
He first became known as a leading 
spirit along with Mr. Cobden in the 
Anti-Corn-Law League. In 1843 he was 
chosen M.P. for Durham, and dis¬ 
tinguished himself as a strenuous advo¬ 
cate of free-trade and reform. In 1847 
he sat for the first time for Manchester, 



John Bright. 


but in 1857 his opposition to the Crimean 
war had made him so unpopular in the 
constituency that he lost his seat by a 
large majority. He was, however, re¬ 
turned for Birmingham, and soon after 
made speeches against the policy of 
great military establishments and wars 
of annexation. In 1865 he took a lead¬ 
ing part in the movement for the exten¬ 
sion of the franchise, and strongly advo¬ 
cated the necessity of reform in Ireland. 
In the Gladstone ministry formed in 
1868 he was President of the Board of 
Trade and afterward Chancellor of the 
Duchy of Lancaster, and he held the 


latter office again under Mr. Gladstone 
in 1880-82. In 1886 he joined the 
Liberals who opposed Mr. Gladstone’s 
schemes for Ireland, and contributed by 
his letters and influence to the over¬ 
throw of the Gladstone party. He was 
a member of the Society of Friends. 
He died March 27, 1889. 

BRIGHTON (bri'tun), a county bor¬ 
ough and favorite watering-place in 
England, county of Sussex, 50£ miles 
from London. In front of the town is 
a massive sea-wall, with a promenade 
and drive over 3 miles in length, one 
of the finest in Europe. Among the 
remarkable buildings, all of modern 
date, is the Pavilion, built by George 
IV., which cost upward of $5,000,000. 
It is in the oriental style, with numerous 
cupolas, spires, etc. The building and 
its gardens, which are open to the public 
as pleasure-grounds, cover 9 acres. 
There is a very large and complete 
aquarium, and a fine iron pier. Brigh¬ 
ton has no manufactures, and is resorted 
to chiefly as a watering-place. It was 
about the middle of the 18th century 
that Dr. Russell, an eminent physician, 
drew attention to Brighton, which sub¬ 
sequently was patronized by George IV., 
then Prince of Wales; in this way it was 
converted from a decayed fishing village 
into a fashionable and populous water¬ 
ing place. It has sent two members to 
parliament since 1832. Pop. 153,393. 

BRIGHT’S DISEASE, a name (de¬ 
rived from a Dr. Bright of London, who 
first described the disorder) given to 
various forms of kidney disease, espe¬ 
cially to that which is characterized by 
a granular condition of the cortical part 
of the kidneys and inflammation of the 
malpighian bodies. The urine during 
life contains albumen, and is of less 
specific gravity than natural. The dis¬ 
ease is accompanied with uneasiness 
or pain in the loins, pale or cachectic 
countenance, disordered digestion, fre¬ 
quent urination, and dropsy. The 
blood contains urea, and is deficient in 
albumen a'nd corpuscles. Progressive 
blood-poisoning induces other visceral 
diseases, and in the end gives rise to the 
cerebral disturbance which is the fre¬ 
quent cause of death. 

BRIM'STONE, a name of sulphur. 
Sulphur, in order to purify it from 
foreign matters, is generally melted in 
a close vessel, allowed to settle, then 
poured into cylindrical molds, in which 
it becomes hard, and is known in com¬ 
merce as roll brimstone. 

BRINE, water saturated with com¬ 
mon salt. It is naturally produced in 
many places beneath the surface of the 
earth, and is also made artificially, for 
preserving meat, a little saltpeter being 
generally added to the solution. 

BRIS'BANE, the capital of Queens¬ 
land, about 25 miles by water from the 
mouth of the river Brisbane, which 
intersects the town. Brisbane was 
originally settled, in 1825, as a penal 
station by Sir Thomas Brisbane (whence 
the name of the town). In 1842 the dis¬ 
trict was opened to free settlers, and on 
the erection of Queensland into a sepa¬ 
rate colony in 1859, Brisbane became 
the capital. Since then it has made 
great progress, and now possesses many 
fine public buildings, such as the Houses 


of Legislature, the town-hall and the 
Albert Hall, the viceregal lodge, the 
post and telegraph offices, etc. There 
are also botanical gardens, several pub¬ 
lic parks, etc. The climate is tropical, 



the annual rainfall about 55 inches. 
The town is the terminus of the west¬ 
ern and southern railway system, and 
the port is the principal one in the 
colony. Pop. (with suburbs), 119,428. 

BRIS'BANE, General Sir Thomas 
MacDougall, a Scotch soldier and as¬ 
tronomer, born in 1773. After serving 
in Flanders and the West Indies he 
commanded a brigade under the Duke of 
Wellington during the Peninsular war, 
and took part in the battles of Victoria, 
Orthes, and Toulouse. In 1821 he was 
appointed governor of New South Wales, 
where his administration tended greatly 
to promote the prosperity of the colony. 
At the same time he devoted himself 
to astronomy, and from his observatory 
at Paramatta catalogued 7385 stars, 
until then scarcely known. On his re¬ 
turn to Scotland he continued his as¬ 
tronomical pursuits, and died in 1860. 

BRISSOT (bre-so), Jean Pierre, a 
French political writer, born in 1754, 
executed 30th October, 1793. He early 
turned his attention to public affairs, 
associating himself with such men as 
Potion, Robespierre, Marat, etc. Dur¬ 
ing the revolution he made himself 
known as a politician and one of the 
leaders of the Girondist party. The 
extreme views of the men of the “Moun¬ 
tain” having prevailed over more mod¬ 
erate counsels, Brissot, like most of his 
party, suffered death by the guillotine. 

BRISTLES, the stiff, coarse, glossy 
hairs of the hog and the wild boar, espe¬ 
cially of the hair growing on the back| 
extensively used by brushmakers, shoe¬ 
makers, saddlers, etc., and chiefly im¬ 
ported from Russia and Germany. 
Russia supplies the finest qualities, 
which are worth about $250 or $300 per 
cwt. 

BRIS'TOL, a cathedral city of Eng¬ 
land, a municipal, county, and pari, 
borough, situated partly in Gloucester¬ 
shire, partly in Somersetshire, but form¬ 
ing a county in itself. It stands at the 















BRISTOL-BOARD 


BRITAIN, OR GREAT BRITAIN 


confluence of the rivers Avon and 
Frome, which unite within the city, 
whence the combined stream (the Avon) 
pursues a course of nearly 7 miles to the 
Bristol Channel. The Avon is a naviga¬ 
ble river, and the tides rise in it to a great 
height. The public buildings are numer¬ 
ous and handsome, and the number of 
places of worship very great. The most 
notable of these are the cathedral, 
founded in 1142, exhibiting various styles 
of architecture, and recently restored 
and enlarged; St. Mary Redcliff, said 
to have been founded in 1293, and per¬ 
haps the finest parish church in the 
kingdom. Among the educational in¬ 
stitutions are the University College, 
the Theological Colleges of the Baptists 
and Independents, Clifton College, and 
the Philosophical Institute. There is 
a school of art, and also a public library. 
Bristol has glass-works, potteries, soap- 
works, tanneries, sugar-refineries, and 
chemical works, ship-building and ma¬ 
chinery yards. Coal is worked exten¬ 
sively within the limits of the borough. 
The export and import trade is large 
and varied. There is a harbor in the 
city itself, and docks at Avonmouth and 
Portishead. Bristol is one of the most 
healthful of the large towns of the 
kingdom. It has an excellent water 
supply, chiefly obtained from the Mendip 
Hills. Pop. 328,842. 

BRISTOL-BOARD, a fine kind of 
pasteboard, smooth, and sometimes 
glazed, on the surface. 

BRISTOL CHANNEL, an arm of the 
Altantic, extending between the south¬ 
ern shores of Wales and the south¬ 
western peninsula of England, and form¬ 
ing the continuation of the estuary of 
the Severn. It is remarkable for its 
high tides. 

BRITAIN, or GREAT BRITAIN, the 

island consisting of the three countries, 
England, Scotland, and Wales, the 
name being also used as equivalent to 
the British Islands collectively, or to 
the British Empire. Great Britain and 
Ireland, with their connected islands, 
form the United Kingdom of Great 
Britain and Ireland. 

The British Islands form a kind of 
archipelago in the northwest of Europe. 
The principal islands are Great Britain 
and Ireland, separated from each other 
by the Irish Sea, which, near the center, 
attains its greatest width of about 130 
miles; but between Holyhead in Wales 
and Howth Head in Ireland is not wider 
than 60 miles; while the distance be¬ 
tween the Mull of Cantyre in Scotland 
and Fair Head in Ireland is only about 
12 miles. Great Britain is the largest 
island in Europe, and the seventh 
largest in the world. Its nearest ap¬ 
proach to the continent of Europe is at 
its s.e. extremity, where the Strait of 
Dover, separating it from France, is 
only 21 miles broad. The British Isles 
rise from a submarine plateau connect¬ 
ing them geologically with the rest of 
Europe, of which at a remote period they 
must have actually formed a part. This 
is evidenced too by the similarity of the 
British fauna and flora to the conti¬ 
nental. 

The n. part of Britain is, for the most 
part, rugged, mountainous, and barren, 
this being the character of much of 


Scotland. The chief feature of the 
southern portion is the mountain mass 
of the Grampians, the culminating 
points of which, Bennevis and Benmac- 
dhui, are the highest British summits, 
being respectively 4406 and 4296 feet. 
South of the Highlands lies the plain 
of the Forth and Clyde, a region of coal 
and iron, in which the chief manufac¬ 
turing industries of Scotland are carried 
on. 

The mountains which constitute the 
principal watersheds of Great Britain 
being generally at no great distance 
from the w. coast, the rivers which 
descend from them in that direction 
have generally a short course, and are 
comparatively unimportant. The two 
great exceptions to this rule are the 
Clyde and the Severn, which owe both 
their volume and the length of their 
course to a series of longitudinal valleys, 
which, instead of opening directly to the 
coast, take a somewhat parallel direc¬ 
tion. The chief rivers entering the sea 
on the e. coast, proceeding from n. to s., 
are the Spey, Don, Dee, Tay, Forth, 
Tweed, Tyne, Ouse, Trent, and Thames, 
the last named in navigable importance 
the greatest river of the world. Owing 
to the great central flat of Ireland its 
rivers usually flow on in a gently wind¬ 
ing course in different directions to the 
sea. Those of importance are not very 
numerous; but one of them, the Shan¬ 
non, is the longest river of the British 
Isles, its length being about 225 miles; 
while the Thames is 215. 

Their maritime situation has a favor¬ 
able effect on the climate of the British 
Isles, making it milder and more equable 
than that of continental countries in 
the same latitude. 

The principal cereal crops grown in 
England are wheat, barley, and oats, 
oats now covering the largest area; the 
principal green crops are turnips, pota¬ 
toes, mangolds, vetches, etc. In Ireland 
and Scotland oats are by far the prin¬ 
cipal grain crop; by far the chief green 
crop being in Ireland potatoes, in Scot¬ 
land turnips. Hops are grown to a large 
extent in Kent, and less extensively in 
some other parts of southern England. 

Such is the mineral wealth of the Brit¬ 
ish Isles that there is scarcely a metal or 
mineral product of economical value 
which is not worked, to a greater or less 
extent, beneath their surface. Among 
these the first place is due to coal, which, 
in regard both to the quantity raised 
annually and its aggregate value, sur¬ 
passes any other mineral product. The 
coal-fields are not confined to one par¬ 
ticular district, but extend as a series of 
basins in an irregular curve from central 
Scotland through northern and middle 
England to the Bristol Channel. On the 
east side of Scotland there are coal¬ 
fields both north and south of the 
Forth; farther west lie the coal-basins 
of Lanark, Renfrew, and Ayrshire; the 
first famous throughout *the world for 
the immense manufacturing establish¬ 
ments which it mainly has called into 
existence and made prosperous. In the 
north of England is the great coal-field 
centering near Newcastle, which gives it 
its name. 

Britain, next to the U. States, is the 
most important commercial country. 


Its exports exceed 81,800,000,000 and 
its imports 82,900,000,000 annually. 
It has about 25,000 miles of railroad, of 
which upward of 20,000 belong to Eng¬ 
land and Wales. Its annual tonnage 
is about 110,000,000, and the number 
of its vessels about 20,000. Two-thirds 
of its tonnage is steam. 

Every form of religion enjoys the 
most complete toleration, but there are 
two churches, one in England having 
an Episcopal form of government, and 
one in Scotland with a Presbyterian 
organization, established by law and 
partly supported by state endowments. 
Both of these are Protestant. In Ire¬ 
land there has been no state church 
since 1871, when the branch of the Angli¬ 
can Church there established was dis¬ 
established. The great majority of the 
people are Roman Catholics. 

All education in England was long 
entirely voluntary. The average at¬ 
tendance is about 5,000,000. The ele¬ 
mentary schools number 3000, the 
average attendance being about 650,- 
000. Ireland is still far behind in the 
matter of education. 

For the higher education there are 
in England the universities of Oxford, 
Cambridge, London, Durham, Birming¬ 
ham, and Liverpool; Victoria Univer¬ 
sity, Manchester; the University of 
Wales; also colleges, some of them called 
“University colleges,” at Newcastle, 
Nottingham, Bristol, etc., besides in¬ 
stitutions giving a university education 
in one or more departments; the train¬ 
ing institutions for teachers; and the 
colleges belonging to the different 
religious bodies. London University, 
which till 1900 only held examinations 
and conferred degrees, is now a teach¬ 
ing institution, embracing University 
College, King’s College, etc. In Scot¬ 
land there are the universities of Edin¬ 
burgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, and St. 
Andrews, the last with a college at 
Dundee, St. Mungo’s College, Glasgow 
—theological colleges, normal schools, 
etc. Ireland has the University of Dub¬ 
lin, the Queen’s Colleges of Belfast, 
Cork, and Galway, in connection with 
the Royal University of Ireland, which 
is merely an examining and degree- 
conferring body; the Roman Catholic 
university, and Maynooth and other 
Roman Catholic colleges. 

The earliest inhabitants of the United 
Kingdom known to history were Celts, 
who inhabited both Great Britain and 
Ireland at the time of the Roman 
occupation. In the 5th and 6th centu¬ 
ries, however, the Celts were displaced 
through the greater part of South 
Britain and in the eastern lowlands of 
North Britain by the Anglo-Saxons, a 
Teutonic race from which the modern 
English and Lowland Scotch are mainly 
descended. The Celts as a distinct peo¬ 
ple were gradually confined to the moun¬ 
tainous districts of Wales and Cornwall 
and the Highlands of Scotland, and only 
in Wales and Scotland has the Celtic 
language survived in Great Britain, be¬ 
ing still also spoken by many in the 
west of Ireland. There is a considerable 
Celtic element, however, among the 
population everywhere. The English 
language is the direct descendant of that 
spoken by the Anglo-Saxons, but con- 




BRITANNIA 


BRITISH COLUMBIA 


tains a strong infusion of French ele¬ 
ments introduced by the Normans in 
the 11th and following centuries, as well 
as other elements, chiefly of Latin and 
Greek origin, introduced in later times. 
The population is as follows: England 
32,526,075; Wales, 4,471,957; Ireland, 
4,456,546; islands, 150,000; total, 41,- 
605,599. 

The area of the British empire is about 
11,435,283 sq. miles, with a popula¬ 
tion of about 393,000,000, distributed 
as follows: British Isles and posses¬ 
sions in Europe (Gibraltar, Malta, and 
Gozo), area, 121,000 sq. miles; pop. 
about 41,605,000; British India and 
feudatory states, Ceylon, Straits Settle¬ 
ments, Hong Kong, etc., in Asia; area, 
1,900,000, pop. about 295,000,000; Cape 
Colony, Natal, Bechuanaland, Sierra 
Leone, Mauritius, St. Helena, protec¬ 
torates and other African possessions, 
2,500,000 sq. miles; pop. estimated 40,- 
000,000; Canada, Newfoundland, Ja¬ 
maica, Trinidad, and other West India 
islands; Honduras, Guiana, and all pos¬ 
sessions in America, North or South, 
3,648,000 sq. miles; pop. 6,790,000; 
Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, Fiji, 
New Guinea, islands in the Pacific, etc.; 
area, 3,270,000 sq. miles; pop. about 
4,285,000. The increase of some of the 
British colonies, especially of Canada 
and Australia, in population, wealth, 
and trade has been somet hing prodigious 
within the last few years. Self-govern¬ 
ment has been conceded to the larger 
colonies. 

Under the name of a constitutional 
and hereditary monarchy the govern¬ 
ment of Britain is vested in a sovereign 
and the two houses of parliament—the 
House of Lords and the House of Com¬ 
mons. Laws passed by these houses, 
and assented to by the sovereign, be¬ 
come the laws of the land. But under 
this general fixity of form the center of 
real power may change greatly, as it has 
in Great Britain within the last two 
centuries. The sovereign’s right of veto 
on acts of parliament has practically 
passed into desuetude, while of the two 
legislative houses the House of Com¬ 
mons, from its being the expression of 
the national will as a whole, has become 
the real center of power and influence. 

The British army has a total (peace 
footing) of 270,128 men, 42,140 horses, 
and 984 guns. It has a war footing of 
1,315,000 men, 98,040 horses, and 
1764 guns. The British navy consists 
■of 40 first-class battle-ships, 20 second- 
class battle-ships, 7 coast defense ships, 
24 armored cruisers, 147 other cruisers, 
97 sea-going gunboats, 18 river gun¬ 
boats, 149 torpedo boat destroyers, 
188 torpedo boats, 383 transports and 
other service boats, 29 training ships, 
6740 officers, and 124,930 men. 

The island in the remotest times bore 
the name of Albion. From a very early 
period it was visited by Phoenicians, Car¬ 
thaginians, and Greeks, for the purpose 
of obtaining tin. Caesar’s two expedi¬ 
tions, 55 and 54 b.c., made it known 
to the Romans, by whom it was gen¬ 
erally called Britannia; but it was not 
till the time of Claudius, nearly a hundred 
years after, that the Romans made a 
serious attempt to convert Britain into 
a Roman province. Some forty years 


later, under Agricola, the ablest of the 
Roman generals in Britain, they had 
extended the limits of the Provincia 
Romana as far as the line of the Forth 
and the Clyde. Here the Roman armies 
came into contact with the Caledonians 
of the interior, described by Tacitus as 
large-limbed, red-haired men. After 
defeating the Caledonians under Gal- 
gacus at “Mons Grampius” Agricola 
marched victoriously northward as far as 
the Moray Firth, establishing stations 
and camps, remains of which are still to 
be seen. But the Romans were unable 
to retain their conquests in the northern 
part of the island, and were finally 
forced to abandon their northern wall 
and forts between the Clyde and the 
Forth and retire behind their second 
wall, built in 120 a.d. by Hadrian, be¬ 
tween the Solway and the Tyne. Thus 
the southern part of the island alone 
remained Roman, and became specially 
known as Britannia, while the northern 
portion was distinctively called Cale¬ 
donia. The capital of Roman Britain 
was York (Eboracum). Under the rule 
of the Romans many flourishing towns 
arose. Great roads were made, travers¬ 
ing the whole country and helping very 
much to develop its industries. Chris¬ 
tianity was also introduced, and took 
the place of the Druidism of the native 
British. Under the tuition of the 
Romans the useful arts and even many 
of the refinements of fife found their 
way into the southern part of the island. 

British history since the Norman con¬ 
quest is really a history of the progress 
of the world since that time in the arts 
and the sciences. The principal events 
of its external political history are the 
war of the grand alliance in which the 
Duke of Marlborough commanded the 
British army and which ended in the 
peace of Utrecht in 1713; the loss of 
the American colonies, the consolida¬ 
tion of the Canadian colonies, the Napo¬ 
leonic wars, the acquisition of India, 
Australia, and parts of Africa, and the 
gradual territorial growth of the empire, 
the extent of which is described above. 

In 1900 the Unionist government 
appealed to the country on their South 
African War policy, and received a 
majority of over 130. Queen Victoria 
died on Jan. 22,1901, and was succeeded 
by her eldest son Edward VII. In May, 
1902, the South African War ended, and 
Lord Salisbury soon afterward resigned 
the premiership to Mr. A. J. Balfour. 
Edward VII. was crowned in Westmin¬ 
ster Abbey on Aug. 9, 1902. In 1906 
Sir Campbell-Bannerman became pre¬ 
mier, and on his retirement in 1908, 
owing to ill health, the premiership was 
assumed by Herbert H. Asquith. 

BRITANNIA, the ancient name of 
Britain. 

BRITANNIA METAL, also called 
White Metal, a metallic compound or 
alloy of tin, with a little copper and 
antimony, used chiefly for tea-pots, 
spoons, etc. The general proportions are 
85J tin, 10J antimony, 3 zinc, and 1 
copper. 

BRITANNIA TUBULAR BRIDGE, an 

iron tubular bridge across Menai Strait, 
which separates Anglesey from Wales, 
about one mile from the Menai Suspen¬ 
sion Bridge. It has two principal spans 


of 460 feet each over the water, and two 
smaller ones of 230 feet each over the 
land; constructed 1846-50. See Bridge. 

BRITAN'NICUS, son of the Roman 
Emperor Claudius, by Messalina, born 
a.d. 42, poisoned a.d. 56. He was passed 
over by his father for the son of his new 
wife Agrippina. This son became the 
emperor Nero, whose fears that he 
might be displaced by the natural suc¬ 
cessor of the late emperor caused him to 
murder Britannicus. 

BRITISH CHANNEL. See English 
Channel. 

BRITISH COLUMBIA, a British col¬ 
ony forming with Vancouver Island a 
province of the Dominion of Canada. 
It is situated partly between the Rocky 
Mountains and the sea, partly between 
Alaska and the meridian of 120° w., and 
extends from the U. States boundary 
north to the 60th parallel n. lat. Area, 
341,305 sq. miles (including Vancouver 
Island). Till 1858 it was part of the 
Hudson Bay Territory; in that year 
gold discoveries brought settlers, and 
it became a colony. Vancouver Island, 
16,000 sq. miles, became a colony at the 
same time, but was afterward joined 
to British Columbia; the conjoined 
colony entered the Dominion in 1871. 
The coast-line is much indented, and ia 
flanked by numerous islands, the Queen 
Charlotte Islands being the chief after 
Vancouver. The interior is mountain¬ 
ous, being traversed by the Cascade 
Mountains near the coast, and by the 
Rocky Mountains farther west. There 
are numerous lakes, generally long and 
narrow, and lying in the deep ravines 
that form a feature of the surface and 
are traversed by numerous rivers. Of 
these the Fraser, with its tributary the 
Thomson, belongs entirely to the colony, 
as does also the Skeena; while the upper 
courses of the Peace river and of the 
Columbia also belong to it. All except 
the Peace find their way to the Pacific. 
Its mountain ranges (highest summits: 
Mount Hooker, 15,700 feet, and Mount 
Brown, 16,000 feet) afford magnificent 
timber (including the Douglas pine and 
many other trees); and between the 
ranges are wide grassy prairies. Part 
of the interior is so dry in summer as 
to render irrigation necessary, and the 
arable land is comparatively limited in 
area, but there is a vast extent of splen¬ 
did pasture land. The climate is mild 
in the lower valleys, but severe in the 
higher levels; it is very healthful. The 
chief products of the colony are gold, 
coal, silver, iron, copper, galena, mer¬ 
cury, and other metals; timber, furs, 
and fish, the last, particularly salmon, 
being very abundant in the streams and 
on the coasts. Gold exists almost every¬ 
where, but has been obtained chiefly 
in the Cariboo district. The total yield 
since 1858 has been over $75,000,000. 
The coal is found chiefly in Vancouver 
Island, and is mined at Nanaimo, where 
large quantities are now raised. Mining, 
cattle-rearing, agriculture, fruit-grow¬ 
ing, salmon-canning, and lumbering are 
the chief industries. Victoria, on the 
s.e. coast of Vancouver Island, is the 
capital and chief town of the colony. 
Near Victoria is Esquimalt, a British 
naval station. New Westminster, on 
, the Fraser river, about 15 miles from 






BRITISH HONDURAS 


BROMINE 


its mouth, is a place of some importance; 
but the new town Vancouver, the ter¬ 
minus of the Canadian Pacific Railway, 
at the mouth of the Fraser, is the chief 
town on the mainland (pop. 17,000). 
Besides this railway there is one between 
Nanaimo and Victoria. Steamers now 
run to China and Japan in connection 
with the Canadian Pacific Railway, and 
lines to Australia and India are pro¬ 
jected. Like the other provinces of the 
Dominion, British Columbia has a 
separate parliament and administration, 
with a lieutenant-governor of its own. 
(See Canada.) Schools are supported 
entirely by government. Pop. in 1881, 
65,954, including about 25,000 Indians; 
in 1891, 98,173; in 1901, 177,272. 

BRITISH HONDURAS. See Hon¬ 
duras, British. 

BRITISH MUSEUM, the great na¬ 
tional museum in London, owes its 
foundation to Sir Hans Sloane, who, in 
1753, bequeathed his various collec¬ 
tions, including 50,000 books and MSS., 
to the nation. Montague House was 
appropriated for the museum, which 
was first opened on the 15th January, 
1759. The Museum is under the man¬ 
agement of 48 trustees. It is open 
daily, free of charge. Admission to the 
reading-room as a regular reader is by 
ticket, procurable on application to the 
chief librarian, there being certain 
simple conditions attached. The li¬ 
brary, which is now one of the largest 
and most valuable in the world, has 
been enriched by numerous bequests 
and gifts, among others the splendid 
library collected by George III. during 
his long reign. A copy of every book, 
pamphlet, newspaper, piece of music, 
etc., published anywhere in British 
territory, must be conveyed free of 
charge to the British Museum. The 
museum contains eight principal de¬ 
partments; namely, the department of 
printed books, maps, charts, plans, etc.; 
the department of manuscripts; the 
department of natural history; the 
department of oriental antiquities; the 
department of Greek and Roman an¬ 
tiquities; the department of coins and 
medals; the department of British 
and medieval antiquities and ethnog¬ 
raphy; and the department of prints 
and drawings. 

BRITISH NORTH AMERICA, a name 
under which are included the Dominion 
of Canada and the colony of Newfound¬ 
land, comprising all the mainland north 
of the U. States (except Alaska) and a 
great many islands. 

BRITTANY, or BRETAGNE, an an¬ 
cient duchy and province of France, 
corresponding nearly to the modern 
departments of Finisterre, Cotes du 
Nord, Morbihan, Me et Vilaine, Loire 
Inf4rieure. It is supposed to have 
received its name from the Britons who 
were expelled from England and took 
refuge here in the 5th century. Along 
the coast and toward its seaward 
extremity the country is remarkably 
rugged, but elsewhere there are many 
beautiful and fertile tracts. Fisheries 
employ many of the inhabitants. The 
people still retain their ancient language, 
which is closely allied to the Welsh, and 
is exclusively used by the peasantry in 
the western part of the province. 


BRI'ZA, a genus of grasses, commonly 
called quaking grass, maiden’s hair, or 
lady’s tresses. There are about thirty 
species, chiefly found in South America. 

BROAD ARROW, a government mark 
placed on British stores of every de¬ 
scription (as well as on some other 
things) to distinguish them as public or 
crown property, and to obliterate or 
deface which is felony. Persons in pos¬ 
session of goods marked with the broad 
arrow forfeit the goods and are subject 
to a penalty. The origin of the mark is 
not clearly known. 

BROAD'CAST, a mode of sowing 
grain by which the seed is cast or dis¬ 
persed upon the ground wfith the hand 
or with a machine devised for sowing 
in this manner; opposed to planting 
in drills or rows. 

BROAD CHURCH, a name given 
originally to a party in the Church of 
England, assuming to be midway be¬ 
tween the Low Church or Evangelical 
section and the High Church or Ritual¬ 
istic; now widely applied to the more 
tolerent and liberal section of any 
denomination. 

BROAD'SIDE, in a naval engagement, 
the whole discharge of the artillery on 
one side of a ship of war. The term is 
also applied to any large page printed 
on one side of a sheet of paper, and, 
strictly, not divided into columns. 

BROAD'SWORD, a sword with a 
broad blade, designed chiefly for cut¬ 
ting, formerly used by some regiments 
of cavalry and Highland infantry in the 
British service. The claymore or broad¬ 
sword was the national weapon of the 
Highlanders. 

BROADWAY, the leading thorough¬ 
fare of New York City. It begins at 
Bowling Green, near the southern point 
of Manhattan Island, and runs diag¬ 
onally through the city to Central 
Park, and then by extension to the 
northern part of Manhattan. It con¬ 
tains many of the largest theaters, 
hotels, and retail shops, and is one 
of the busiest thoroughfares in the 
w'orld. 

BROCADE', a stuff of silk, enriched 
with raised flowers, foliage, or other 
ornaments. The term is restricted to 
silks figured in the loom, distinguished 
from those which are embroidered after 
being woven. Brocade is in silk what 
damask is in linen or wool. 

BROD'HEAD, John Romeyn, Amer¬ 
ican historian, born in Philadelphia in 
1814, died in 1873. His principal work 
is his History of the State of New York, 
published 1853-71. 

BROGUE (brog), a coarse and light 
kind of shoe made of raw or half-tanned 
leather, of one entire piece, and gath¬ 
ered round the foot by a thong, for¬ 
merly worn in Ireland and the High¬ 
lands of Scotland. The term is also 
used of the mode of pronunciation 
peculiar to the Irish. 

BROKE, Sir Philip Bowes Vere, a 
British admiral, born in 1776, died in 
1841; distinguished himself, particularly 
in 1813, as commander of the Shannon, 
in the. memorable action which that 
vessel, in answer to a regular challenge, 
fought with the U. States vessel Chesa¬ 
peake off the American coast, and in 
which the latter was captured. 


BROKEN-WIND, a disease in horses, 

often accompanied with an enlarge¬ 
ment of the lungs and heart, which dis¬ 
ables them for bearing fatigue. In this 
disease the expiration of the air from 
the lungs occupies double the time that 
the inspiration of it does; it requires also 
two efforts rapidly succeeding to each 
other, attended by a slight spasmodic 
action, in order fully to accomplish it. 
It is caused by rupture of the air-cells, 
and there is no known cure for it. 

BROKER, an agent who is employed 
to conclude bargains or transact busi¬ 
ness for others in consideration of a 
charge or compensation, which is usually 
in proportion to the extent or value of 
the transaction completed by him, and 
is called brokerage. In large mercantile 
communities the business of each broker 
is usually limited to a particular class 
of transactions, and thus there are bro¬ 
kers with several distinctive names, as 
bill-brokers, who buy and sell bills of 
exchange for others; insurance-brokers, 
who negotiate between underwriters 
and the owners of vessels and shippers 
of goods; ship-brokers, who are the 
agents of owners of vessels in chartering 
them to merchants or procuring freights 
for them from one part to another; 
stock-brokers, the agents of dealers in 
shares of joint-stock companies, govern¬ 
ment securities, and other monetary 
investments. 

BROM'BERG, a town of Prussia, 
province of Posen, on the Brahe, near 
its confluence with the Vistula. Among 
its industries are machinery, iron- 
founding, tanning, paper, tobacco, chic¬ 
ory, pottery, distilling, and brewing. 
The Bromberg Canal connects the Brahe 
with the Netz, and thus establishes 
communication between the Vistula, 
the Oder, and the Elbe. Pop. 52,154. 

BROMELIA' CEA£, the pineapple 
family, a natural order of endogenous 
plants, taking its name from the genus 
Bromelia (so called after a Swedish bo¬ 
tanist, Olaus Bromel), to which the 
pineapple was once incorrectly referred, 
and consisting of herbaceous plants re¬ 
markable for the hardness and dryness 
of their gray foliage. They abound in 
tropical America, commonly growing 
epiphytically on the branches of trees. 
With the exception of the pineapple the 
Bromeliaceae are of little value, but 
some species are cultivated in hot-houses 
for the beauty of their flowers. They 
can exist in dry hot air without contact 
with the earth, and in hot-houses are 
often kept hung in moist moss. 

BROMIDES, certain salts consisting 
of hydrobromic acid united with an¬ 
other substance such as a metal, or 
metallic salts. Bromides, especially the 
bromide of potassium, are used exten¬ 
sively in medicine 

BRO'MINE, a non-metallic element 
discovered in 1826. In its general chem¬ 
ical properties it much resembles chlo¬ 
rine and iodine, and is generally asso¬ 
ciated with them It exists, but in very 
minute quantities, in sea-water, in the 
ashes of marine plants, in animals, and 
in some salt springs. It is usually ex¬ 
tracted from bittern by the agency of 
chlorine. At common temperatures it 
is a very dark reddish liquid of a 
powerful and suffocating odor, and 




BRONCHI 


BROOKLYN 


emitting red vapor. It has bleaching 
powers like chlorine, and is very poison¬ 
ous. Its density is about four and a 
half times that of water. It combines 
with hydrogen to form hydrobromic 
acid gas. With oxygen and hydrogen 
it forms bromic acid.—Bromide of 
potassium has sedative and other prop¬ 
erties, and is used in medicine (scrofula, 
goiter, rheumatism, etc.); bromide of 
silver is used in photography. 

BRON'CHI (-ki), the two branches 
into which the trachea or wind-pipe 
divides in the chest, one going to the 



Bronchi and their ramifications. 


right lung, the other to the left, and 
ramifying into innumerable smaller 
tubes—the bronchial tubes. 

BRONCHITIS (bron-ki'tis), an inflam¬ 
mation of the mucous membrane of the 
bronchial tubes, or the air-passages 
leading from the trachea to the lungs. 
(See Bronchi.) It is of common occur¬ 
rence, and may be either acute or 
chronic. Its symptons are those of a 
feverish cold, such as headache, lassi¬ 
tude, and an occasional cough, which 
are succeeded by a more frequent cough 
occurring in paroxysms, a spit of yellow¬ 
ish mucus, and a feeling of great oppres¬ 
sion on the chest. Slight attacks of 
acute bronchitis are frequent and not 
very dangerous. They may be treated 
with mustard poultices or fomentations. 
Acute bronchitis is often a formidable 
malady, and requires prompt treatment. 
Confirmed chronic bronchitis is hardly 
amenable to medical treatment. Its 
main symptoms are cough, shortness of 
breath, and spit. It is particularly apt 
to attack a person in winter; and in the 
end may cause death through the lungs 
becoming unable to do their work, and 
through accompanying complications. 

BRON'TE, Charlotte (afterward Mrs. 
Nicholls), English novelist, born at 
Thornton, in Yorkshire, 21st April, 1816; 
died at Haworth, 31st March, 1855. 
The success of Jane Eyre, which was 
published in October, 1847, was imme¬ 
diate and decided. Her second novel, 
Shirley, appeared in 1849. In the au¬ 
tumn of 1852 her third novel, Villette, 
was published. Shortly after, she mar¬ 
ried her father’s curate, the Rev. Arthur 
Bell Nicholls, but in nine months died 
of consumption. Her originally rejected 
tale of The Professor was published after 
her death, in 1857, and the same year a 
biography of her appeared from the pen 
of Mrs. Gaskell. 


BRONTOSAU'RUS, a gigantic rep¬ 
tilian animal, of the order Dinosauria, 
found fossil in secondary strata of the 
Rocky Mountains, having a long neck 
and tail, a very small head, and strong 
limbs. It seems to have lived in 
swampy localities, and to have been 
herbivorous. Living it must have 
weighed between 20 and 30 tons. 

BRONZE is an alloy of copper and tin, 
to which other metallic substances are 
sometimes added, especially zinc. It is 
a fine-grained metal, taking a smooth 
and polished surface, harder and more 
fusible than copper, but not so malle¬ 
able. In various parts of the world 
weapons and implements were made of 
this alloy before iron came into use, and 
hence the bronze age is regarded as one 
coming between the stone age and the 
iron age of prehistoric archaeology. (See 
Archaeology.) Both in ancient and mod- 
iern times it has been much used in mak¬ 
ing casts of all kinds, metals, bas-reliefs, 
statues, and other works of art; and 
varieties of it are also used for bells, 
gongs, reflectors of telescopes, cannon, 
etc. Its color is reddish, brownish, or 
olive-green, and is darkened by exposure 
to the atmosphere. Ancient bronze 
generally contains from 4 to 15 per cent 
of tin. An alloy of about 85 parts cop¬ 
per, 11 zinc, and 4 tin is used for statues. 
Bell-metal consists of 78 of copper and 
22 of tin. An alloy called phosphor 
bronze, consisting of about 90 per cent 
of copper, 9 of tin, and from ' 5 to *75 of 
phosphorus has been found to have pe¬ 
culiar advantages for certain purposes. 
The addition of phosphorus increases the 
homogeneousness of the compound, and 
by varying the proportion of the constit¬ 
uents the hardness, tenacity, and elas¬ 
ticity of the alloy may be modified at 
pleasure.—Aluminium bronze is an alloy 
of copper and aluminium, the metals 
being combined in different proportions 
according to the kind of bronze wanted. 
One variety is of a yellow or golden color, 
and is made into watch-chains and orna¬ 
mental articles.—Manganese bronze is a 
bronze containing manganese and iron, 
and is said to possess remarkable prop¬ 
erties in regard to strength, hardness, 
toughness, etc.—Bronzing is the oper¬ 
ation of covering articles with a wash 
or coating to give them the appearance 
of bronze. Two kinds are common, the 
yellow and the red. The yellow is made 
of fine copper dust, the red of copper 
dust with a little pulverized red ocher. 
The fine green tint which bronze ac¬ 
quires by oxidization, called patina an- 
tiqua, is imitated by an application of 
sal-ammoniac and salt of sorrel dissolved 
in vinegar. Recently bronze has been 
deposited on small statues and other 
articles with good effect by means of 
the electrotype process. 

BRONZING. See Bronze. 

BROOCH (broch), a kind of orna¬ 
ment worn on the dress, to which it is 
attached by a pin stuck through the fab¬ 
ric. They are usually of gold or silver, 
often worked in highly artistic patterns 
and set with precious stones. Brooches 
are of great antiquity, and were for¬ 
merly worn by men as well as women, 
especially among the Celtic races. 

BROOK FARM, a community at West 
Roxbury, Mass., founded by George 


Ripley to test the socialistic doctrines 
of Fourier. Among the members were 
George W. Curtis, Nathaniel Hawthorne, 
Charles H. Dana, and Margaret Fuller. 
Hawthorne based his story “The Blithe- 
dale Romance” on Brook Farm. The 
community fell to pieces after a short 
life. 

BROOKLYN, a borough of New York 
City, formerly a city in Long Island on 
Long Island Sound. Population, 1906, 
1,500,000. It consists of an aggregation 
of villages which have gradually grown 
together to form a vast city, and that 
is why the streets have no uniformity 
of plan. The park system of Brooklyn 
consists of 36 parks, with a combined 
area of 1566£ acres, and 22 parkways, 
42J miles in length. The principal 
park is Prospect; area, 516£ acres. 
It is on the highest ground in the city, 
and includes 110 acres of woodland. 
Fort Greene Park, 30 acres of beautiful 
grounds, is less than half a mile from the 
Borough Hall. Here 11,000 victims of 
the Revolutionary War prison ships are 
entombed. The Soldiers and Sailors’ 
Memorial Arch on Prospect Park Plaza, 
dedicated in 1892, is of white marble; 
the bas-reliefs are by Maurice J. Power. 
Six cemeteries lie wholly or partly in 
Brooklyn, and others are j'ust beyond 
the borough boundary in Queens. 
Greenwood, southwest of Prospect Park, 
has an area of 474 acres, and is widely 
known for the beauty of its ground and 
monuments. Other cemeteries within 
Brooklyn’s boundaries are Evergreens, 
Holy Cross, Kings County Farm (Pot¬ 
ter’s Field), Maimonides Cemetery, 7£ 
acres; Mount Hope, 12 acres; Washing¬ 
ton Cemetery, on Ocean Parkway. The 
suspension-bridge over the East river 
was commenced Jan. 2, 1870. The first 
wire was runout May 29, 1877, and the 
bridge was opened to the public May 24, 
1883. The bridge railroad was opened 
Sept. 24,1883. Total length, with exten¬ 
sions, 6537 feet. The original cost of 
construction was $15,000,000. 

Brooklyn is called “the city of 
churches.” There are 400 Protestant 
churches, with a total indebtedness of 
$1,863,700, and property valued at 
$169,923,681. There are 84 Roman 
Catholic churches, with property to the 
value of $10,086,000, indebted to the 
extent of $1,342,859. There are 75 
religious societies and Young Men’s 
Christian Associations, besides church 
societies, 100 city missionaries, 31 mis¬ 
sions, 10 Chinese missions, 41 church 
sewing and industrial schools, 19 church 
kindergartens, and 19 free church read¬ 
ing-rooms. There are 6 high-schools, a 
training-school for teachers, 122 day 
and 16 evening schools, 10 industrial 
and asylum schools, and a truant school. 
There are 23 libraries, having an aggre¬ 
gate of more than 480,000 volumes, of 
which 208,445 volumes are also in free 
circulation. Brooklyn has developed 
an extensive commerce. The wharves 
and docks of the city nave a water 
frontage of more than 25 miles, lined 
with great storehouses and elevators, 
and represent an investment of hun¬ 
dreds of millions of dollars. Ninety per 
cent of the coffee and sugar imported 
into the U. States is received there. 
Thirty-three regular lines of steamships. 






BROOKS 


BROWN 


and a great number of “tramp” steam¬ 
ers and sailing vessels, dock in Brooklyn. 
Along the water-front are also extensive 
basins, one covering 40 acres and ac¬ 
commodating 500 vessels at one time, 
ship-yards, dry-docks, and marine rail¬ 
ways. Here also is the Brooklyn Navy- 
yard, the most important station in the 
TJ. States, where four-fifths of the stores 
for the entire navy are handled, and 
war-ships repaired and fitted for sea. 
Pop. 1909, 1,492,970. See New York. 

BROOKS, Phillips, a noted American 
Protestant Episcopal bishop and preach¬ 
er, born in Boston Dec. 13, 1835, died 
in 1893. He served in charges at Phila¬ 
delphia and Boston, and was elected 
bisnop of Massachusetts in 1891. His 
works are: Lectures on Preaching, The 
Influence of Jesus, and several volumes 
of sermons. His nymn, O, Little Town 
of Bethlehem, is one of the most popular 
Christmas hymns of the church. 

BROOKS, Preston Smith, an Ameri¬ 
can lawyer and legislator, born in South 
Carolina in 1819, died in 1857. He 
served as congressman from 1852 to 
1856. On May 22, 1856, he assaulted 
Senator Charles Sumner while the latter 
was at his desk in the senate chamber, 
the alleged offense being Sumner’s 
arraignment of South Carolina in his 
famous speech on the “Crime of Kan¬ 
sas,” delivered a few days previously. 

BROOM, a popular name which in¬ 
cludes several allied genera of plants 
distinguished by a leguminous fruit and 
papilionaceous flowers. The common 
broom of Europe is a bushy shrub with 
straight angular branches, of a dark- 
green color, deciduous leaves, and 
flowers of a deep golden yellow. Its 
twigs are often made into brooms, and 
are used as thatch for houses and corn- 
stacks. They have also been used for 
tanning. The whole plant has a very 
bitter taste, and a decoction of it is 
diuretic, in strong doses emetic.—White 
broom or Portugal broom has beautiful 
white flowers.—Spanish broom or Spart 
is an ornamental flowering shrub grow¬ 
ing in Africa, Spain, Italy, and the s. of 
France. It has upright, round branches, 
that flower at the top, and spear-shaped 
leaves. Its fiber is made into various 
textile fabrics, and is also used in paper¬ 
making.—Dyer’s broom yields a yellow 
color used in dyeing.—Butcher’s broom 
is an evergreen shrub of the order 
Liliacese, and therefore entirely different 
from the brooms proper. 

BROOM-CORN, BROOM-GRASS, a 
plant of the order of grasses, with a 
jointed stem, rising to the height of 8 
or 10 feet, extensively cultivated in N. 
America, where the branched panicles 
are made into carpet-brooms and clothes- 
brushes. The seed is used for feeding 
poultry, cattle, etc. 

BROTH, the liquor in which some 
kind of flesh is boiled and macerated, 
often with certain vegetables, to give it 
a better relish. Beef-tea is a kind of 
broth. Scotch broth is a kind of soup 
in which pot-barley is an ingredient. 

BROTHERHOODS. See Fraternities. 

BROTHERS, a term applied to the 
members of monastic and military 
orders as being united in one family. 
Lay brothers were an inferior class of 


monks employed in monasteries as 
servants. Though not in holy orders, 
they were bound by monastic rules. 

BROUGH, John, a'n American gov¬ 
ernor and politician, born in Ohio in 
1811, died in 1865. He is known as 
“the war governor of Ohio.” 

BROUGHAM (brom or bro'em), a 
close four-wheeled carriage, with a single 
inside seat for two persons, glazed in 
front and with a raised driver’s seat, 
named after and apparently invented 
by Lord Brougham. 

BROUGHAM (brom or bro'em), 
Henry, Baron Brougham and Vaux, 
was born at Edinburgh 19th September, 
1778; died at Cannes 7th May, 1868. 
He was educated at Edinburgh, studied 
law there, and was admitted a member 
of the Society of Advocates in 1800. 
Along with Jeffrey, Horner, and Sydney 
Smith, he bore a chief part in the start- 



Lord Brougham. 


ing of the Edinburgh Review in 1802, 
to which he contributed a great number 
of articles. Finding too circumscribed 
a field for his abilities in Edinburgh he 
removed to London, and in 1808 was 
called to the English bar. In 1810 he 
entered parliament as member for the 
borough of Camelford, joined the Whig 
party, which was in opposition, and 
soon after obtained the passing of a 
measure making the slave-trade felony. 
At the general election of 1830 he was 
returned for the large and important 
county of York. In the ministry of Earl 
Grey he accepted the post of lord- 
chancellor, and was raised to the peerage 
(22d Nov. 1830), with the title of Baron 
Brougham and Vaux. In this post he 
distinguished himself as a law reformer, 
and aided greatly in the passing of the 
Reform Bill of 1832. Lord Brougham 
accomplished a large amount of literary 
work, contributing to newspapers, re¬ 
views, and encyclopedias, besides writ¬ 
ing several independent works; and he 
had no mean reputation in mathematics 
and physical science. 

BROUGHTON (br^'tun), John Cam 
Hobhouse, Lord, English writer and 
statesman; born 1786, died 1869. He 
entered parliament in 1819 as member 
for Westminster. In 1832 he entered 
Lord Melbourne’s ministry as secretary 
at war, and became a privy-councilor. 
In 1833 he was made chief-secretary for 
Ireland, and in 1835 he was appointed 
president of the board of control. He 


held this office till Sept., 1841, and in 
Lord Russell’s administration, 1846-52. 
He was raised to the peerage as Baron 
Broughton in 1851. 

BROUSSONET (bro-so-na), Pierre 
Marie Auguste, French naturalist, born 
1761, died 1807. He was professor of 
botany at Montpellier, and a member of 
the Academy of Sciences. 

BROWN, a color which may be re¬ 
garded as a mixture of red and black, or 
of red, black, and yellow. There are 
various brown pigments, mostly of min¬ 
eral origin, as bister, umber, cappagh 
brown, etc. 

BROWN, Charles Brockden, an emi¬ 
nent American novelist, was born in 
Philadelphia in 1771, died 1810. He 
was originator of the Monthly Magazine 
and American Review (1799-1800). He 
also founded in 1805 the Literary Maga¬ 
zine and American Register, which he 
edited for five years. 

BROWN, John, an American oppo¬ 
nent of slavery, born 1800, hanged 1859. 
He early conceived a hatred for slavery, 
and having removed to Osawatomie, 
Kansas, in 1855, he took an active part 
against the pro-slavery party, the sla¬ 
very question there giving rise already 
almost to a civil war. In the summer of 
1859 he rented a farmhouse about 6 
miles from Harper’s Ferry, and organ¬ 
ized a plot to liberate the slaves of Vir¬ 
ginia. On Oct. 16 he, with the aid of 
about twenty friends, surprised and 
captured the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, 
but was wounded and taken prisoner by 
the Virginia militia next day, tried, and 
executed at Charlestown, 2d Dec. 

BROWN, Robert, botanist, born at 
Montrose, December 21, 1773; died in 
London June 10, 1858. In 1800 he was 
appointed naturalist to Flinders’s sur¬ 
veying expedition to Australia. He 
returned with nearly 4000 species of 
plants, and was shortly after appointed 
librarian to the Linnaean Society. He 
was the first English writer on botany 
who adopted the natural system of 
classification, which has since entirely 
superseded that of Linnaeus. In 1810 
he received the charge of the collections 
and library of Sir Joseph Banks. He 
transferred them in 1827 to the British 
Museum, and was appointed keeper of 
botany in that institution. He became 
a fellow of the Royal Society in 1811, 
D.C.L. Oxford in 1832, and a foreign 
associate of the French Academy of 
Sciences in 1833. He had the Copley 
medal in 1839, and was appointed pres¬ 
ident of the Linnaean Society in 1849 
As a naturalist Brown occupied the very 
highest rank among men of science. 

BROWN, Dr. Thomas, Scotch meta¬ 
physician, was born at Kirkmabreck, 
Kirkcudbright, in 1778; died at Bromp- 
ton, London, 1820 He distinguished 
himself, at a very early age, by an acute 
review of the medical and physiological 
theories of Dr. Darwin, in a work en¬ 
titled Observations on Darwin’s Zoono- 
mia. He published some indifferent 
poems which were collected in 1820 
But he chiefly deserves notice on account 
of his metaphysical speculations, his 
chief work being Lectures on the Phi¬ 
losophy o* the Human Mind, 1822. His 
system reduces the intellectual faculties 
to three great classes—perception, sim- 





BROWN UNIVERSITY 


BRUCINE 


pie suggestion, and relative suggestion; 
employing the term suggestion as nearly 
synonymous with association. He held 
original views in regard to the part 
played by touch and the muscular sense 
in relation to belief in an external world. 
His development of the theory of cause 
and effect was first suggested by Hume. 

BROWN UNIVERSITY, founded at 
Providence, R. I., in 1765, and named 
for Nicholas Brown, one of its sup¬ 
porters. The university confers degrees 
in art, science, and philosophy. It has 
an endowment of nearly $2,000,000,100 
instructors and a student body of near¬ 
ly 1000. The libraries contain 120,000 
volumes. The school is open, in all 
departments, to women. 

BROWNE, Charles Farrar, an Amer¬ 
ican humorist, best known as “Artemus 
Ward,” was born at Waterford, Maine, 
1836; died at Southampton, England, 
1867. Originally a printer, he became 
editor of papers in Ohio, where his hu¬ 
morous fetters became very popular. 
He subsequently lectured on California 
and Utah in the States and in England, 
where he contributed to Punch. His 
writings consist of letters and papers by 
“Artemus Ward,” a pretended exhibitor 
of wax figures and wild beasts, and are 
full of drollery and eccentricity. 

BROWNE, Francis Fisher, an Ameri¬ 
can poet and critic, born in South Hali¬ 
fax, Vt., 1843. He has edited several 
literary publications, including The Dial, 
of whicn he has been the editor since 
1880. He has published several col¬ 
lections of poems. 

BROWNE, Hablot Knight, an Eng¬ 
lish designer of humorous and satirical 
subjects, and an etcher of considerable 
skill, better known by the pseudonym 
of “Phiz,” born at Kennington, Sur¬ 
rey, 1815, died at Brighton 1882. In 
1835 he succeeded Seymour as the illus¬ 
trator of Dickens’s Pickwick, and was 
afterward engaged to illustrate Nicho¬ 
las Nickleby, Dombey & Son, Martin 
Chuzzlewit, David Copperfield, and 
other works of that author. He also 
illustrated the novels of Lever, Ains¬ 
worth, etc., besides sending many comic 
sketches to the illustrated serials of the 
time. 

BROWNIE, in Scotland, an imaginary 
spirit formerly believed to haunt houses, 
particularly farmhouses. Instead of 
doing any inj'ury he was believed to be 
very useful to the family, particularly 
to the servants if they treated him well, 
for whom he was wont to do many pieces 
of drudgery while they slept. The 
brownie bears a close resemblance to 
the Robin Goodfellow of England, and 
the Kobold of Germany. 

BROWNING, Elizabeth Barrett, Eng¬ 
lish poetess; born at Burn Hall, Dur¬ 
ham, in 1809; died at'Florence 1861. 
Her bodily frame was from the first ex¬ 
tremely delicate, but her mind was 
sound and vigorous, and disciplined by 
a course of severe and exalted study. 
She early began to commit her thoughts 
to writing, and in 1826 a volume, en¬ 
titled An Essay on Mind, with other 
Poems, appeared of her authorship. Her 
health was at length partially restored, 
and in 1846 she was married to Mr. 
Robert Browning, soon after which they 



settled in Italy, and continued to reside 
for the most part in the city of Florence. 
Her Prometheus Bound (from the Greek 
of vEschylus) and Miscellaneous Poems 
appeared in 1833; the Seraphim and 
other Poems in 1838. In 1856 a col¬ 
lected edition of Mrs. Browning’s works 
appeared, including several new poems, 
and among others Lady Geraldine’s 
Courtship. Casa Guidi Windows, a 
poem on the struggles of the Italians for 
liberty in 1848-49, appeared in 1851. 
The longest and most finished of all her 
works, Aurora Leigh, a narrative and 
didactic poem in nine books, was pub¬ 
lished in 1857. Poems before Congress 
appeared in 1860, and two posthumous 
volumes, Last Poems, 1862, and The 
Greek Christian Poets and the English 
Poets (prose essays and translations), 
1863 were edited by her husband. 

BROWNING, Robert, poet, born at 
Camberwell May 7, 1812; died Dec. 12, 
1889. In 1846 he married Elizabeth 
Barrett (see above), and thereafter re¬ 
sided chiefly in Italy, making occasional 




visits to England. His first poem, 
Pauline, was published in 1833; fol¬ 
lowed by Paracelsus in 1835; Strafford, 
a Tragedy (1837), produced at Co vent 
Garden. Sordello appeared in 1840, 
followed by Pippa Passes, A Blot on the 
Scutcheon, Luria, A Soul’s Tragedy, 
the well-known Pied Piper of Hamelin, 
and How They Brought the Good News 
from Ghent to Aix (1841-46). Between 
1846 and 1889 appeared The Ring and 
the Book, his longest poem, Fifine at 
the Fair; Aristophanes’ Apology; Dra¬ 
matic Idylls; Jocoseria; Ferishtah’s 
Fancies; Asolando. He received the 
degree of D.C.L. from Oxford in 1882. 
A Browning Society for the study of his 
works was formed in 1881, under whose 
auspices several of his dramas have been 
performed. His poems are often diffi¬ 
cult to understand from the quick trans¬ 
itions of thought, and they are not in¬ 
frequently rugged and harsh in expres¬ 
sion, yet they are among the chief poetic 
utterances of last century. 

BRUCE, a family name distinguished 
in the history of Scotland. The family 
of Bruce (or de Brus) was of Norman 


descent, its founder having obtained 
from William the Conqueror large 
grants of land in Northumberland. 
After being frequently involved in bor¬ 
der warfare with the Scots, the house 
of Bruce received about 1130 from 
from David I. a grant of the lands of 
Annandale, thus obtaining a footing in 
the south of Scotland. 

BRUCE, David. See David II. 

BRUCE, Edward, a brother of Robert 

I. , who, after distinguishing himself in 
the war of independence, crossed in 1315 
to Ireland to aid the native septs against 
the English. After many successes he 
was crowned king of Ireland at Carrick- 
fergus, but fell in battle near Dundalk in 
1318. 

BRUCE, Robert, the greatest of the 
kings of Scotland, born 1274. In 1296, 
as Earl of Carrick, he swore fealty to 
Edward I., and in 1297 fought on the 
English side against Wallace. He then 
j’oined the Scottish army, but in the 
same year returned to his allegiance to 
Edward until 1298, when he again 
joined the national party, and became 
in 1299 one of the four regents of the 
kingdom. In the three final campaigns, 
however, he resumed fidelity to Edward, 
and resided for some time at his court ; 
but, learning that the king meditated 
putting him to death on information 
given by the traitor Comyn, he fled in 
Feb., 1306, to Scotland, stabbed Comyn 
in a quarrel at Dumfries, assembled his 
vassals at Lochmaben Castle, and 
claimed the crown, which he received at 
Scone, March 27th. Being twice de¬ 
feated, he dismissed his troops, retired 
to Rathlin Island, and was supposed to 
be dead, when, in the spring of 1307, 
he landed on the Carrick coast, defeated 
the Earl of Pembroke at Loudon Hill, 
and in two years had wrested nearly the 
whole country from the English. He 
then in successive years advanced into 
England, laying waste the country; 
and on June 24, 1314, defeated at Ban¬ 
nockburn the English forces advancing 
under Edward II. to the relief of the 
garrison at Stirling. In 1316 he went 
to Ireland to the aid of his brother 
Edward, and on his return in 1318, in 
retaliation for inroads made during his 
absence, he took Berwick and harried 
Northumberland and Yorkshire. Hos¬ 
tilities continued until the defeat of 
Edward near Byland Abbey in 1323, and 
though in that year a truce was con¬ 
cluded for thirteen years, it was speedily 
broken. Not until March 4, 1328, was 
the treaty concluded by which the in¬ 
dependence of Scotland was fully recog¬ 
nized. Bruce did not long survive the 
completion of his work, dying at Car- 
dross Castle on June 7, 1329. He was 
twice married; first to a daughter of the 
Earl of Mar, Isabella, by whom he had a 
daughter, Marjory, mother of Robert 

II. ; and then to a daughter of Aymer de 
Burgh, Earl of Ulster, Elizabeth, by 
whom he had a son, David, who suc¬ 
ceeded him. 

BRUCINE,'an alkaloid accompanying 
strychnia in nux vomica. Its taste is 
exceedingly bitter and acrid, and its 
action on the animal economy is entirely 
analogous to that of strychnia, but 
much less powerful. 





BRUGES 


BRUNSWICK, NEW 


BRUGES (briizh), an old walled city 
of Belgium, capital of West Flanders, 
57 miles n.w. Brussels, on the railway 
to Ostend. It is an important canal 
center, and has over fifty bridges, all 
opening in the middle for the passage of 
vessels. The principal canals are those 
to Sluis, Ghent, and Ostend, on all of 
which pretty large vessels can come up 
to Bruges. Among its more noteworthy 
buildings are the Halles (containing 
cloth and other halls or markets), a fine 
old building, with a tower 354 feet high, 
in which is a numerous set of chimes; 
the Hotel de Ville, the Bourse, and the 
Palace of Justice; the Church of Notre 
Dame, with its elevated spire and splen¬ 
did tombs of Charles the Bold and Mary 
of Burgundy; etc. The town possesses 
interesting works of art by Jan Van 
Eyck, Memling, the Van Oosts, etc. 
Textile goods, lace, etc., are manu¬ 
factured. Pop. 51,657. 

BRUHL (briil), Heinrich, Count von, 
minister and favorite of Augustus III., 
king of Poland, born in 1700, died 1763. 
In 1747 he became the prime-minister 
of Augustus, to gratify whose wishes he 
exhausted the state, plunged the coun¬ 
try into debt, and greatly reduced the 
army. He acquired great wealth and 
lived in greater state than the king him¬ 
self. His profusion was often beneficial 
to the arts and sciences, and his library 
of 62,000 vols. forms a chief part of the 
Royal Library at Dresden. 

BRUISE, a hurt caused by a blow or 
other violent pressure on the body. 
Owing to the rupture of small blood¬ 
vessels and the leakage of blood into the 
tissues the skin becomes discolored in 
the region affected. The best remedy 
for bruises is rest. The pain resulting 
from small bruises may be relieved by 
letting cold water fall on the part, or by 
immersing the part in cold water. 

BRUM AIRE (bru-mar), the second 
month in the calendar adopted by the 
first French republic, beginning on the 
23d of October and ending 21st Novem¬ 
ber. The 18th Brumaire of the year VIII. 
of the French Revolution (Nov. 9,1799) 
witnessed the overthrow of the Direc¬ 
tory by Bonaparte. The next day he 
dispersed at the point of the bayonet 
the Council of Five Hundred, and was 
elected consul. 

BRUMMELL, George Bryan (Beau 
Brummell), son of a clerk in the Treas¬ 
ury, born in London in 1778, died 1840. 
He was educated at Eton and at Ox¬ 
ford, and at the age of sixteen made the 
acquaintance of the Prince of Wales, 
afterward George IV., who made him 
a cornet in his own regiment of the 10th 
Hussars, and secured his rapid promo¬ 
tion. The death of his father in 1794 
brought him a fortune of $150,000, 
which he expended in a course of sump¬ 
tuous living, extending over twenty-one 
years, during which his dicta on matters 
of etiquette and dress were received in 
the beau monde as indisputable. 

BRUNEL', Isambard Kingdom, Eng¬ 
lish engineer, son of Sir Mark Isambard 
Brunei, born in 1806, died in 1859. 
He was educated at the Henri IV. 
College, Paris; and commenced practical 
engineering under his father, acting at 
twenty as resident engineer at the 
Thames Tunnel. Among his best-known 


works were the Great Western, Great 
Britain, and Great Eastern steamships; 
the entire works on the Great Western 
Railway, to which he was appointed 
engineer in 1833; the Hungerford Sus¬ 
pension-bridge; docks at Plymouth, 
Milford Haven, etc. 

BRUNEL', Sir Mark Isambard, a dis¬ 
tinguished engineer, born near Rouen 
in 1769. He was educated in Rouen, his 
mechanical genius early displaying 
itself. Among his inventions were a 
machine for making seamless shoes, 
machines for making nails and wooden 
boxes, for ruling paper and twisting 
cotton into hanks, and a machine for 
producing locomotion by means of 
carbonic acid gas; but his greatest 
engineering triumph was the Thames 
Tunnel, commenced March, 1825, and 
opened in 1843. In 1841 the honor of 
knighthood was conferred on him. He 
died in Dec., 1849. 

BRUNN (brun), an Austrian city, 
capital of Moravia, on the railway from 
Vienna to Prague, nearly encircled by 
the rivers Schwarzawa and Zwittawa. 
It contains a cathedral and other hand¬ 
some churches; a landhaus, where the 
provincial assembly meets, and several 
palaces; and has extensive manufactures 
of woolens, which have procured for it 
the name of the Austrian Leeds. Pop. 
108,944. 

BRUNO, Giordano (jor-da'no), an 
Italian philosopher of the Renaissance, 
born at Nola about 1550. He entered 
the order of Dominicans, but was 
accused of impiety, and, after endur¬ 
ing much persecution, fled from Rome 
about 1577 to Geneva. Here he was 
soon persecuted in turn by the Calvin¬ 
ists, and traveled slowly through 
southern France to Paris, where he 
was offered a chair of philosophy, but 
declined to fulfil its conditions of at¬ 
tendance at mass. In 1583 he went 
to London, where he published sev¬ 
eral of his works, and to Oxford, 
where he taught for a short time. In 

1585 he went by way of Paris and 
Marburg to Wittenberg, and from 

1586 to 1588 taught his philosophy 
there. He next went to Prague and to 
Helmstedt, where he remained till 1589; 
thence to Frankfort until 1592; and 
finally to Padua, where he remained 
until the inquisition of Venice arrested 
him and transferred him to Rome. 
After an imprisonment of seven years, 
during which he steadfastly refused to 
retract his doctrines, he was burned, 
February 16, 1600, for apostasy, heresy, 
and violation of his monastic vows. 
His doctrines form a more complete 
Pantheistical system than had been 
previously exhibited, and represent 
the highest level of the thought of the 
period. 

BRUNO, THE GREAT, Archbishop 
of Cologne and Duke of Lorraine, third 
son of Henry the Fowler, and brother 
of the Emperor Otho I. He was em¬ 
ployed in various important negotia¬ 
tions, and was a great patron of learning. 
Commentaries on the Pentateuch, and 
some biographies of saints, are ascribed 
to him. He died 965, at Rheims. 

BRUNS'WICK, a duchy and sovereign 
state in the northwest of Germany, area 


1425 sq. miles. A good portion of it is 
hilly or undulating, and it partly be¬ 
longs to the Harz mountain system. 
Mining is carried on chiefly in the Harz, 
and the minerals include iron, lead, 
copper, brown coal, etc. About half 
the surface is arable, and the chief cul¬ 
tivated products are grain, flax, hops, 
tobacco, potatoes, and fruit. Brewing, 
distilling, the manufacture of linens, 
woolens, and leather, the preparation of 
paper, soap, tobacco, beet-sugar, with 
agriculture and mining, afford the 
principal employment of the people. 
Pop. 464,251, mostly Lutherans by 
religion.—Brunswick, the capital, is sit¬ 
uated on the Oker, and on the railway 
from Hanover to Berlin. The principal 
buildings of note are the ducal palace, 
the cathedral of St. Blaise (1173), St. 
Catherine’s Church (dating from 1172), 
and St. Magnus’s (1031), the Gewand- 
haus, and the fine old Gothic Council 
House. The educational institutions 
include the polytechnic school, a gym¬ 
nasium, etc., and there are a city 
museum, a ducal museum, and a public 
library. The principal manufactures 
are wool, linen, jute, machinery, sewing- 
machines, gloves, lackered wares, etc., 
chemicals, and the tow r n is famous for 
beer. Pop. 128,177. 

BRUNSWICK (brunz'wik), a city, 
port of entry, and county seat of Glynn 
Co., Ga., 90 miles south by west of 
Savannah, on Saint Simon’s Sound, 8 
miles from the ocean, and on the Sea¬ 
board Air Line, the Plant System, and 
the Southern railroads. Pop. 10,840. 

BRUNSWICK, a town of Maine, on 
the Androscoggin, 26 miles n.e. of Port¬ 
land. At Bowdoin College, in this town, 
Hawthorne and Longfellow graduated 
in 1825, and the latter filled the chair 
of modem languages for several years. 
Pop. 10,125. 

BRUNSWICK, Family of, a distin¬ 
guished family founded by Albert Azo 
II., Marquis of Reggio and Modena, a 
descendant, by the female line, of 
Charlemagne. In 1047 he married 
Cunigunda, heiress of the Counts of 
Altorf, thus uniting the two houses 
of Este and Guelph. From his son, 
Guelph, who was created Duke of 
Bavaria in 1071, and married Judith of 
Flanders, a descendant of Alfred of 
England, descended Henry the Proud, 
who succeeded in 1125, and by marriage 
acquired Brunswick and Saxony. Otho, 
the great-grandson of Henry by a 
younger branch of his family, was the 
first who bore the title of Duke of Bruns¬ 
wick (1235). By the two sons of Ernest 
of Zell, who became duke in 1532, the 
family was divided into the two 
branches of Brunswick - Wolfenbiittel 
(II.) and Brunswick - Hanover, from 
the latter of which comes the present 
royal family of Britain. The former was 
the German family in possession of the 
duchy of Brunswick until the death of 
the last duke in 1884. George Louis, 
son of Ernest Augustus and Sophia, 
granddaughter of James I. of England, 
succeeded his father as Elector of Han¬ 
over in 1698, and was called to the 
throne of Great Britain in 1714 as 
George I. 

BRUNSWICK, NEW. See New Bruns¬ 
wick. 




BRUNSWICK BLACK 


BRUTUS 


BRUNSWICK BLACK, a varnish com¬ 
posed chiefly of lamp-black and turpen¬ 
tine, and applied to cast-iron goods. 
Asphalt and oil of turpentine also are 
ingre dien ts in some kinds of it. 

BRUNSWICK GREEN, commonly a 
carbonate of copper mixed with chalk or 
lime. 

BRUSA, BROUSSA (bro'sa), or 
BURSA, a Turkish city in Asia Minor, 
south of the Sea of Marmora, about 20 
miles distant from its port Mudania, 
with a pop. of about 75,000 Turks, 
Greeks, Armenians, and Jews, engaged 
in commerce, and the manufacture of 
satins, silk stuffs, carpets, gauze, etc. 

BRUSH, Charles Francis, an American 
inventor, born in Ohio in 1849. His 
principal inventions are the dynamo 
which bears his name and a number of 
other electric devices, being chiefly 
improvements on his dynamo. He is 
the founder of the Brush Electric 
Company. 

BRUSH, an implement for removing 
dirt, for polishing surfaces, or for paint¬ 
ing. Brushes are made of broom (which 
see), bristles, wire, and of various kinds 
of hair. Among the materials prin¬ 
cipally used in the manufacture of 
brushes are bristles, broom straw, feath¬ 
ers, and the hair of the camel, squirrel, 
goat, badger, and bear. Brushes are 
simple when they consist of a single 
tuft, compound when they consist of a 
series of tufts. The brush industry of 
the U. States has increased vastly dur¬ 
ing the past twenty years. 

BRUSH-WHEEL, a toothless wheel 
sometimes used in light machinery to 
turn a similar wheel by means of bristles, 
or some brush-like or soft substance, as 
cloth, buff-leather, india-rubber, or the 
like. 

BRUS'SELS, the capital of Belgium 
and of the province of Brabant, is situ¬ 


part is surrounded with fine boulevards 
on the site of its fortifications, and in 
many places presents a congeries of 
twisted streets. The upper town, which 
is partly inside the boulevards and part¬ 
ly outside, is the finest part of the city, 
and contains the king’s palace, the 
palace of the chambers, the palace of 
justice, the palace of the fine arts, the 
public library and museum, etc. 1 ; and 
has also a fine park of 17 acres, around 
which most of the principal buildings are 
situated. The lower town retains much 
of its ancient appearance. The hotel 
de ville (1401-55) is an imposing Gothic 
structure, with a spire 364 feet in height, 
the square in front of it being perhaps 
the most pictorial of all the public places 
of Brussels. The cathedral of Saint Gu- 
dule (dating in part from the 13th 
century) is the finest of many fine 
churches, richly adorned with sculp¬ 
tures and paintings. The whole town is 
rich in monuments and works of art. 
The institutions comprise a university, 
an academy of science and the fine arts 
and polytechnic school; one of the finest 
observatories in Europe; a conserva- 
torium of music; a public library, con¬ 
taining 400,000 volumes and 30,000 
MSS.; a picture-gallery with the finest 
specimens of Flemish art; and many 
learned societies and educational organ¬ 
izations. The manufactures and trade 
are greatly promoted by canal communi¬ 
cations with Charleroi, Mechlin, Ant¬ 
werp, and the ocean, and by the net¬ 
work of Belgian railways. The indus¬ 
tries are varied and important. Lace 
was an ancient manufacture, and is still 
of great importance; the manufacture 
of cotton and woolen fabrics, paper, 
carriages, and many minor manufactures 
are carried on. There are breweries, 
distilleries, sugar-refineries, foundries, 
etc. The language spoken by the upper 



The law courts or Palais de Justice, Brussels. 


ated on the small river Senne, which is 
not navigable, but serves as a canal- 
feeder. The city consists of a north¬ 
western or lower portion and a south¬ 
eastern or upper portion. The older 


classes is French, and Flemish is that 
of the lower; but German, Dutch, and 
English are also a good deal spoken. 
Pop. 211,429, or, including suburbs, 
about 590,000. 


BRUSSELS CARPET. See Carpet. 

BRUTUS, or BRUTE, the first king of 
Britain- a purely mythical personage, 
said to have been the son of Sylvius, and 
grandson of Ascanius the son of iEneas. 
He landed in Devonshire, destroyed the 
giants then inhabiting Albion, and 
called the island from his own name. 
At his death the island was divided 
among his sons: Locrine, Cumber, and 
Albanact. 

BRUTUS, Decimus Junius, served 
under Julius Csesar in Gaul, and was 
afterward commander of his fleet, but, 
like his relative, Marcus Junius Brutus, 
joined in the assassination of Csesar. 
He was afterward for a short time suc¬ 
cessful in opposing Antony, but was 
deserted by his soldiers in Gaul and 
betrayed into the hands of his opponent, 
who put him to death in b.c. 43. 

BRUTUS, Lucius Junius, ancient 
Roman hero, son of Marcus Junius by 
the daughter of the elder Tarquin. He 
saved his life from the persecutions of 
Tarquin the Proud by feigning himself 
insane, whence his name Brutus (stupid). 
On the suicide of Lucretia (see Lucretia), 
however, he threw off the mask, and 
headed the revolt against the Tarquins. 
Having secured their banishment, he 
proposed to abolish the regal dignity 
and introduce a free government, with 
the result that he was elected to the con¬ 
sulship, in which capacity he condemned 
his own sons to death for conspiring to 
restore the monarchy. He fell in battle 
b.c. 509. 

BRUTUS, Marcus Junius, a distin¬ 
guished Roman, born b.c. 85; was at 
first an enemy of Pompey, but joined 
him on the outbreak of civil war until 



Marcus Junius Brutus.—Antique bust. 

the battle of Pharsalia. He then sur¬ 
rendered to Caesar, who made him in the 
following year governor of Cisalpine 
Gaul, and afterward of Macedonia. 
He soon, however, joined the conspiracy 
against Caesar, and by his influence 
insured its success. After the assassina¬ 
tion he took refuge in the East, made 
himself master of Greece and Macedonia, 
and with a powerful army joined Cas¬ 
sius in the subjugation of the Lycians 
and Rhodians. In the meantime the 
triumvirs, Octavianus, Antony, and 
Lepidus, had been successful at Rome, 
and were prepared to encounter the 
army of the conspirators, which, cross¬ 
ing the Hellespont, assembled at Phi¬ 
lippi in Macedonia. Cassius appears to 
have been beaten at once by Antony; 
and Brutus, though temporarily success¬ 
ful against Octavianus, was totally 




















BRUYERE 


BUCKBOARD 


defeated twenty days later. He escaped 
with a few friends; but, seeing that his 
cause was hopelessly ruined, fell upon 
the sword held for him by his confidant 
Strato, and died (b.c. 42). 

BRUYERE (brii-yar'), Jean de la, a 
French writer, born at Paris in 1645. 
Through the influence of Bossuet he 
was employed in the education of the 
Duke of Bourbon, grandson of the 
great Cond6, with a pension of 3000 
livres, and was attached to his person 
during the remainder of his life. In 
1695 he was elected a member of the 
French Academy. He died in 1696. 

BRYAN, William Jennings, an Ameri¬ 
can politician, born at Salem, Ill., in 
1860. He graduated in law at the 
Union College of Law in Chicago, and 
settled in Lincoln, Neb., in 1887. From 
1891 to 1895 he was congressman from 
the Lincoln district;; in 1896 he was nom¬ 
inated by the Chicago convention for 
president on the democratic ticket. 
Defeated by McKinley, he was again 
nominated in 1900, but was again de¬ 
feated by McKinley. He subsequently 
founded The Commoner, a weekly paper 
which he 6till publishes. Bryan is one 
of the most appealing orators in the 
United States. 

BRYANT, Henry Grier, an American 
traveler, born in Pennsylvania in 1859. 
In 1892 he was second in command of 
the Peary relief expedition to Green¬ 
land, and in 1894 was the commander 
of a similar expedition, also in 1897 
commander of the expedition to Mount 
Elias. 

BRYANT, William Cullen, an Ameri¬ 
can poet and journalist, born in Hamp¬ 
shire, Mass., in 1794. At ten years of 
age he published translations from Latin 
poets; at thirteen wrote The Embargo; 



William Cullen Bryant. 

and at eighteen the Thanatopsis. In 
1815 he was admitted to the bar, and 
practiced with success till 1825, when 
he established the New York Review. 
In 1826 he became assistant editor of 
the Evening Post, a leading organ of the 
New York democrats, of which he was 
long chief editor. His poems, first 
collected in 1832, took rank as the best 
America had up to that time produced. 
In 1842 he issued The Fountain and 
other poems; and a new edition of his 
poems in 1858 was followed by metrical 
translations of the Iliad in 1869 and of 
the Odyssey in 1871. His Letters of a 
Traveller record his visits to Europe 


in 1834 and subsequently. He died in 
1878. 

BRYN MAWR (mar) COLLEGE, 
founded by Joseph W. Taylor, was incor¬ 
porated in 1880, and opened for students 
in 1885, at Bryn Mawr, near Philadel¬ 
phia. Bryn Mawr is distinctive among 
women’s colleges in that its course and 
method of study are based upon the 
university model. The system of 
“major and minor electives in fixed 
combination” has been adopted; stu¬ 
dents are grouped in accordance with 
the work they have actually accom¬ 
plished, instead of by arbitrary “classes”; 
original research is in all cases en¬ 
couraged; and, in pursuance of the same 
policy of placing the scholarship of the 
college upon a basis of pure merit, can¬ 
didates for admission as undergraduates 
are not accepted upon certificate, and 
honorary degrees are not granted. The 
college offers the graduate degrees of 
A.B., A.M., and Ph.D. Eleven resident 
fellowships, eight graduate scholarships, 
and three European fellowships are 
offered to graduate students, and there 
are also scholarships and a students’ 
loan fund for undergraduates. 

Bryn Mawr has grown rapidly since 
its foundation, and in 1902 had 45 pro¬ 
fessors and instructors, and a student 
body of 425. 

BUCCANEERS', a name derived from 
Carib boucan, a place for smoking meat, 
first given to European settlers in Hayti 
or Hispaniola, whose business was to 
hunt wild cattle and swine and smoke 
their flesh. In an extended sense it was 
applied to English and French adven¬ 
turers, mostly seafaring people, who, 
combining for mutual defense against 
the arrogant pretensions of the Span¬ 
iards to the dominion of the whole of 
America, frequented the W. Indies in 
the 17th century, acquired predatory 
and lawless habits, and became ulti¬ 
mately, in many cases, little better than 
pirates. The earliest association of 
these adventurers began about 1625, 
but they afterward became much more 
formidable, and continued to be a terror 
until the opening of the 18th century, 
inflicting heavy losses upon the shipping 
trade of Spain, and even attacking large 
towns. Among their chief leaders were 
Montbars (II exterminador), Peter the 
Great of Dieppe, L’Olonnas, de Busco, 
Van Horn, and the Welshman Henry 
Morgan, who, in 1670, marched across 
the Istnmus, plundered Panama, and, 
after being knighted by Charles II., 
became deputy-governor of Jamaica. 
The last great exploit of the buccaneers 
was the capture of Carthagena in 1697, 
after which they are lost sight of in the 
annals of vulgar piracy. 

BUCEPH'ALUS, the horse of Alex¬ 
ander the Great. On its death from a 
wound Alexander built over its grave, 
near the Hydaspes, a city called Bu- 
cephala. 

BUCHANAN, Franklin, an American 
naval officer, born in Maryland in 1800, 
died in 1874. He served in the Mexican 
war, and was an officer on Perry’s ship 
in the expedition to Japan. In 1861 he 
resigned from the United States navy, 
joined the confederate navy and com¬ 
manded the Merrimac in the famous 
battle with the Monitor in Hampton 


Roads. After the war he devoted him¬ 
self to the life of an educator. 

BUCHANAN, James, the fifteenth 
president of the United States, born in 
Stony Batter, Franklin Co., Pennsyl¬ 
vania in 1791, died in 1868. He was 
educated at Dickinson College and 



qualified for the bar. In 1820 Buchanan 
became a member of congress, continu¬ 
ing in that capacity for ten years. He 
supported Jackson for president, was 
made minister to Russia, and in 1833 
was elected United States senator. He 
held that congress had no power over 
slavery, but favored petition for aboli¬ 
tion. In 1845 he became secretary of 
state in Polk’s cabinet, and successfully 
handled the various territorial expan¬ 
sion questions of his time. In 1856 lie 
was nominated for president by the 
democrats, defeating Fremont, the can¬ 
didate of the newly-organized republican 
party. His administration was marked 
by much activity in diplomatic affairs, 
and successfully avoided the brewing 
trouble between the North and the 
South. He died at Lancaster, Pa. 

BUCHANAN, Robert, an English poet, 
born in 1841. His earliest volumes of 
verse—Undertones (1863), Idylls and 
Legends of Inverburn (1865), and Lon¬ 
don Poems (1866)—gained him a good 
reputation for truth, simplicity, humor, 
and pathos, and he afterward produced 
various volumes of poetry which have 
been no less well received; such as Way- 
side Poesies (1866), North Coast and 
other Poems (1867); The Drama of 
Kings (1871); Ballads of Life, Love, and 
Humour (1882); The City of Dream 
(1888); The Wandering Jew (1893). He 
also wrote novels—The Shadow of the 
Sword, God and the Man, The Child of 
Nature, etc., and plays. He died in 
1901. 

BUCHAREST. See Bukarest. 

BUCHARIA. See Bokhara. 

BUCK, the male of the fallow-deer, of 
the goat, rabbit, and hare. 

BUCKBOARD, a four-wheeled vehicle 
in which a long elastic board or platform 
is used in place of the ordinary body, 
springs, and gear. It is fixed as a con¬ 
nection between the fore and rear axles, 
and may have one or more seats. It is 
thus the most simply constructed of 
any four-wheeled vehicle. Buckboards 
were first used only in mountain dis¬ 
tricts where the roads are rugged, and 






BUCKEYE 


BUDAUN 


were for a long time rudely and simply 
built. When the Adirondack region and 
Mount Desert became fashionable re¬ 
sorts, the summer vistors to these 
places had the primitive buckboards 
reproduced in more elegant form by 
carriage-builders, so that the buckboard 
now usually seen differs greatly from 
the model, being made in handsome 
woods of a light color, ash or hickory, 
with springs, silver mountings, and 
cushions of russet leather. 

BUCKEYE, an American name for 
certain species of horse-chestnuts. 

BUCK-HOUND, a kind of hound 
similar to but smaller than a stag-hound, 
once commonly used in Britain for hunt¬ 
ing bucks. The Master of the Buck- 
hounds is still the title of an officer of 
the royal household in England. 

BUCKINGHAM, an inland county of 
England, bounded by Northampton, 
Bedford, Hertford, Middlesex, Berks, 
and Oxford; area about 730 sq. miles, 
or 467,009 acres, of which over 400,000 
are under crops or permanent pasture. 
The rich vale of Aylesbury stretches 
through the center, and a portion of the 
Chiltern range across the south of the 
county, which is watered by the Ouse, the 
Thame, and the Thames. The breeding 
and fattening of cattle and pigs are 
largely carried on, also the breeding of 
horses, and much butter is made. The 
manufactures are unimportant, among 
them being straw-plaiting, thread lace, 
and the making of wooden articles, such 
as beechen chairs, turnery, etc. There 
are also paper-mills, silk-mills, etc. The 
mineral productions are of no great im- 
ortance. The county comprises eight 
undreds, those of Stoke, Burnham, and 
Desborough being known as “the Chil¬ 
tern Hundreds.” Buckingham is nom¬ 
inally the county town, but Aylesbury 
is the assize town. Pop. 195,534.— 
Buckingham, the county town, a munic¬ 
ipal, and, until 1885, a pari, borough, is 
pleasantly situated on a peninsula 
formed by the Ouse. Malting and tan¬ 
ning are carried on, and some lace is 
made. Pop. 3151. 

BUCKINGHAM, George Villiers, Duke 
of, favorite of James I. and Charles I. 
of England, was born in 1592, his father 
being George Villiers, Knight. At eigh¬ 
teen he was sent to France, where he 
resided three years, and on his return 
made so great an impression on James 
I. that in two years he was made a 
knight, a gentleman of the bed-chamber, 
baron, viscount, Marquis of Bucking¬ 
ham, lord high-admiral, etc., and at last 
dispenser of all the honors and offices of 
the three kingdoms. In 1623, when the 
Earl of Bristol was negotiating a mar¬ 
riage for Prince Charles with the Infanta 
of Spain, Buckingham went with the 
prince incognito to Madrid to carry on 
the suit in person in the hope of securing 
the Palatinate as dowry. The result, 
however, was the breaking off of the 
marriage, and the declaration of war 
with Spain. During his absence Buck¬ 
ingham was created duke. After the 
death of James in 1625 he was sent to 
France as proxy for Charles I. to marry 
the Princess Henrietta Maria. In 1626, 
after the failure of the Cadiz expedition, 
he was impeached, but saved by the 


favor of the king. Despite the difficulty 
in obtaining supplies Buckingham took 
upon himself the conduct of a war with 
France, but his expedition in aid of the 
Rochellese proved an entire failure. 
Aug. 24, 1628, he was stabbed by John 
Felton, an ex-lieutenant who had been 
disappointed of promotion. 

BUCKINGHAM PALACE, a royal 
palace in London, facing St. James’s 
Park, built in the reign of George IV., 
and forming one of the residences of the 
sovereign. 

BUCKLE, Henry Thomas, English 
historical writer, born 1822. His chief 
work, a philosophic History of Civiliza¬ 
tion, of which only two volumes (1858 
and 1861) were completed, was charac¬ 
terized by much novel and suggestive 
thought, and by the bold coordination 
of a vast store of materials drawn from 
the most varied sources. He died, 
while traveling, at Damascus, 1862. 

BUCKLER, a kind of small shield 
formerly worn on the left arm, and vary¬ 
ing in form and material, among the 
latter being wickerwork, wood covered 
with leather, a combination of wood 
and metal, etc. 

BUCKNER, Simon Bolivar, an Ameri¬ 
can politician and soldier, born in Ken¬ 
tucky in 1823. He graduated from 
West Point, served in the Mexican war, 
and was a brigadier-general of the Con¬ 
federate army. In 1896 he was candi¬ 
date for vice-president with John M. 
Palmer on the ticket of the gold wing 
of the democratic party. 

BUCK'RAM, a coarse textile fabric 
stiffened with glue and used in garments 
to give them or keep them in the form 
intended. It is also used in binding 
books. 

BUCK-SHOT, a kind of large leaden 
shot used for killing deer or other large 
game. 

BUCK'SKIN, a kind of soft leather 
of a yellowish or grayish color, made 
originally from deer-skins, but now 
usually from sheep-skins. The softness 
which is its chief characteristic is im¬ 
parted by using oil or brains in dressing 
it. 

BUCK'THORN, the name of an exten¬ 
sive genus of trees and shrubs. Several 
species belong to N. America. The 
common buckthorn, a British and 
N. American shrub, grows to 7 or 8 feet, 
has strong spines on its branches, ellipti¬ 
cal and serrated leaves, male and female 
flowers on different plants, a greenish- 
yellow calyx, no corolla, and a round 
black berry. It flowers in May. The 
berries are purgative, but harsh in 
action. The bark yields a yellow dye, 
the berries sap green. 

BUCK'WHEAT, a plant with branch¬ 
ed herbaceous stem, somewhat arrow- 
shaped leaves, and purplish-white 
flowers, growing to the height of about 
30 inches, and bearing a small triangular 
grain of a brownish-black without and 
white within. The shape of its seeds 
gives it its German name Buchweizen, 
“beech-wheat,” whence the English 
name. The plant was first brought to 
Europe from Asia by the Crusaders, 
and hence in France is often called 
Saracen corn. It grows on the poorest 


soils. It is cultivated in China and other 
Eastern countries as a bread-corn. In 
Europe buckwheat has been principally 
cultivated as food for oxen, swine, and 
poultry; but in Germany it serves as an 
ingredient in pottage, puddings, and 
other food, and in America buckwheat 
cakes are common. 

BUD, the name of bodies of various 
form and structure, which develop upon 
vegetables, and contain the rudiments 
of future organs, as stems, branches, 
leaves, and organs of fructification. 
Upon exogenous plants they are in their 
commencement cellular prolongations 
from the medullary rays, which force 
their way through the bark. In general 
a single bud is developed each year in 
the axil of each leaf, and there is one 
terminating the branch called a terminal 
bud. The life of the plant during winter 
is stored up in the bud as in an embryo, 
and it is by its vital action that on the 
return of spring the flow of sap from 
the roots is stimulated to renewed 
activity. Buds are distinguished into 
leaf-buds and flower-buds. The latter 
are produced in the axil of leaves called 
floral leaves or bracts. The termina, 
bud of a branch is usually a flower-bud, 
and as cultivation is capable of produc¬ 
ing flower-buds in place of leaf-budsl 
the one is probably a modification of the 
other. 

BUDAPEST (-pesht'), the official name 
of the united towns of Pest and Buda or 
Ofen, the one on the left, the other on 
the right, of the Danube, forming the 
capital of Hungary, the seat of the im¬ 
perial diet of the Hungarian ministry 
and of the supreme court of justice. 
Buda, which is the smaller of the two, 
and lies on the west bank of the river, 
consists of the fortified Upper Town on 
a hill, the Lower Town or Wasserstadt 
at the foot of the hill, and several other 
districts. The mineral baths of Buda 
have long been famous, the Bruckbad 
and Kaiserbad having both been used 
by the Romans. Pest, or the portion of 
Budapest on the left or east bank of the 
river, is formed by the inner town of 
Old Pest on the Danube, about which 
has grown a semicircle of districts— 
Leopoldstadt, Theresienstadt, Eliza- 
bethstadt, etc. There is a well-attended 
university. In commerce and industry 
Budapest ranks next to Vienna in the 
empire. Its chief manufactures are 
machinery, gold, silver, copper, and 
iron wares, chemicals, silk, leather, 
tobacco, etc. A large trade is done in 
grain, wine, wool, cattle, etc. Budapest 
is strongly Magyar, and as a factor in 
the national life may almost be regarded 
as equivalent to the rest of Hungary. 
It was not until 1799 that the population 
of Pest began to outdistance that of 
Buda; but from that date its growth 
was very rapid and out of all proportion 
to the increase of Buda. In 1799 the 
joint population of the two towns was 
little more than 50,000; in 1900 it was 
713 383 

BUDA'UN, a town of India, United 
Provinces, consisting of an old and a 
new town, the former partly surrounded 
by ancient ramparts; there is a hand¬ 
some mosque, American mission, etc. 
Pop. 39,031. The district of Budaun 






BUDDHA 


BUENOS AYRES 


has an area of 2017 sq. miles, and a pop. 
of 925,598. 

BUDDHA (bud'ha), the sacred name 
of the founder of Buddhism, an Indian 
sage who appears to have lived in the 
5th century b.c. His personal name 
was Siddhartha, and his family name 
Gautama; and he is often called also 
Sakya-muni. His father was King of 
Kapilavastu, a few days’ journey north 
of Benares. Siddhartha, filled with a 
deep compassion for the human race, 
left his father’s court, and lived for 
years in solitude till he had penetrated 
the mysteries of life, and become the 
Buddha. He then began to teach his 
new faith, in opposition to the prevail¬ 
ing Brahmanism, commencing at Ben¬ 
ares. Among his earliest converts were 
the monarchs of Magadha and Kosala, 
in whose kingdoms he chiefly passed the 
latter portion of his life, respected, 
honored, and protected. See Buddhism. 

BUDDHISM, the religious system 
founded by Buddha, one of the most 
prominent doctrines of which is that 
Nirv&na, or an absolute release from 
existence, is the chief good. According 
to it pain is inseparable from existence, 
and consequently pain can cease only 
through Nirv&na; and in order to attain 
Nirvana our desires and passions must 
be suppressed, the most extreme self- 
renunciation practiced, and we must, as 
far as possible, forget our own person¬ 
ality. In order to attain Nirvana eight 
conditions must be kept or practiced. 
The first is in Buddhistic language right 
view; the second is right judgment; the 
third is right language; the fourth is 
right purpose; the fifth is right profes¬ 
sion ; the sixth is right application; the 
seventh is right memory; the eight is 
right meditation. The five fundamental 
precepts of the Buddhist moral code are: 
not to kill, not to steal, not to commit 
adultery, not to lie, and not to give way 
to drunkenness. To these there are 
added five others of less importance, and 
binding more particularly on the relig¬ 
ious class, such as to abstain from re¬ 
pasts taken out of season, from theatri¬ 
cal representations, etc. There are six 
fundamental virtues to be practiced 
by all men alike, viz., charity, purity, 



Buddha—From a Burmese bron ze 


patience, courage, contemplation, and 
knowledge. These are the virtues that 
are said to “conduct a man to the other 
shore.” The devotee who strictly prac¬ 
tices them has not yet attained Nirv&na, 
but is on the road to it. The Buddhist 


virtue of charity is universal in its 
application, extending to all creatures, 
and demanding sometimes the greatest 
self-denial and sacrifice. There is a leg¬ 
end that the Buddha in one of his stages 
of existence (for he had passed through 



Singhalese Buddhist priests and dagobah at 
Kandy. 


innumerable transmigrations before be¬ 
coming “the enlightened”) gave him¬ 
self up to be devoured by a famishing 
lioness which was unable to suckle her 
young ones. There are other virtues 
less important, indeed, than the six car¬ 
dinal ones, but still binding on believers. 
Thus not only is lying forbidden, but 
evil-speaking, coarseness of language, 
and even vain and frivolous talk, must 
be avoided. Buddhist metaphysics are 
comprised in three theories—the theory 
of transmigration (borrowed from Brah¬ 
manism), the theory of the mutual con¬ 
nection of causes, and the theory of 
Nirvana. The first requires no explana¬ 
tion. According to the second, life is the 
result of twelve conditions, which are by 
turns causes and effects. Thus there 
would be no death were it not for birth; 
it is therefore the effect of which birth 
is the cause. Again, there would be no 
birth were there not a continuation of 
existence. Existence has for its cause 
our attachment to things, which again 
has its origin in desire; and so on 
through sensation, contact, the organs 
of sensation and the heart, name and 
form, ideas, etc., up to ignorance. This 
ignorance, however, is not ordinary 
ignorance, but the fundamental error 
which causes us to attribute permanence 
and reality to things. This, then, is the 
primary origin of existence and all its 
attendant evils. Nirvana or extinction is 
eternal salvation from the evils of exist¬ 
ence, and the end which every Buddhist 
is supposed to seek. Sakya-muni did not 
leave his doctrines in writing; he de¬ 
clared them orally, and they were care¬ 
fully treasured up by his disciples, and 
written down after his death. The de¬ 
termination of the canon of the Buddhist 
scriptures as we now possess them was 
the work of three successive councils, 
and was finished two centuries at least 


before Christ. From Buddhism involv¬ 
ing a protest against caste distinctions 
it was eagerly adopted by the Dasyus or 
non-Aryan inhabitants of Hindustan. 
It was pure, moral, and humane in its 
origin, but it came subsequently to be 
mixed up with idolatrous worship of its 
founder and other deities. Although 
now long banished from Hindustan by 
the persucutions of the Brahmans, 
Buddhism prevails in Ceylon, Burmah, 
Siam, Anam, Tibet, Mongolia, China, 
Java, and Japan, and its adherents are 
said to comprise about a third of the 
human race. 

BUDDING, the art of multiplying 
plants by causing the leaf-bud of one 
species or variety to grow upon the 
branch of another. The operation con¬ 
sists in shaving off a leaf-bud, with a 
portion of the wood beneath it, which 
portion is afterward removed by a 
sudden jerk of the operator’s finger and 
thumb, aided by the budding-knife. An 
incision in the bark of the stock is then 
made in the form of a T; the two side 
lips are pushed aside, the bud is thrust 
between the bark and the wood, the 
upper end of its bark is cut to a level 
with the cross arm of the X, and the 
whole is bound up with worsted or other 
soft fastening, the point of the bud being 
left exposed. In performing the opera¬ 
tion, a knife with a thin flat handle and 
a blade with a peculiar edge is required. 
The bud must be fully formed; the bark 
of the stock must separate readily from 
the wood below it; and young branches 
should always be chosen, as having be¬ 
neath the bark the largest quantity of 
cambium or viscid matter out of which 
tissue is formed. The maturer shoots 
of the year in which the operation is 
performed are the best. The autumn 
is the best time for budding, though 
it may also be practiced in the spring. 

BUELL, Don Carlos, an American 
soldier, born in Ohio in 1818, died in 
1898. He was graduated at West Point, 
fought in the Mexican war, and was 
brigadier-general of the Union forces 



(volunteer) at the beginning of the civil 
war, and later brigadier-general. He 
took part in several of the great battles 
of the civil war, and was subsequently 
appointed pension agent. 

BUENOS AYRES (bu-en'os i'ras), a 
city of S. America, capital of the Argen¬ 
tine Republic, on the s.w. side of the 
La Plata, 150 miles from its mouth. 
It was founded in 1535 by Don Pedro de 
Mendoza, and is built with great regu¬ 
larity, the streets uniformly crossing 
each other at right angles. It contains 
the palace of the president, the house of 




















BUFFALO 


BUILDING ACTS 


representatives, a town-hall, a number 
of hospitals and asylums, a cathedral, 
several monasteries, nunneries, and 
Catholic and Protestant churches; 
several theaters, a university, and a 
custom-house. The university, founded 
in 1821, is attended by about 800 stu¬ 
dents. There are also a medical school, 
normal and other schools, besides 
literary and scientific societies. For¬ 
merly large vessels could only come 
within 8 or 9 miles of the town, but 
they can now come up to it and enter 
the extensive docks that have been con¬ 
structed, about $25,000,000 having been 
spent on harbor works and channels. 
La Plata (capital of the province), 30 
miles lower down the estuary, serves as 
a subport. Buenos Ayres is one of the 
leading commercial centers of S. Amer¬ 
ica. Chief exports are wool, wheat, 
maize, meat, hides and skins, tallow, 
etc. There are six railways running 
from the city, and 100 miles of tram¬ 
way in the city and suburbs. About 
one-fourth of the inhabitants are 
whites; the rest are of mixed blood 
or Indians, negroes, etc. Pop. in 1900, 
795,323.—The province of Buenos Ayres 
has an area of 177,777 sq. miles, and 
consists mostly of level or slightly un¬ 
dulating plains (pampas), which afford 
pasture to vast numbers of cattle, 
sheep, and horses. Pop. 1,140,067. 

BUF'FALO, an ungulate or hoofed 
ruminant mammal, family Bovidae or 
oxen, the best-known species of which is 
the common or Indian buffalo, larger 
than the ox and with stouter limbs, origi- 



1, Head of Cape buffalo. 

3, Head of Indian buffalo. 


nally from India, but now found in most 
of the wanner countries of the Eastern 
Continent. A full-grown male is a bold 
and powerful animal, quite a match for 
the tiger. The buffalo is less docile than 
the eommon ox, and is fond of marshy 
places and rivers. It is, however, used 
in tillage, draft, and carriage in India, 
Italy, etc. The female gives much more 
milk than the cow, and from the milk 
the ghee or clarified butter of India is 
made. The hide is exceedingly tough, 
and a valuable leather is prepared from 
it, but the flesh is not very highly 
esteemed. Another Indian species is the 
arnee, the largest of the ox family. The 
Cape buffalo is distinguished by the size 
of its horns, which are united at their 
bases, forming a great bony mass on the 
front of the head. It attains a greater 
size than an ordinary ox. The name is 
also applied to wild oxen in general, and 
articularly to the bison of N. America, 
ee Bison. 


BUFFALO, a city of the state of New 
York, situated on Lake Erie, and by 
virtue of its position one of the principal 
ports of the country. It is 400 miles 
from New York, 500 miles from Chicago, 
and only 20 miles from Niagara Falls. 
Its population in 1908 was 400,000. 
The city has an area of 42 square miles. 

Buffalo is one of the most marked of 
large American cities in its recent de¬ 
velopment, and owes its prosperity to 
commerce. Several great steamship 
lines and innumerable independent ves¬ 
sels ply to the chief ports on the Great 
Lakes, and there are several ferries to 
the Canada side, besides the Inter¬ 
national Bridge, completed at a cost of 
$1,500,000. The city is connected with 
the tide-waters of the Hudson by the 
Erie Canal, and with ports on Lake 
Ontario and the Saint Lawrence river 
by the Welland Canal, and is also the 
terminus or connecting-point of a score 
of railroads, the commerce of Buffalo 
by these various means of transpor¬ 
tation is very great. With a season 
of only about 246 days in the year, 
Buffalo ranks with the leading Amer¬ 
ican and European ports in extent of 
traffic. The immense quantity of flour 
and grain moved from the Western 
States to the seaboard constitutes the 
most important feature of its commerce; 
but live stock, lumber, and coal, iron 
ore, and fish, also, are of importance. 
Some part of the lumber and iron ore 
which arrive at this end of Lake Erie is 
received at Tonawanda, a suburb to 
the north, on Niagara river, but Buf¬ 
falo receives large quantities of each. 
Over 15,000,000 pounds of fish are 
received annually, mainly from Georgian 
Bay, and are distributed as far east as 
Boston and as far west as Denver. The 
horse market and sheep market of 
Buffalo are the largest in the U. States, 
and in the trade in cattle and hogs 
Buffalo is among the leading American 
cities. In the production of foundry and 
machine-shop products, including stoves, 
nails, etc., and agricultural implements, 
the city ranks among the foremost. 
Other industries are slaughtering and 
meat-packing, refining petroleum, and 
ship-building; clothing, flouring- and 
grist-mill products, brick, stone, lime, 
and stucco, malt and distilled liquors, 
soap and candles, starch, furniture, and 
tobacco and cigars, are extensively 
produced. 

BUFFALO-GRASS, a strong-growing 
N. American grass, so called from form¬ 
ing a large part of the food of the buffalo, 
and said to have excellent fattening 
properties. 

BUFFER, any apparatus for deaden¬ 
ing the concussion between a moving 
body and the one on which it strikes. 
In railway-carriages they are placed in 
pairs at each end, and are fastened by 
rods to springs under the frame-work 
to deaden the concussions caused when 
the velocity of part of the train is 
checked. 

BUFFET, a cupboard, sideboard, or 
closet to hold china, crystal, plate, and 
the like. The word is also very com¬ 
monly applied to the space set apart for 
refreshments in public places. 


BUFF LEATHER, a sort of leather 
prepared from the skin of the buffalo 
and other kinds of oxen, dressed with 
oil, like shammy. It is used for making 
bandoliers, belts, pouches, gloves, and 
other articles. 

B U F F O N (bu-fon), George Louis 
Leclerc, Count de, celebrated French 
naturalist, was born at Montbard, in 
Burgundy, 1707; died in Paris 1788. 
In 1739 he was appointed superintend¬ 
ent of the Royal Garden at Paris (now 
the Jardin des Plantes), and devoted 
himself to the great work on Natural 
History, which occupied the most of his 
life. It is now obsolete and of small 
scientific value, but it for long had an 
extraordinary popularity, and was the 
means of diffusing a taste for the study 
of nature throughout Europe. After an 
assiduous labor of ten years the three 
first volumes were published, and be¬ 
tween 1749 and 1767 twelve others, 
which comprehend the theory of the 
earth, the nature of animals, and the 
history of man and the Mammalia. In 
these Buffon was assised by Daubenton 
in the purely anatomical portions. 
Buffon was raised to the rank of count 
by Louis XV., whose favor, as also that 
of Louis XVI., he enjoyed. His works 
were translated into almost every Euro¬ 
pean language. 

BUFFOON', a merry-andrew, a clown, 
a jester. 

BUFORD, John, an American soldier, 
born in Kentucky in 1826, died in 1863. 
He was graduated at West Point, fought 
in the Indian wars, and was a brigadier- 
general in the Union army during the 
civil war. He was one of the most 
brilliant of the minor generals in Ameri¬ 
can history. 

BUG, a name given to the house-bug 
or bedbug, or any member of this genus 
or of the family Cimicidse. The com¬ 
mon bug is about j* T inch long, wingless, 
of a roundish depressed body, dirty 
rust color, and emits an offensive smell 
when touched. The female lays her 
eggs in summer in the crevices of bed¬ 
steads, furniture, and walls of rooms. 
Its larvae are small, white, and semi¬ 
transparent. They attain full size in 
eleven weeks. The mouth of the bug 
has a three-jointed proboscis, which 
forms a sheath for a sucker. It is fond 
of human blood, but eats various other 
substances. 

BUGGY, a name given to several 
species of carriages or gigs: in England, 
a light one-horse two-wheeled vehicle 
without a hood; in the U. States, a 
light one-horse four-wheeled vehicle, 
with or without a hood or top; in India, 
a gig with a large hood to screen those 
who travel in it from the sun’s rays. 

BU'GLE, a military musical brass 
wind-instrument of the horn kind, 
sometimes furnished with keys or valves. 
It is used in the American and other 
armies to sound signal-calls. The name 
is an abbreviation of bugle-horn, that 
is, buffalo-horn. 

BUGLE, a shiny elongated glass bead, 
usually black, used in decorating female 
apparel and also in trafficking with 
savage tribes. 

BUILDING ACTS, laws restricting the 
rights of land owners in the matter of 
improving their land with buildings. 


P. E.—13 





BUILDING AND LOAN ASSOCIATIONS 


BULLDOG 


They generally have to do with the 
height, stability, material, sanitation, 
etc., of proposed structures. 

BUILDING AND LOAN ASSOCIA¬ 
TIONS, societies the purpose of which 
is to encourage and assist individuals 
in buying, building, and paying for a 
home. They were in existence in Eng¬ 
land as early as 1781, but were first 
introduced in the U. States in 1831. 

Five states, New York, Massachu¬ 
setts, New Jersey, Ohio, and Illinois, 
require these associations to make 
annual returns, the same as is required 
of savings banks. In all the other states 
no control whatsoever is exercised over 
them. 

BUILDING LOANS, loans made to 
owners of land who desire to build upon 
the land. They are usually secured by a 
mortgage on the whole property. 

BUILDING STONE, stone used in the 
construction of buildings of any kind, 
of bridges, walls, or other structures in 
which stone can be used. The principal 
building stones are granite, limestones 
of various kinds, marbles, sandstones, 
and slate. Granite is the most enduring 
of stones, as it is not so easily affected by 
weather. The granite quarries of the 
U. States are practically inexhaustible, 
and the natural resources of the country 
in respect to the other stones used for 
building are unsurpassed in the world. 

BUKAREST', the capital of Rou- 
mania, situated on the Dimbovitza 
about 33 miles north of the Danube, in 
a fertile plain. It is in general poorly 
built, among the chief buildings being 



A street in Bukarest. 


the royal palace, the National Theater, 
the university buildings, the National 
Bank, the Mint, and the Archiepiscopal 
Church. There are handsome public 
gardens. Manufactures are varied but 
unimportant; the trade is considerable, 
the chief articles being grain, wool, 
honey, wax, wine, hides. The mercan¬ 
tile portion of the community is mostly 
foreign, and the whole population pre¬ 
sents a curious blending of nationalities. 
Bukarest became the capital of Wala¬ 
chia in 1665, in 1862 that of the united 
principalities of Walachia and Moldavia. 
A treaty was concluded here in 1812 
between Turkey and Russia by which 
the former ceded Bessarabia and part 
of Moldavia. Pop. 282,071. 

BUKOWINA (bo-ko-ve'na), an Aus¬ 
trian duchy, forming the southeastern 
corner of Galicia. Area, 4035 sq. miles; 
pop. 571,671. It is traversed by ramifi¬ 


cations of the Carpathians, and much of 
the surface is occupied with swamps and 
forests. Chief town, Czernowitz. 

BULANDSHAHR (bu-land-shar'), a 
district of India, United Provinces, in 
the alluvial plain between the Ganges 
and the Jumna; producing cotton, in¬ 
digo, sugar, etc. Area, 1911 sq. miles; 
pop. 949,914.—Bulandshahr, the capital, 
has a pop. of 16,900. 

BULB, a modified leaf-bud, formed on 
a plant upon or beneath the surface of 
the ground, emitting roots from its base, 
and producing a stem from its center. 
It is formed of imbricated scales or of 
concentric coats or layers. It incloses 
the rudiments of the future plant and 
a store of food to nourish it. Examples 
of bulbs are the onion, lily, hyacinth, 
etc. 

BULGA'RIA, a principality tributary 
to Turkey, constituted by the first 
article of the Treaty of Berlin, July 13, 
1878, and placed under the suzerainty 
of the sultan. It is bounded north by 
Roumania and the Dobrudsha, east by 
the Black Sea, south by the Balkan 
Mountains, which separate it from 
Eastern Rumelia, and west by Servia. 
The principal towns are Widdin, Sofia, 
Plevna, Sistova, Tirnova, Rustchuk, 
Shumla, Varna, and Silistria. The 
country almost wholly belongs to the 
north slope of the Balkans, and is inter¬ 
sected by streams flowing from that 
range to the Danube. It possesses 
much good agricultural land and a good 
climate; but cultivation is backward, 
though the rearing of cattle and horses 
is successfully carried on. Agricultural 
produce is exported,manufactured goods 
imported. Education is backward, but 
is improving; four years’ school attend¬ 
ance is obligatory in principle. The 
prevalent religion is that of the Greek 
Church. The revenue and expenditure 
are each about $20,000,000. Military 
service is obligatory; the war strength 
of the army is about 130,000. In accord¬ 
ance with the Treaty of Berlin a consti¬ 
tution was drawn up by an assembly of 
Bulgarian notables in 1879. By this 
constitution, as subsequently amended, 
the legislative authority is vested in a 
single chamber, called the Sobranje or 
National Assembly, elected by man¬ 
hood suffrage for five years, the mem¬ 
bers being now one for every 20,000 of 
the population. The capital is Sofia. 
On the 29th of April, 1879, Prince Alex¬ 
ander of Battenberg, cousin of the 
Grand-duke of Hesse, was elected prince 
by unanimous vote of the constituent 
assembly. In 1885 a national rising took 
place in Eastern Rumelia, the Turkish 
governor was expelled, and union with 
Bulgaria proclaimed. In consequence 
Servia demanded an addition to her 
own territory, and began a war against 
Bulgaria (Nov., 1885), in which she was 
severely defeated. By the treaty which 
followed, the Prince of Bulgaria was ap¬ 
pointed governor-general of Eastern 
Rumelia for a term of five years, to be 
renominated at the end of that time by 
sanction of the great powers. These 
events greatly irritated Russia, whose 
agents managed to seduce certain regi¬ 
ments of Bulgarians; and in August, 
1886, the prince was seized and carried 


off, while a proclamation was issued to 
the effect that he had abdicated. When 
he was set free on Austrian territory he 
discovered that the people were still 
with him, and determined to return. 
Seeing, however, that his presence 
would cause an immediate interference 
on the part of Russia he formally ab¬ 
dicated and left the country (7th Sep., 
1886). In 1887 Prince Ferdinand of 
Saxe-Coburg accepted an invitation to 
occupy the throne and the six great 
powers sanctioned the step. In 1908 Bul¬ 
garia proclaimed its independence. The 
area of Bulgaria proper is 24,440 sq. 
miles of Eastern Rumelia or southern 
Bulgaria, 13,500 sq. miles. The total 
pop. is 3,733,189. 

BULGARIANS, a race of Finnish 
origin, whose original seat was the banks 
of the Volga, and who subdued the old 
Moesian population and established a 
kingdom in the present Bulgaria in the 
7th century. They soon became blended 
with the conquered Slavs, whose lan¬ 
guage they adopted. In the I4th century 
the country was conquered by the Turks, 
and has until lately remained part of 
the Ottoman Empire. (See Bulgaria ) 
The Bulgarian language is divided into 
two dialects, the old and the new; the 
former is the richest and best of the 
Slavonic tongues, and although extinct 
as a living tongue is still used as the 
sacred language of the Greek Church. 
The Bulgarians are now spread over 
many parts of the Balkan peninsula. 

BULK-HEADS, partitions built be¬ 
tween the several portions of the in¬ 
terior of a ship, whether to separate it 
into rooms, or as a safeguard in case of 
wreck. 

BULL, a letter, edict, or rescript of 
the pope, published or transmitted to 
the churches over which he is head, con¬ 
taining some decree, order, or decision, 
and in many cases having a leaden seal 
attached, impressed on one side with 
the heads of St. Peter and St. Paul, on 
the other with the name of the pope. 
The document is in Latin and on parch¬ 
ment. 

BULL, the name given to the male 
of any bovine quadruped. 

BULL, John, the English nation per¬ 
sonified, and hence any typical English¬ 
man: first used in Arbuthnot’s satire, 
The History of John Bull, designed to 
ridicule the Duke of Marlborough; and 
in which the French are personified as 
Lewis Baboon, the Dutch as Nicholas 
Frog, etc. 

BULL, Ole Bornemann, famous vio¬ 
linist, born at Bergen, in Norway, 1810; 
died 1880. He secured great triumphs 
both throughout Europe and in America 
by his wonderful playing. 

BULL-BAITING, the barbarous sport 
of setting dogs on a bull, which is tied to 
a stake and worried by the dogs for the 
amusement of the spectators. It was a 
favorite sport in England from a very 
early period till it was finally put down 
by act of parliament in 1835. 

BULLDOG, a variety of the common 
dog, remarkable for its short, broad 
muzzle, and the projection of its lower 
jaw, which causes the lower front teeth 
to protrude beyond the upper. The 
head is massive and broad: the lips are 















A GROUP OF THE WORLD’S HIGHEST BUILDINGS. 

The Eiffel Tower in Paris is still the world’s tallest structure, being 984 feet, but as will be 
seen frotn the illustration, the greater part of it is purely ornamental and serves no useful pur¬ 
pose. Behind is shown the Friede Globe Tower, built at Coney Island and completed in 1908 . 
It is 700 "feet high and is visible from Manhattan Island. At the left is the highest building in 
the world occupied for business purposes, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Building, Madison 
Square, New York, 683 feet high and completed in 1907 . At the right is the tower of the Singer 
Sewing Machine Company in lower Broadway which will be 593 feet high, and which also will 
be occupied for business purposes. At the extreme right is the Washington monument, 555 , feet; 
at the extreme left is the Philadelphia City Hall tower, 547 feet. In the foreground at the right 
is the Park Row Building in New York, 382 feet high, and to the left of the Metropolitan is the 
Flat-Iron building at 23 d street and Broadway, New York, 286 feet. 








































BULLEN 


BUMPUS 


thick and pendulous; the ears pendent 
at the extremity; the neck robust and 
short; the body long and stout; and 
the legs short and thick. The bulldog 
is a slow-motioned, ferocious animal, 
better suited for savage combat than 
for any purpose requiring activity and 
intelligence. For this reason he is often 
employed as a watch-dog. It was for¬ 
merly used—as its name implies—for the 
barbarous sport of bull-baiting.—The 
bull terrier was originally from a cross 
between the bulldog and the terrier. 
It is smaller than the bulldog, lively, 
docile, and very courageous. 

BULLEN, Anne. See Boleyn. 

BULLER, Sir Henry Redvers, a 
British soldier, born in 1839, commander 
of the army in South Africa during 
the early part of the Anglo-Boer war in 
1898. His command was marked by 
numerous disasters and defeats, and 
his military reputation totally annihi¬ 
lated. He was soon afterward retired 
from the service. Died in 1908. 

BUI LET (byl'et), a projectile in¬ 
tended to be discharged from firearms 
or other missile weapons; more espe¬ 
cially, one for a rifle, musket, fowling- 
piece, pistol, or similar firearm. Bullets 
used to be solid spherical masses, but of 
late many changes have been made in 
their shape and structure. Bullets used 
for rifles of recent construction are elon¬ 
gated and generally rounded, conical, or 
ogival at the apex, somewhat like half 
an egg drawn out, often with a hollow 
at the base, into which a plug of wood 
or clay is inserted. When the rifle is 
fired the plug is driven forward, forcing 
the base of the bullet outward till the 
lead catches the grooves of the barrel. 

BULLETIN (bql'e-tin), an authen¬ 
ticated official report concerning some 
public event, such as military operations, 
the health of the sovereign or other dis¬ 
tinguished personage, issued for the 
information of the public. The name 
is also given to some periodical publi¬ 
cations recording the proceedings of 
learned societies. 

BULLET-TREE, or BULLY-TREE, a 

forest tree of Guiana and neighboring 
regions yielding an excellent gum (the 
concreted milky juice) known as balata, 
having properties giving it in some re¬ 
spects an intermediate position between 
gutta-percha and india-rubber, and 
making it for certain industrial purposes 
more useful than either. In the U. 
States it is used as a chewing material. 
The timber of the tree is also valuable. 

BULL-FIGHTS are among the favorite 
diversions of the Spaniards. They are 
usually held in an amphitheater having 
circular seats rising one above another, 
and are attended by vast crowds who 
eagerly pay for admission. The com¬ 
batants, who- make bull-fighting their 
profession, march into the arena in pro¬ 
cession. They are of various kinds— 
the picadores, combatants on horseback, 
in the old Spanish knightly garb; the 
chulos or banderilleros, combatants on 
foot, in gay dresses, with colored cloaks 
or banners; and lastly, the matador 
(the killer). As soon as the signal is 
given the bull is let into the arena. The 
picadores, who have stationed them¬ 
selves near him, commence the attack 


with their lances, and the bull is thus 
goaded to fury. Sometimes a horse is 
wounded or killed (only old worthless 
animals are thus employed), and the 
rider is obliged to run for his life. The 
chulos assist the horsemen by drawing 
the attention of the bull with their 
cloaks; and in case of danger they save 
themselves by leaping over the wooden 
fence which surrounds the arena. The 
banderilleros then come into play. 
They try to fasten on the bull their 
banderillas—barbed darts ornamented 
with colored paper, and often having 
squibs or crackers attached. If they 
succeed, the squibs are discharged, and 
the bull races madly about the arena. 
The matador or espada now comes in 
gravely with a naked sword, and a red 
flag to decoy the bull with, and aims a 
fatal blow at the animal. The slaughter¬ 
ed bull is dragged away, and another is 
let out from the stall. Several bulls are 
so disposed of in a single day. 

BULLFINCH, an insessorial bird, with 
short thick rounded bill, beak and crown 
of the head black, body bluish-gray 
above and bright tile-red below. It 



Bullfinch. 


occurs in Britain, in the middle and 
south of Europe, and in Asia, and when 
tamed may be taught to sing musical 
airs. 

BULLFROG, a large species of frog 
found in North America, 8 to 12 inches 
long, of a dusky-brown color mixed 
with a yellowish green, and spotted with 
black. These frogs live in stagnant 
water, and utter a low croaking sound 
resembling the lowing of cattle, whence 
the name. 

BULLHEAD, the popular name of 
certain fishes. One of these, a British 
fish, is about 4 inches long, with head 
very large and broader than the body. 
The armed bull-head is found in the 
Baltic and northern seas; the six-homed 
bull-head is a North American species. 
In America this name is called also Cat¬ 
fish and Horned-pout. 

BUL'LION is uncoined gold or silver, 
in bars, plate, or other masses, but the 
term is frequently employed to signify 
the precious metals coined and uncoined. 

BULL RUN, a stream in the n.e of 
Virginia, flowing into the Occoquan river, 
14 miles from the Potomac; the scene 
of two great battles during the American 
civil war in which the Federals were de¬ 
feated. The first battle was fought 21st 
July, I 86 I 1 ; and the second on 30th 
August, 1862. 


BULLS AND BEARS, in stock-ex- 
change slang, manipulators of stocks; 
the former operating in order to effect a 
rise in price, the latter doing all they can 
to bring prices of stock down. 

BULL’S-EYE, (1) a round piece of 
thick glass, convex on one side, inserted 
into the decks, ports, scuttle-hatches, 
or skylight-covers of a vessel for the 
purpose of admitting light. (2) A small 
lantern with a lens in one side of it to 
concentrate the light in any desired 
direction. (3) In rifle shooting, the 
center of a target, of a differerent color 
from the rest of it and usually round. 

BULOW (btt'16), Friedrich Wilhelm 
von, Prussian general, born 1755, died 
1816. He was actively engaged against 
the French at the earliest periods of the 
revolutionary war; and his services in 
1813 and 1814, especially at Grosbeeren 
and Dennewitz, were rewarded with a 
Grand Knightship of the Iron Cross and 
the title Count Billow von Dennewitz. 
As commander of the fourth division of 
the allied army he contributed to the 
victorious close of the battle of Waterloo. 

BULOW (bil'lo), Hans Guido von, 
pianist and composer, bom at Dresden 
1830. He studied the piano under Liszt, 
and made his first public appearance in 
1852. In 1855 he became leading pro¬ 
fessor in the Conservatory at Berlin; in 
1858 was appointed court pianist; and 
in 1867 he became musical director to 
the King of Bavaria. His compositions 
include overture and music to Julius 
Csesar, The Minstrel’s Curse, and Nir- 
wana; songs, choruses, and pianoforte 
pieces. He was considered one of the 
first of pianists and orchestral conduct¬ 
ors. He died in 1894. 

BULOZ (bii-loz), Francois, born near 
Geneva, Switzerland, 1803, died at Paris 
1877; founder and editor of the Revue 
des Deux Mondes, the celebrated French 
fortnightly literary magazine. 

BULRUSH (bul'-), the popular name 
for large rush-like plants growing in 
marshes, not very definitely applied. 
Some authors apply the name to cat’s- 
tail or reed-mace. But it is more gener¬ 
ally restricted to a tall rush-like plant 
from which the bottoms of chairs, mats, 
etc., are manufactured. 

BULWER (bul'-), Sir Henry Lytton, 
Lord Dalling and Bulwer, diplomatist 
and author, elder brother of Lord 
Lytton, born 1804, died 1872. He was 
attached to the British embassies at 
Berlin, Brussels, and the Hague from 
1827 to 1830, when he entered parlia¬ 
ment. In 1837 he was sent as secretary 
of legation to Constantinople; subse¬ 
quently he was minister at Madrid and 
Washington'; and he succeeded Lord 
Stratford de Redcliffe as ambassador 
at the Porte (1858-65). He wrote, 
among others, France, Social, Literary, 
and Political; Life of Byron, Life of 
Palmerston, and Historical Characters. 
He was raised to the peerage in 1871. 

BULWER LYTTON. See Lytton, 
Lord. 

BUM-BOAT, a small boat used to sell 
vegetables, etc., to ships lying at a dis¬ 
tance from shore. 

BUMPUS, Herman Carey, an Ameri¬ 
can anatomist and zoologist, bom in 
Maine in 1862. He is director of the 




BUNCE 


BUOY 


biological laboratory at Am. Mus. Nat¬ 
ural History, New York. 

BUNCE, F rands Marvin, an American 
admiral, born in Connecticut in 1836. 
He was graduated at Annapolis in 1857, 
was wounded at the siege of Charleston 
in 1863, and was commander of the 
monitor Monadnock from Philadelphia 
to San Francisco in 1865. In 1898 he 
was retired with the rank of rear ad¬ 
miral. 

BUNCO, a word used to designate a 
species of swindling practiced by city 
sharpers on strangers. The stranger is 
led to believe that the “bunco man” is 
acquainted with people of influence in 
the stranger’s locality, and in one way 
or another is then fleeced of money. 

BUNCOMBE, BUNKUM, a county in 
South Carolina; area, 450 6q. miles; 
pop. 21,910. The term Bunkum, mean¬ 
ing talking for talking's sake, bombastic 
speech-making, is said to have originated 
with a congressional member for this 
county, who declared that he was only 
talking for Buncombe, when attempts 
were made to cut his oratory short. 

BUNDELCUND, a tract of country 
in Upper India lying between the river 
Jumna on the n., and the Chambal on 
the n. and w.; area, 20,658 sq. miles; 
pop. 3,779,627. It comprises the British 
districts of Hamirpur, Jalaun, Jhansi, 
Lalitpur, and Banda, and thirty-one 
native states. 

BUNDESRATH (bun'des-rat), the 
German federal council which represents 
the individual states of the empire, as 
the Reichstag represents the German 
nation. It consists of sixty-two dele¬ 
gates, and its functions are mainly those 
of a confirming body, although it has 
the privilege of rejecting measures 
passed by the Reichstag. 

BUN'GALOW, in India, a house or 
residence, generally of a single floor. 
Native bungalows are constructed of 
wood, bamboos, etc.; but those erected 



Bungalow on Penang hills. 

by Europeans are generally built of 
sun-dried bricks, and thatched or tiled, 
and are of all styles and sizes, but in¬ 
variably surrounded by a veranda. 

BUN'ION, an enlargement and in¬ 
flammation of the joint of the great toe 
arising from irritation of the small mem¬ 
branous sac called bursa mucosa. 

BUNK, a wooden box or case serving 
as a seat during the day and a bed at 
night; also one of a series of sleeping 
berths arranged above each other. 

BUNKER HILL, a small eminence in 
Charlestown, now a part of Boston, 
Mass.; scene of the first important battle 
in the revolutionary war, fought June 
17,1775. A considerable body of Amer¬ 
icans having been sent to occupy 


the peninsula on which Charlestown 
stands, a British force was sent to dis¬ 
lodge them. This was not effected till 
after three assaults on their intrenched 
position, with a loss of 1000 men, while 
the Americans did not lose half that 
number. 

BUNKUM. See Buncombe. 

BUNSEN, Robert Wilhelm Eberard, 
eminent German chemist, born at Got¬ 
tingen 1811. Among his many dis¬ 
coveries and inventions are the produc¬ 
tion of magnesium in quantities, mag¬ 
nesium light, spectrum analysis, the 
Bunsen burner, etc. He died in 1899. 

BUNSEN’S BURNER, a form of gas 
burner especially adapted for heating, 
consisting of a tube, in which, by means 
of holes in the side, the gas becomes 
mixed with air before consumption so 
that it gives a non-illuminating smoke¬ 
less flame. 

BUNT'ING, a thin woolen stuff, of 
which the colors and signals of a ship are 
usually formed; hence, a vessel’s flags 
collectively. 

BUN'YAN, John, author of the Pil¬ 
grim’s Progress, was the son of a tinker, 
and was bom at the village of Elstow, 
near Bedford, in 1628, died in London 
1688. He followed his father’s employ¬ 
ment, but during the civil war he served 
as a soldier. Returning to Elstow, after 
much mental conflict his mind became 
impressed with a deep sense of the truth 
and importance of religion. He joined 
a society of Anabaptists at Bedford, and 
at length undertook the office of a public 
teacher among them. Acting in defiance 
of the severe laws against dissenters, 
Bunyan was detained in prison for 
twelve years (1660-72), but was at last 
liberated, and became pastor of the com¬ 
munity with which he had previously 
been connected. During his imprison¬ 
ment he wrote Profitable Meditations, 
The Holy City, etc., and also the curious 
piece of autobiography entitled Grace 
Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. In 
1675 he was sent to prison for six months 
under the Conventicle Act. To this con¬ 
finement he owes his chief literary fame, 
for in the solitude of his cell he produced 
the first part of that admired religious 
allegory, the Pilgrim’s Progress. His 
Holy War, his other religious parables, 
and his devotional tracts, which are 
numerous, are also remarkable, and 
many of them valuable. On obtaining 
his liberty Bunyan resumed his functions 
as a minister at Bedford, and became 
extremely popular. He died when on a 
visit to London. 

BUONAPARTE. See Bonaparte. 

BUONAROTTI (by-o-na-rot'te), Mi¬ 
chael Angelo, of the ancient family of the 
counts of Canossa, born at Caprese, in 
Tuscany, 1475, died at Rome 1563; a 
distinguished Italian painter, sculptor, 
architect, and poet. Having distin¬ 
guished himself both in sculpture and 
painting, he was commissioned (to¬ 
gether with Leonardo da Vinci) to deco¬ 
rate the senate-hall at Florence with a 
historical design, but before it was fin¬ 
ished, in 1505, he was induced by Pope 
Julius II. to settle in Rome. Here he 
sculptured the monument of the pontiff 
(there are seven statues belonging to it) 
now in the church of St. Pietro in Vin- 


coli; and painted the dome of the 
Sistine Chapel, his frescoes representing 
the creation and the principal events of 
sacred history. In 1530 he took a lead¬ 
ing part in the defense of Florence 



Michael Angelo Buonarotti. 


against Charles V. Three years later 
he began his great picture in the Sistine 
Chapel, the Last Judgment, which 
occupied him eight years. His last con¬ 
siderable works in painting were two 
large pictures: the Conversion of St. 
Paul and the Crucifixion of St. Peter in 
the Pauline Chapel. In sculpture he 
executed the Descent of Christ from the 
Cross, four figures of one piece of marble. 
His statue of Bacchus was thought by 
Raphael to possess equal perfection with 
the masterpieces of Phidias and Praxit¬ 
eles. As late as 1546 he was obliged to 
undertake the continuation of the build¬ 
ing of St. Peter’s, and planned and 
built the dome, but he did not live long 
enough to see his plan finished, in 
which many alterations were made 
after his death. Besides this, he under¬ 
took the building of the Piazza del 
Campidoglio (Capitol), of the Farnese 
Palace, and of many other edifices. His 
style in architecture is distinguished by 
grandeur and boldness, and in his orna¬ 
ments the untamed character of the 
imagination frequently appears, pre¬ 
ferring the uncommon to the simple and 
elegant. 

BUOY (boi), any floating body em¬ 
ployed to point out the particular situa¬ 
tion of a ship’s anchor, a shoal, the 
direction of a navigable channel, etc. 



Buoys. 

1, Can-buoy. 2, Nun-buoy. 3, Bell-buoy. 

4, Mooring-buoy. 

They are made of wood, or now more 
commonly of wrought-iron plates rivet¬ 
ed together and forming hollow cham¬ 
bers. They are generally moored by 
chains to the bed of the channel, etc. 










BURBANK 


BURGUNDY 


They are of various shapes, and receive 
corresponding names; thus there are 
the can-buoy, the nun-buoy, the bell- 
buoy, the mooring-buoy, as represented 
in the accompanying cuts. The name 
is also given to a floating object intended 
to keep a person afloat till he can be 
taken from the water: more particu¬ 
larly called a life-bouy. 

BURBANK, Luther, an American 
plant grower, born in Massachusetts 
in 1849, and since 1875 the proprietor 
of an experimental farm near Santa 
Rosa, Cal. By means of artificial selec¬ 
tion he has bred numerous useful varie¬ 
ties of food plant, including a thornless 
cactus and a white blackberry. 

BURCHARD, Samuel Dickinson, an 
American Presbyterian clergyman, born 
in New York in 1812, died in 1891. He 
preached to New York City. Burchard 
is famous chiefly for his speech in 1884 
during the Blaine-Cleveland campaign, 
in which he denounced the democratic 
party as the party of Rum, Romanism, 
and Rebellion. The speech, it is be¬ 
lieved, defeated Blaine, notwithstanding 
his favor with many Roman Catholics. 

BURDEN, Henry, an American in¬ 
ventor, born in Scotland in 1791, died 
in 1871. His principal inventions, are 
improvements in the plow, a railroad 
spike making machine, and a horseshoe 
making machine. He was the owner 
of the Troy Iron and Nail Works. 

BURDEN OF PROOF, the obligation 
resting on the affirmant of a proposition 
to prove the truth of his affirmation. 
In criminal cases the burden of proof 
rests with the state. 

BUR'DETT, Sir Francis, English 
politician, born 1770, died 1844. In 
1796 he entered parliament as member 
for Boroughbridge, and advocated par¬ 
liamentary reform and various liberal 
measures. He afterward sat for Middle¬ 
sex, and in 1807-37 for Westminster. 
In his later years he became a Tory, 
and represented North Wilts. In 1793 
he married the youngest daughter of 
Thomas Coutts the banker. 

BURDETT-COUTTS (kots), Angela 
Georgina, daughter of the above, born 
1814, has become deservedly popular 
for the liberal use she has made of the 
immense wealth she inherited from her 
grandfather (Thomas Coutts) in public 
and private charities. In 1871 she 
received a peerage from government^ 
and in 1881 married a Mr. Ashmead- 
Bartlett who has assumed the name of 
Burdett-Coutts. She died in 1906. 

BUREAU (bu-ro'), a writing-table, 
also the chamber of an officer of gov¬ 
ernment and the body of subordinate 
officers who labor under the direction of 
a chief.—Bureau system, or bureau¬ 
cracy, is a term often applied to those 
governments in which the business of 
administration is carried on in depart¬ 
ments, each under the control of a chief; 
or, more broadly, the system of central¬ 
izing the administration of a country 
through regularly graded series of gov¬ 
ernment officials. 

BURGESS, Edward, an American 
naval architect, born in 1848, died in 
1891. He is noted for his designs of 
racing yachts, including the Puritan, 
the Mayflower, and the Volunteer, 
which were successful defenders of 


the America’s cup in 1885, 1886, and 
1887. 

BURGESS, Frank Gelett, an Ameri¬ 
can humorist, born in 1866, in Boston. 
He originated in 1895 a fantastical 
weekly called The Lark, which was pub¬ 
lished with poor success at San Fran¬ 
cisco. His drawings are quaint and 
most pleasing. 

BURGESS, Neil, an American actor, 
born in Boston in 1846. His principal 
roles have been those of Josiah Allen’s 
Wife, and the Widow Bedott, female 
characters in which the actor evinced a 
quaint and fetching humor which has 
made him exceedingly popular. 

BURG'LARY is defined in English 
law to be a breaking and entering the 
dwelling-house of another, in the night, 
with intent to commit some felony 
within the same, whether such felonious 
intent be executed or not. In the U. 
States the crime of burglary has been 
defined in many states by statutes in 
which the meaning of the term has been 
considerably widened so as to include 
the breaking into any building at any 
time with the intention of committing 
a crime. 

BUR'GOMASTER, the chief magis¬ 
trate of a municipal town in the Nether¬ 
lands and Germany. The title is equiva¬ 
lent to the English mayor and the Scotch 
provost. 

BURGOS (bur'gos), a city of northern 
Spain, once the capital of the kingdom 
of Old Castile, and now the chief town 
of the province of Burgos. The cathe¬ 
dral, commenced in 1221, is one of the 



The Cathedral of Burgos. 


finest examples of Gothic architecture 
in Spain. It contains the tombs of the 
famous Cid, and of Don Fernando, both 
natives of Burgos, and celebrated 
throughout Spain for their heroic 
achievements in the wars with the 
Moors. Before the removal of the court 
to Madrid, in the 16th century, Burgos 
was in a very flourishing condition, and 
contained thrice its present population. 
It has some manufactures in woolens 
and linens. Pop. 29,683.—The province 
has an area of 5650 sq. miles, largely 
hilly or mountainous, but w r ith good 
agricultural and pastoral land. Pop. 
348,152. 

BURGOYNE (bur-goin'), John, an 
English general officer and dramatist; 
born 1722, died 1792. After serving in 
various parts of the world, he was in 
1777 appointed commander of an army 
against the revolted Americans, and 
took Ticonderoga, but had at last to 
surrender with his whole army at Sar¬ 
atoga. He was ill received on his return 
to England, and deprived of his com¬ 
mand of the 76th Light Dragoons and 
the governorship of Fort William. 

BURGUNDY, a region of western 
Europe, so named from the Burgun¬ 


dians, a Teutonic or Germanic people 
originally from the country between the 
Oder and the Vistula. They migrated 
first to the region of the Upper Rhine, 
and in the beginning of the 5th century 



General Burgoyne. 


passed into Gaul and obtained posses¬ 
sion of the southeastern part of this 
country, where they founded a king¬ 
dom having its seat of government 
sometimes at Lyons, and sometimes at 
Geneva. They were at last w T holly sub¬ 
dued by the Franks. In 879 Boson, 
Count of Autun, succeeded in establish¬ 
ing the royal dignity again in part of 
this kingdom. He styled himself King 
of Provence, and had his residence at 
Arles. His son Louis added the country 
beyond the Jura, and thus established 
Cis-Juran Burgundy. A second king¬ 
dom arose when Rudolph of Strettlingen 
formed Upper or Transjuran Burgundy 
out of part of Switzerland and Savoy. 
Both these Burgundian kingdoms were 
united, and finally, on the extinction of 
Rudolph’s line, were incorporated with 
Germany. But a third state, the his¬ 
torical Duchy of Burgundy, consisting 
principally of the French province of 
Bourgogne or Burgundy, had been 
formed as a great feudal and almost 
independent province of France in the 
9th century. This first ducal line died 
out with a Duke Philip, and the duchy, 
reverting to the crown, was, in 1363, 
granted by King John of France to his 
son Philip the Bold, who thus became 
the founder of a new line of dukes of 
Burgundy. A marriage with Margaret, 
daughter of Louis III., count of Flanders, 
brought him Flanders, Mechlin, Ant¬ 
werp, and Franche-Comt6. He was 
succeeded by his son Duke John the 
Fearless, whose son and successor, 
Philip the Good, so greatly extended 
his dominions, that on his death in 1467 
his son Charles, surnamed the Bold, 
though possessing only the title of duke, 
w r as in reality one of the richest and most 
powerful sovereigns of Europe. (See 
Charles the Bold.) Charles left a daugh¬ 
ter, Mary of Burgundy, the sole heiress 
of his states, who by her marriage to 
Maximilian of Austria transferred a 
large part of her dominions to that 
prince, while Louis XI. of France ac¬ 
quired Burgundy proper as a male fief 
of France. Burgundy then formed a 
province, and is now represented by the 
four departments of Yonne, Cote-d’Or, 
Saone-et-Loire, and Ain. It is watered 
by a number of navigable rivers, and 
is one of the most productive provinces 
in France, especially of wines. 





BURGUNDY PITCH 


BURMAH 


BURGUNDY PITCH, a resin got from 
the Norway spruce and several other 
pines. It is used in medicine as a 
stimulating plaster. It takes its name 
from Burgundy in France, where it was 
first prepared. 

BURGUNDY WINES are produced in 
the former province of Burgundy, espe¬ 
cially in the department of Cote-d’Or, 
and in richness of flavor and all the more 
delicate qualities of the juice of the 
grape they are inferior to none in the 
world. Among the red wines of Bur¬ 
gundy the finest are the Chambertin, 
the Clos Vougeot, Roman6e-Conty, etc. 

BURIAL (be'ri-al), the mode of dis¬ 
posing of the dead, a practice which 
varies among different peoples. Among 
savage races, and even among some 
cultured peoples of the East, exposure 
to wild animals or birds of prey is not 
uncommon. The careful embalmment 
of their dead by the ancient Egyptians 
may be regarded as a special form of 
burial. But by far the most common 
forms of disposing of the dead have been 
burning and interring. Among the 
Greeks and Romans both forms were 
racticed, though among the latter 
urning became common only in the 
later times of the republic. In this form 
of burial the corpse, after being borne 
in procession through the streets, was 
placed upon a pyre built of wood, and 
profusely sprinkled with oils and per¬ 
fumes. Fire was set to the wood, and 
after the process of cremation was com¬ 
plete the bones and ashes were carefully 
gathered together by the relatives and 
placed in an urn. With the introduction 
of the Christian religion, consecrated 
places were appropriated for the purpose 
of general burial, and the Roman custom 
of providing the sepulcher with a stone 
and inscription was continued by the 
Christians. The practice of cremation 
now declined and finally disappeared, 
but has recently to some little extent 
been revived. 

BU'RIATS, a nomadic Tartar people 
allied to the Kalmucks, inhabiting the 
southern part of the government of 
Irkutsk and Transbaikalia. Their num¬ 
ber is about 200,000. They live in huts 
called yurts, which in summer are 
covered with leather, in winter with felt. 
They support themselves by their 
flocks, by hunting, and the mechanical 
arts, particularly the forging of iron. 

BURKE, Edmund, a writer, orator, 
and statesman of great eminence, was 
born in Dublin, Jan. 1, 1730. The 
political career for which he had been 
arduously preparing himself all along at 
length opened up to him on his appoint¬ 
ment as private secretary to Mr. W. G. 
Hamilton, Secretary for Ireland, in 
1761. On his return he obtained the 
appointment of private secretary to the 
Marquis of Rockingham, then First 
Lord of the Treasury. Through the 
same interest he entered parliament as 
member for Wendover (1765). The 
great question of the right of taxing the 
American colonies was then occupying 
parliament, and the Rockingham min¬ 
istry having taken, mainly through 
Burke’s advice, a middle and undecided 
course, was soon dissolved (1766). From 
1770 to 1782 Lord North was in power, 
and Burke held no office. In 1774-80 


he was member for Bristol. In several 
magnificent speeches he criticized the 
ministerial measures with regard to the 
colonies, and advocated a policy of 
justice and conciliation. In 1782, when 
the Rockingham party returned to 
power, Burke obtained the lucrative 
post of paymaster-general of the forces, 
and shortly after introduced his famous 



Edmund Burke. 

bill for economical reform, which passed 
after considerable modifications had 
been made on it. On the fall of the Duke 
of Portland’s coalition ministry, 1783, 
of which Burke had also been part, Pitt 
again succeeded to power, and it was 
during this administration that the im¬ 
peachment of Hastings, in which Burke 
was the prime mover, took place. The 
lucidity, eloquence, and mastery of 
detail which Burke showed on this 
occasion have never been surpassed. 
The chief feature in the latter part of 
Burke’s life was his resolute struggle 
against the ideas and doctrines of the 
French revolution. His attitude on this 
question separated him from his old 
friend Fox, and the Liberals who fol¬ 
lowed Fox. His famous Reflections on 
the Revolution in France, a pamphlet 
which appeared in 1790, had an un¬ 
precedented sale, and gave enormous 
impetus to the reaction which had 
commenced in England. From this 
time most of his writings are powerful 
pleadings on the same side. In 1794 he 
withdrew from parliament. Three years 
after, on July 8, 1797, he died, his end 
being hastened by grief for the loss of his 
only son. 

BURLEIGH, Lord. See Cecil. 

BURLESQUE (bur-lesk') signifies a 
low form of the comic, arising generally 
from a ludicrous mixture of things high 
and low. High thoughts, for instance, 
are clothed in low expressions, noble 
subjects described in a familiar manner, 
or vice versa. The true comic shows us 
an instructive, if laughable, side of 
things; the burlesque Travesties and 
caricatures them in order to excite 
laughter or ridicule. 

BURLET'TA, a light, comic species 
of musical drama, which derives its 
name from the Italian burlare, to jest. 
It originated in Italy, from whence it 
passed to the Transalpine countries. 

BURLINGTON, city, important rail¬ 
road center, and river-port of Iowa; 
capital of Des Moines co.; situated on 
the Mississippi river; 207 miles w.s.w. of 
Chicago, 250 miles by water above St. 


Louis, and 296 miles by railroad east of 
Omaha. The river is here a broad, deep, 
and beautiful stream. The plan of the 
city is regular, and the houses are mostly 
of brick and stone. This place is the 
seat of Burlington University, and con¬ 
tains about twenty-five churches and 
numerous manufactories. Pop. 27,400. 

BURLINGTON, city, and railroad cen¬ 
ter, of Burlington co., N. J., on the Del¬ 
aware river, 20 miles above Philadel¬ 
phia and 12 miles s.w. of Trenton. The 
principal industries are the manufacture 
of shoes, canned goods, iron pipes of all 
sizes, stoves, heaters, and carriages. 
Pop. 10,100. 

BURLINGTON, city and railroad cen¬ 
ter and county-seat of Chittenden co., 
Vt., on Burlington Bay of Lake Cham¬ 
plain ; 40 miles w. from Montpelier, the 
capital of the state. 

The heaviest trade in the city is in lum¬ 
ber. There are large quarries of build¬ 
ing-stone, of limestone, and of fine mar¬ 
ble within or near the city limits; large 
cotton-mills, steam marble-mills, ma¬ 
chine-shops, foundries, sash, chair, fur¬ 
niture, patent medicine, malt cereals, 
and shoe factories, paper-mills, and 
many smaller manufacturing trades are 
thriving. 

The University of Vermont and State 
Agricultural College is situated here. 
Pop. 20,140. 

BURLINGTON LIMESTONE, a forma¬ 
tion of the carboniferous period, occur- 
ing in Missouri and Illinois, adjacent to 
the Mississippi river. It affords a val¬ 
uable building-stone, and is peculiarly 
interesting to naturalists. The upper 
bed is of a light-gray color, and is nearly 
pure carbonate of lime. The lower bed 
contains more magnesia. 

BUR'MAH, a country of southern 
Asia, bounded on the north by Assam 
and Tibet, on the east by Chinese 
territory and Siam, elsewhere mainly 
by the Bay of Bengal; area about 290,- 
000 sq. miles. It is traversed by great 
mountain ranges branching off from 
those of northern India and running 
parallel to each other southward to the 
sea. Between these ranges and in the 
plains or valleys here situated the four 
great rivers of Burrnah—the Irrawaddy, 
its tributary the Kyen-dwen, the Sittang, 
and the Salwen—flow in a southerly 
direction to the sea, watering the rich 
alluvial tracts of Lower Burmah, and 
having at their mouths all the great 
seaports of the country—Rangoon, Bas- 
sein, Moulmein, Akyab, etc. The Irra¬ 
waddy is of great value as a highway 
of communication and traffic, being 
navigable beyond Bhamo, near the 
Chinese frontier, or over 800 miles. 
In their lower courses the rivers often 
overflow their banks in the rainy season. 
Though its resources are almost entirely 
undeveloped, the country, as a whole, 
is productive, especially in the lower 
portions. Here grow rice, sugar-cane, 
tobacco, cotton, indigo, etc. Cotton is 
grown almost everywhere; tea is cul¬ 
tivated in many of the more elevated 
parts. The forests produce timber of 
many sorts, including teak, which grows 
most luxuriantly, and is largely ex¬ 
ported. Iron-wood is another valuable 
timber; and among forest products are 
also the bamboo, cutch, stick-lac, and 









BURNABY 


BURNS AND SCALDS 


rubber. Burmah has great mineral 
wealth—gold, silver, precious stones, 
iron, marble, lead, tin, coal, petroleum, 
etc.; but these resources have not yet 
been much developed. The chief pre¬ 
cious stone is the ruby, and the mines 
of this gem belong to tne crown. Sap¬ 
phire, amber, and jade are also obtained. 
Among wild animals are the elephant, 
rhinoceros, tiger, leopard, deer of various 
kinds, and the wild hog. Among do¬ 
mestic animals are the ox, buffalo, 
horse, and elephant. The rivers abound 
with fish. The most common fruits are 
the guava, custard-apple, tamarind, 
pine, orange, banana, jack, and mango. 
The yam and sweet-potato are culti¬ 
vated, and in some parts the common 
potato. The climate of course varies 
according to elevation and other cir¬ 
cumstances, but as a whole is warm, 
though not unhealthful, except in low 
jungly districts. The rainfall among 
the mountains reaches as high as 190 
inches per annum. 

The population may be stated at 
about 9,000,000 or 10,000,000, made up 
of a great variety of races besides the 
Burmese proper, as Talaings, Shans, 
Karens, etc. The Burmese proper are 
of a brown color, with lank, black hair 
(seldom any on the face), and have 
active, vigorous, well - proportioned 
frames. They are a cheerful, lively 
people, fond of amusement, averse to 
continuous exertion, free from prejudice 
of caste or creed, temperate and hardy. 
The predominant religion is Buddhism. 
The Burmese language is monosyllabic, 
like Chinese, and is written with an 
alphabet the characters of which (de¬ 
rived from India) are more or less cir¬ 
cular. There is a considerable literature. 

Burmah is now divided into Lower 
Burmah and Upper Burmah, the former 
till 1886 being called British Burmah, 
while the latter till that date was an 
independent kingdom or empire. Lower 
Burmah was acquired from Independ¬ 
ent Burmah in 1826 and 1852 as the 
result of two wars terminating in favor 
of 'Britain. It comprises the divisions 
of Aracan, Pegu, Irrawaddy, and Tenas- 
serim; area, 87,957 sq. miles; population 
5,371,328. Under British rule it has 
prospered greatly, the population and 
trade having increased immensely. 
Roads, canals, railways, and other 
public works have been carried out. 
The area of Upper Burmah under direct 
British administration is 83,473 sq. 
miles; pop. 3,849,833. The chief city 
and port is Rangoon, which is now con¬ 
nected by railway with Mandalay in 
Upper Burmah. 

Under its native kings the form of 
government in Upper Burmah was 
absolute monarchy, the seat of govern¬ 
ment being latterly at Mandalay. The 
king was assisted in governing by a 
council of state known as the Hloot-daw, 
to which belonged the functions of a 
house of legislature, a cabinet, and a 
supreme court. The king had power to 
punish at his pleasure any one, even the 
great officers of state. The revenue was 
derived from taxes levied in a very 
irregular and capricious manner, and 
official corruption was rampant. The 
criminal laws were barbarously severe. 
Capital punishment was commonly 


inflicted by decapitation, but crucifixion 
and disemboweling were also practiced. 
After the loss of the maritime provinces 
the influence of Independent Burmah 
greatly declined, as did also its Asiatic 
and foreign trade. 

The Burmese empire is of little note in 
ancient or general history. Upper Bur¬ 
mah was annexed to the British empire 
by proclamation of the Viceroy of India, 
1st Jan. 1886. The area thus annexed 
was about 200,000 sq. miles, of which 
half belonged to the kingdom proper, 
half to the semi-independent Shan 
states. Its government is now organ¬ 
ized under a single lieutenant-governor, 
Upper and Lower Burmah forming each 
a commissionership, and being divided 
into four divisions each, which again are 
subdivided into districts. 

BUR'NABY, Frederick Gustavus, Eng¬ 
lish soldier and traveler, born 1842. 
In 1875 he made his famous ride to 
Khiva. In 1876 he rode through Asiatic 
Turkey and Persia. Of both these 
journeys he published narratives. In 
1885 (Jan. 17), while serving as lieu- 
tenant-colonel of the Royal Horse 
Guards in the Egyptian campaign, he 
was slain at the battle of Abu-Klea. 

BURNETT, Frances Eliza Hodgson, an 
Anglo-American novelist, born in Eng¬ 
land in 1849 and identified with Ameri¬ 
can literature since 1872. Her most 
popular works are That Lass o’ Lowrie’s, 
A Lady of Quality, Little Lord Faunt- 
leroy, and Through One Administration. 
In 1873 she married Dr. S. M. Burnett. 
She fives in Europe and in Washington. 

BURNING-GLASS, a lens which, by 
bringing the sun’s rays rapidly to a 
focus, produces a heat strong enough to 
kindle combustible matter. The lenses 
commonly used are convex on both 
sides, and have a small focal distance. 
That such a glass may produce its great¬ 
est effect it is necessary that the rays of 
the sun should fall upon it in a perpen¬ 
dicular direction. The effect may be 
greatly augmented by the use of a 
second lens, of a smaller focal distance, 
placed between the first and its focus. 
Some immense burning-glasses have 
been made, producing surprising effects. 
Concave burning-mirrors produce the 
same kind of results, and have almost 
four times more power than burning- 
glasses of equal extent and curvature. 
The concavity must present a surface of 
high reflecting power (polished silver or 
other metal, or silvered glass), and must 
be either spherical or parabolic. Plane 
mirrors may also be employed like con¬ 
cave ones, if several of them are com¬ 
bined in a proper manner. The ancients 
were acquainted with such mirrors, and 
Archimedes is said to have set the Ro¬ 
man fleet on fire at the siege of Syracuse 
(b.c. 212) by some such means. In 1747 
Buffon by a combination of mirrors 
burned wood at the distance of 200 feet 
and melted tin at the distance of 150, etc. 

BURNING-MIRRORS. See preceding 
article. 

BURNISHER, a blunt, smooth tool, 
used for smoothing and polishing a 
rough surface by rubbing. Agates, 
tempered steel, and dog’s teeth are used 
for burnishing. 

BURN'LEY, a pari., municipal, and 
county borough of England, in Lan¬ 


cashire, about 22 miles n. of Manchester. 
Pop. 97,044. 

BURNS, Robert, the great lyric poet 
of Scotland, was born near Ayr, January 
25, 1759. He was instructed in the 
ordinary branches of an English edu¬ 
cation; to these he afterward added 
French and a little mathematics. But 



Robert Burns. 


most of his education was got from the 
general reading of books, to which he 
gave himself with passion. In this 
manner he learned what the best Eng¬ 
lish poets might teach him, and culti¬ 
vated the instincts for poetry which had 
been implanted in his nature. He be¬ 
gan to produce poetical pieces which 
attracted the notice of his neighbors and 
gained him considerable reputation. 
In 1786 Burns was about to set sail 
for Jamaica, when he was drawn to 
Edinburgh by a letter from Dr. Black- 
lock to an Ayrshire friend of his and the 
poet, recommending that he should take 
advantage of the general admiration his 
poems had excited, and publish a new 
edition of them. This advice was eager¬ 
ly adopted, and the result exceeded his 
most sanguine expectations. After re¬ 
maining more than a year in the Scot¬ 
tish metropolis, admired, flattered, and 
caressed by persons of eminence for 
their rank, fortune, or talents, he retired 
to the country with the sum of some 
$2500, which he had realized by the 
second publication of his poems. A part 
of this sum he advanced to his brother, 
and with the remainder took a consider¬ 
able farm (Ellisland) near Dumfries, to 
which he subsequently added the office 
of exciseman. He now married Jean 
Armour, a Mauchline girl. But the 
farming at Ellisland was not a success, 
and in about three years Burns removed 
to Dumfries and relied on his employ¬ 
ment as an exciseman alone. He con¬ 
tinued to exercise his pen, particularly 
in the composition of a number of beauti¬ 
ful songs adapted to old Scottish tunes. 
In the winter of 1795 his constitution, 
broken by cares, irregularities, and 
passions, fell into premature decline; 
and in July, 1796, a rheumatic fever 
terminated his fife and sufferings at the 
early age of thirty-seven. 

BURNS AND SCALDS are injuries 
produced by the application of excessive 
heat to the human body. They are 
generally dangerous in proportion to 
the extent of surface they cover, and a 
wide-spread scald may cause serious 
consequences on account of the nervous 
shock. Congestion of the brain, pneu- 





BURNSIDE 


BUSHRANGERS 


monia, inflammation of the bowels, or 
lock-jaw may result from an extensive 
burn. Hence the treatment requires to 
be both local and constitutional. If 
there is shivering or exhaustion hot 
brandy and water may be given with 
good effect, and if there is much pain a 
sedative solution of opium. The local 
treatment consists in dredging the burn 
with fine wheat flour, and then wrapping 
it up in cotton-wool. An application of 
equal quantities of olive-oil and lime- 
water, called carron-oil, is much recom¬ 
mended by some, the part being after¬ 
ward covered by cotton-wool. The 
main thing is to keep the air from the in¬ 
jured part, and therefore, when a blister 
forms, although it may be pricked, the 
loose skin should not be removed. 

BURNSIDE, Ambrose Everett, an 
American soldier, born in Indiana in 
1824, died in 1881. He began his mili¬ 
tary career as a colonel of Rhode Island 
volunteers in the civil war and took part 


agent at Birmingham. In 1868 he 
returned to live on his farm in America, 
and died March 7, 1879. His best- 



A. E. Burnside. 

in the battles of Antietam, Fredericks¬ 
burg, and other engagements. He tried 
to suppress several newspapers in the 
North, but his orders were overruled by 
popular pressure. He was raised to the 
rank of major-general of volunteers, and 
toward the end of the war he served 
under Grant in the Richmond campaign. 
Burnside subsequently to the war served 
in the senate of the U. States. 

BURNT-OFFERING, something of¬ 
fered and burnt on an altar as an atone¬ 
ment for sin; a sacrifice. The burnt- 
offerings of the Jews were either some 
clean animal, as an ox, a sheep, a pigeon; 
or some species of vegetable substance, 
as bread, flour, ears of wheat or barley. 

BURR, Aaron, third vice-president of 
the U. States, born in New Jersey in 
1756. After serving with honor in the 
revolutionary army he became a law¬ 
yer, and finally leader of the democratic 
party and vice-president in 1801. His 
duel with Alexander Hamilton, which 
ended fatally for the latter, drove him 
from New York to settle farther west, 
where he conceived an audacious and 
grandiose scheme of founding an em¬ 
pire in the s.w. He was tried for trea 
son, and, though acquitted, sank into 
obscurity. He died in 1836. 

BUR'RITT, Elihu, the “learned black¬ 
smith,” as he was called, was born at 
New Britain, Conn., Dec. 8, 1810. He 
was apprenticed to a blacksmith, but, 
conceiving a strong desire for knowl¬ 
edge, he began to read English literature, 
and with great diligence and perse¬ 
verance at length acquired proficiency 
not only in the ancient, but also most 
of the modern languages of Europe. 
In 1848 the first International Peace 
Congress was held under his guidance 
at Brussels. In 1865 he was consular 





known writings are Sparks from the 
Anvil; Thoughts and Things at Home 
and Abroad; Chips from Many Blocks; 
etc. 

BURROUGHS, John, an American 
naturalist and writer, born at Roxbury, 
N. Y., in 1837. His chief works are 
concerned with descriptions of animals 
and plants, but he has also written a 
considerable number of essays and 



criticisms. Among his more popular 
books are Wake, Robin; Winter Sun¬ 
shine; Birds and Poets; Locusts and 
Wild Honey; Fresh Fields; Signs and 
Seasons; Indoor Studies; and Squirrels 
and Other Fur-Bearers. 

BURROUGHS, Marie, an American 
actress, born at San Francisco in 1866. 
She made her d6but in New York in 
The Rajah, and subsequently appeared 
with E. S. Willard in The Middleman, 
Judah and Ophelia, and other plays. 
She married Robert Barclay MacPher- 
son in 1901. 

BURRO WING-OWL, an American 
owl which dwells in holes in the ground 


either made by itself or by some other 
animal, as the prairie-dog or marmot. 
It feeds on insects and seeks it food by 
day. 

BURTON, John Hill, historian of Scot¬ 
land, born at Aberdeen 1809, died near 
Edinburgh 1881. His first book was 
the Life and Correspondence of David 
Hume (1846), followed by Lives of Lord 
Lovat and Duncan Forbes of Culloden, 
and other works. His chief work was 
his History of Scotland from the Earliest 
Times to 1746. He was appointed 
secretary to the Scottish Prison Board 
in 1854, and was connected with this 
department till his death. 

BURTON, Sir Richard Francis, K.C. 
M.G., English traveler and linguist, 
born in 1821. In 1853 he went to Arabia 
and visited Mecca and Medina dis¬ 
guised as a Mohammedan pilgrim—a 
sufficiently dangerous journey. He vis¬ 
ited many countries and published 
many works, and translations of Cam- 
oens’s Lusiads and of the Arabian 
Nights, etc. Died 1890. 

BUR'TON, Robert, an English writer, 
born at Lindley in Leicestershire in 
1576. His vast out-of-the-way learning 
is curiously displayed in his book The 
Anatomy of Melancholy, which he pub¬ 
lished in 1621. Burton died in 1640. 

BURTON-UPON-TRENT, a county 
borough of England, in Staffordshire. 
It is chiefly celebrated for its excellent 
ale, for which there are numerous 
breweries, employing upward of 5000 
men and boys. Pop. 50,386. 

BURY (be'ri), a municipal, county, 
and pari, borough of England, in Lan¬ 
cashire, 8 miles n.n.w. of Manchester. 
Sir Robert Peel was born near Bury 
in 1788, and a bronze statue of him 
adorns the town. Pop. 58,028. 

BURYING-BEETLE, the name of a 
genus of insects. They have a very 
keen scent, which guides them to the 
dead bodies of rats, mice, etc., which 
form their food. Several beetles will 
unite to cover such animals, burying 
them sometimes more than 6 inches in 
the earth. They deposit their eggs on 
the carrion, and in less than a fortnight 
the larvse issue. The species are com¬ 
mon everywhere. 

BUSBY (buz'bi), a military head-dress 
worn by hussars, artillerymen, and 
engineers, consisting of a fur hat with 
a bag, of the same color as the facings 
of the regiment, hanging from the top 
over the right side. The bag appears 
to be a relic of a Hungarian head-dress 
from which a long padded bag hung 
over, and was attached to the right 
shoulder as a defense against sword-cuts. 

BUSHEL, an English dry measure, 
containing 8 gallons or 4 pecks. 

BUSHMEN, a race of people who 
dwell in the western part of South Africa, 
in the immense plains bordering on the 
n. side of the colony of the Cape of Good 
Hope. They are the most degraded of 
the races who inhabit this part of the 
country. Their language is exceedingly 
poor, consisting only of a certain click¬ 
ing with the tongue and harsh gurgling 
tones, for which we have no letters. 

BUSH'RANGERS, the name for 
desperadoes in Australia who, taking 
to the bush, have supported themselves 
by levying contributions on the prop- 






BUSINESS COLLEGES 


BUTTERFLY 


erty of all and sundry within their 
reach 

BUSINESS COLLEGES, the name in 
America for the higher-class institutions 
specially intended to give a practical 
training in all subjects belonging to 
commerce. 

BUSINESS HOURS, the hours of the 
day in which business is ordinarily done. 
In the U. States from 8 a. m. till 6 p. m. 
is the usual business day. In American 
banks business hours are from 10 a. m. 
to 3 p. m. No payment is made nor 
deposit received except in these hours. 
Bills cannot be collected nor payment 
legally tendered except during business 
hours. 

BUST, in sculpture, the representation 
of that portion of the human figure 
which comprises the head and the upper 
part of the body. During the literary 
period of Greece the portrait busts of 
the learned formed an important branch 
of art, and in this way we come to 
possess faithful likenesses of Socrates, 
Plato, Demosthenes, etc., in which the 
artists showed great power of expressing 
the character of those represented. The 
number of busts belonging to the time 
of the Roman Empire is very consider¬ 
able, but those of the Roman poets and 
men of letters have not been preserved 
in nearly so large numbers as those of 
the Greeks. The first bust that can be 
depended upon as giving a correct like¬ 
ness is that of Scipio Africanus the elder. 

BUS'TARD, a bird belonging to the 
order Cursores, or runners, but ap- 
roaching the waders. The great 
ustard is the largest European bird, 
the male often weighing 30 lbs., with a 



Great bustard. 


breadth of wing of 6 or 7 feet. The 
bustard is now rare in Britain, but 
abounds in the south and east of Europe 
and the steppes of Tartary, feeding on 
green corn and other vegetables, and 
on earth-worms. Its flesh is esteemed. 
All the species run fast, and take flight 
with difficulty. 

BUTLER, Alban, English Roman 
Catholic writer, born 1711, died 1773. 
His Lives of the Saints is a monument 
of erudition which cost him thirty years’ 
labor. 

BUTLER, Benjamin Franklin, an 
American politician and lawyer, born 
in New York in 1795, died 1858. He 
was Martin Van Buren’s partner until 
1821, revised the New York statutes, 
was attorney-general in Jackson’s cabi¬ 
net, and secretary of war in Polk’s 
cabinet. He was an ardent democrat. 

BUTLER, Benjamin Franklin, an 
American soldier, politician, and gover¬ 
nor, born in Deerfield, N. H., in 1818, 
died in 1893. He was candidate for 
governor of Massachusetts in 1860, and 
at the opening of the civil war was made 
major-general of volunteers. Butler 


from the first was an uncompromising 
enemy of slave-owners, and his occupa¬ 
tion of New Orleans from 1862 to 1863 
has been critized severely. His chief 
offense was his general order that women 
insulting officers should be treated as 
women of the town. Jefferson Davis 
issued a proclamation that Butler was 
an outlaw, and if captured should be at 
once hanged. Subsequently to the war 
Butler was very prominent in politics, 
and in 1880 was elected governor of 
Massachusetts. In 1884 he was candi¬ 
date for president on the greenback- 
labor ticket. He died at Washington. 

BUTLER, Joseph, an English prelate 
and celebrated writer on ethics and 
theology, born in Berkshire in 1692. 
The sermons which he delivered as 
preacher at the Rolls Chapel, an appoint¬ 
ment he occupied in 1718-26, still hold 
a high place in ethical literature. But 
his great work is the Analogy of Religion, 
Natural and Revealed, to the Constitu¬ 
tion and Course of Nature, which was 
published in 1736, and acquired for him 
a great reputation. In 1738 he was 
made Bishop of Bristol, and in 1750 
promoted to the see of Durham. He 
died in 1752. 

BUTLER, Nicholas Murray, an Amer¬ 
ican educator, born in New Jersey in 
1862, educated in American and Eu¬ 
ropean universities, and in 1887 organ¬ 
ized the New York College for the Train¬ 
ing of Teachers. He founded the Edu¬ 
cational Review in 1891, and since 1901 
has been president of Columbia Uni¬ 
versity. 

BUTLER, Samuel, English satirical 
poet. Butler published the first part of 
Hudibras after the Restoration, in 1663. 
It became immensely popular, and 
Charles II. himself was perpetually 



Samuel Butler. 


quoting the poem, but did nothing for 
the author, who seems to have passed 
the latter part of his life dependent on 
the support of friends, and died in 
poverty in London in 1680. A second 
part of Hudibras appeared in 1664, a 
third in 1678. The poem is a sort of 
burlesque epic ridiculing Puritanism, 
and fanaticism and hypocrisy generally. 
Butler was author also of various other 
pieces, including a satire on the Royal 
Society entitled the Elephant in the 
Moon. 

BUTTE, a city and county seat of 
Silverbow Co., Mont., on the western 
slope of a range of the Rocky Mountains, 
and on the Oregon Short Line, the 


Northern Pacific, the Great Northern, 
and the Montana Union railroads. The 
famous Anaconda Copper and Silver 
Mine is located here, and within a 
few miles are many other productive 
gold, silver, and copper deposits, the 
industries of the city centering almost 
entirely in the mines. In copper, the 
production of Butte is placed at about 
one-half of the entire output of the 
United States, and the amount of gold 
and silver mined is also considerable, the 
value of the annual production of these 
three minerals being estimated at nearly 
$50,000,000. Besides the mines, there 
are immense mills and 6melting-works. 
Pop. 33,125. 

BUTTER, a fatty substance produced 
from milk, especially cows’ milk. When 
the milk is first drawn this fatty matter 
is disseminated through it in minute 
clear globules inclosed in membranous 
sacs or bags which in a short time rise 
to the surface and form cream. The 
cream is then skimmed off to undergo 
the operation of churning, which by 
rupturing the sacs effects a separation of 
the cream into a solid called butter and 
a liquid called buttermilk, the latter 
consisting of whey and other caseous 
matter. The quality of the butter de¬ 
pends much upon the treatment of the 
cream at this stage. Its temperature 
in warm weather ought to be between 
53° and 55°; in colder weather several 
degrees higher. If too cold the fat is 
hard and does not coalesce, and if too 
warm it becomes semi-liquid. The 
butter, being formed into lumps, is 
washed well in cold water, and kneaded 
till all the buttermilk has been expelled. 
Butter of good quality has a faint sweet 
odor and a soft delicate flavor. Its com¬ 
position varies somewhat according to 
the way in which it is made. It has 
usually from 80 to 90 per cent of pure 
fat, the rest consisting of casein, water, 
and salt. The water should not amount 
to more than 10 per cent, nor the salt 
to more than 2 per cent of the whole 
weight, but butter is frequently adul¬ 
terated by the excess of these two ele¬ 
ments. Butter which is to be thoroughly 
“cured,” so as to keep for some length 
of time, is usually prepared with from 
5 to 8 per cent of common salt. 

BUTTERCUP, the popular name of 
two or three species of plants with bril¬ 
liant yellow-flowers. 

BUTTERFLY, the common name of 
all diurnal lepidopterous insects. One of 
the most remarkable and interesting cir¬ 
cumstances connected with these beau¬ 
tiful insects is their series of transforma¬ 
tions before reaching a perfect state. 
The female butterfly lays a great quan¬ 
tity of eggs, which produce larvae com¬ 
monly called caterpillars. After a short 
life these assume a new form, and 
become chrysalids or pupae. These 
chrysalids are attached to other bodies 
in various ways, and are of various forms; 
they often have brilliant golden or 
argentine spots. Within its covering 
the insect develops, to emerge as the 
active and brilliant butterfly. These 
insects in their perfect form suck the 
nectar of plants, but take little food, 
and are all believed to be short-lived, 
their work in the perfect state being 
almost confined to the propagation of 




BUTTERINE 


BYRON 


the species. Butterflies vary greatly 
in size and coloring, but most of them 
are very beautiful. The largest are 
found in tropical countries, where some 
measure nearly a foot across the wings. 
They may generally be distinguished 
from moths by having their wings erect 
when sitting, the moths having theirs 



1, 2. Chrysalis of the white butterfly-moth; 
<r, Palpi or feelers; bb, wing-cases; c. sucker; 
ee, eyes; xx, antennas. 3, Chrysalis of the oak 
efger-moth. 

horizontal. Some of them have great 
powers of flight. Among the most 
remarkable butterflies are those that 
present an extraordinary likeness to 
other objects—leaves, green or withered, 
flowers, bark, etc.—a feature that serves 
greatly to protect them from enemies. 
See Lepidoptera and Mimicry. 

BUTTERINE, a mixture of several 
kinds of fats, worked together, churned 
in milk, colored, and sold as a substitute 
for butter. Its manufacture is per¬ 
mitted by U. States law, but it must not 
be sold as butter, but must be marked 
plainly “butterine.” Some states forbid 
the coloring of it, and dealers supply 
coloring matter to the buyer, who may 
thus evade the law in dealing with his 
consumers. Butterine now is generally 
made of deoderized lard mixed with 
cottonseed stearine and a little genuine 
butter, and churned with milk. It was 
formerly made of “oleo oil,” that is, the 
fat expressed from beef tallow, which 
was mixed and churned as above. 
Butterine is not an unhealthful article 
of diet when properly and carefully 
manufactured. 

BUTTERMILK, the milk from which 
butter has been extracted, forming a 
nutritious and agreeable cooling bever¬ 
age with an acidulous taste. 

BUTTERNUT, the fruit of an Ameri¬ 
can tree, so called from the oil it con¬ 
tains. The tree bears a resemblance in 
its general appearance to the black 
walnut, but the wood is not so dark in 
color. 

BUTTONS are of almost all forms and 
materials—wood, horn, bone, ivory, 
steel, copper, silver, brass, etc.—which 
are either left naked or covered with silk 
or some other material. A substance 
now very commonly used for buttons 
is vegetable ivory (seeds of the ivory- 
nut palm), which may be colored accord¬ 
ing to taste. Mother-of-pearl buttons 
are another common kind. 

BUT'TRESSES, in architecture, espe¬ 
cially Gothic, projections on the outside 
of the walls of an edifice, extending from 
the bottom to the top, or nearly, and 
intended to give additional support to 
the walls and prevent them from spread¬ 
ing under the weight of the roof. Flying 
buttresses, of a somewhat arched form, 
often spring from the top of the ordinary 
buttresses, leaning inward so as to abut 
against and support a higher portion of 


the building, such as the wall of a clear¬ 
story, thus receiving part of the pressure 
from the weight of the roof of the central 
pile. 

BUTYR'IC ACID, an acid obtained 
from butter; it also occurs in perspira¬ 



tion, cod-liver oil, etc. Butyric acid is 
a colorless liquid, having a smell like 
that of rancid butter; its taste is acrid 
and biting, with a sweetish after-taste. 

BUZ'ZARD, the name of raptorial 
birds which form one of the sub-families 
of the diurnal birds of prey; characters, 
a moderate-sized beak, hooked from the 
base, long wings, long tarsi, and short 
weak toes. The common buzzard is 
distributed over the whole of Europe 
as well as the north of Africa and 
America. Its food is very miscellaneous, 
and consists of moles, mice, frogs, toads, 
worms, insects, etc. It is sluggish in its 
habits. Its length is from 20 to 22 
inches. The rough-legged buzzard, so 
called from having its legs feathered to 
the toes, is also a native of Britain. Its 
habits resemble those of the common 
buzzard. The red-tailed hawk of the 
U. States is a buzzard. It is also called 
hen-hawk, from its raids on the poultry- 
yard. 

BY-LAW, a law made by an incorpo¬ 
rated or other body for the regulation of 
its own affairs, or the affairs intrusted 
to its care. By-laws must of course be 
within the meaning of the charter of 
incorporation and in accordance with 
the law of the land. 

BY'RON, George Gordon Noel, Lord 
Byron, a great English poet, was born in 
Holies street, London, Jan. 22, 1788. 
In 1805 he was entered of Trinity Col¬ 
lege, Cambridge. Two years after, in 
1807, appeared his first poetic volume, 
Hours of Idleness, which, though indeed 
containing nothing of much merit, was 
castigated with overseverity by Brough¬ 
am in the Edinburgh Review. This 
caustic critic roused the slumbering 
energy in Byron, and drew from him his 
first really notable effort, the celebrated 
satire English Bards and Scotch Re¬ 
viewers. In 1809, in company with a 
friend, he visited the southern provinces 
of Spain, and voyaged along the shores 


of the Mediterranean. The fruit of 
these travels was the fine poem of Childe 
Harold’s Pilgrimage, the first two cantos 
of which were published on his return 
in 1812. The poem was an immense 
success, and Byron “awoke one morning 
and found himself famous.” During 
the next two years (1813-14) the Giaour, 
the Bride of Abydos, the Corsair, Lara, 
and the Siege of Corinth showed the 
brilliant work of which the new poet 
was capable. On the 2d of January, 
1815, Byron married Anna Isabella, 
only daughter of Sir Ralph Milkanke, 
but the marriage turned out unfortunate, 
and in about a year Lady Byron, having 
gone on a visit to her parents, refused to 
return, and a formal separation took 
place. He visited France, the field of 
Waterloo and Brussels, the Rhine, 
Switzerland, and the north of Italy, and 
for some time took up his abode at 
Venice, and latterly at Rome, where he 
completed his third canto of Childe 
Harold. Not long after appeared the 
Prisoner of Chillon, The Dream, and 
other poems; and in 1817 Manfred, a 
tragedy, and the Lament of Tasso. 
From Italy he made occasional excur¬ 
sions to the islands of Greece, and at 
length visited Athens, where he sketched 
many of the scenes of the fourth and 
last canto of Childe Harold. In 1819 
was published the romantic tale of 
Mazeppa, and the same year was marked 
by the commencement of Don Juan. 
In 1820 appeared Marino Faliero, Doge 
of Venice, a tragedy; the drama of 
Sardanapalus; the Two Foscari, a 



Lord Byron. 


tragedy; and Cain, a mystery. After 
leaving Venice Byron resided for some 
time at Ravenna, then at Pisa, and 
lastly at Genoa. There he continued to 
occupy himself with literature and 
poetry, sustained for a time by the com¬ 
panionship of Shelley, one of the few 
men whom he entirely respected and 
with whom he was quite confidential. 
Besides his contributions to the Liberal, 
a periodical established at this time in 
conjunction with Leigh Hunt and Shel¬ 
ley, he completed the later cantos of 
Don Juan, with Werner, a tragedy, and 
the Deformed Transformed, a fragment. 
These are the last of Byron’s poetical 
efforts. In 1823 he conceived the idea 
of throwing himself into the struggle 
for the independence of Greece. In 
January, 1824, he arrived at Missolonghi, 
was received with the greatest enthusi¬ 
asm, and immediately took into his pay 
a body of 500 Suliotes. On the 9th of 














BYZANTINE ART 


BYZANTINE EMPIRE 


April, 1824, while riding out in the rain, 
he caught a fever, which ten days later 
ended fatally. Thus, in his thirty- 
seventh year, died prematurely a man 
whose natural force and genius were 
perhaps superior to those of any English¬ 
man of his time. The body of Byron 
was brought to England and interred 
near Newstead Abbey. 

BYZANTINE ART, a style which 
arose in southeastern Europe after 
Constantine the Great had made Byzan¬ 
tium the capital of the Roman Empire 
(330 a.d.), and ornamented that city, 
which was called after him, with all the 
treasures of Grecian art. (See Byzan¬ 
tine Empire.) One of the chief in¬ 
fluences in Byzantine art was Christian¬ 
ity, and to a certain extent Byzantine 
art may be recognized as the endeavor 
to give expression to the new elements 
which Christianity had brought into 
the life of men. The tendency toward 
Oriental luxuriousness and splendor of 
ornament now quite supplanted the 
simplicity of ancient taste. Richness 
of material and decoration was the aim 
of the artist rather than purity of con¬ 
ception. Yet the classical ideals of art, 
and in particular the traditions of 
technical processes and methods carried 
to Byzantium by the artists of the 
Western Empire, held their ground long 
enough, and produced work pure and 
powerful enough, to kindle the new 
artistic life which began in Italy with 
Cimadue and Giotto. 

Byzantine architecture may be said 
to have assumed its distinctive features 
in the church of St. Sophia built by 
Justinian in the 6th century, and still 
existing as the chief mosque in Con¬ 
stantinople. It is more especially the 
style associated with the Greek Church 
as distinguished from the Roman. The 
leading forms of the Byzantine style are 
the round arch, the circle, and in par¬ 
ticular the dome. The last is the most 
conspicuous and characteristic object 
in Byzantine buildings, and the free and 
full employment of it was arrived at 
when by the use of pendentives the 



Byzantine Architecture—Ancient cathedral, 
Athens. 


architects were enabled to place it on 
a square apartment instead of a circular 
or polygonal. In this style of building 
incrustation, the incrustation of brick 
with more precious materials, was 
largely in use. It depended much on 
oolor and surface ornament for its effect. 


and with this intent mosaics wrought 
on grounds of gold or of positive color 
are profusely introduced, while colored 
marbles and stones of various kinds are 
greatly made use of. The capitals are 
of peculiar and original designs, the 
most characteristic being square and 



Byzantine Architecture—Part of the nave of 
the Palatine chapel, Palermo. 


tapering downward, and they are very 
varied in their decorations. Byzantine 
architecture may be divided into an 
older and a newer (or Neo-Byzantine) 
style. The most distinctive feature of 
the latter is that the dome is raised on a 
perpendicular circular or polygonal 
piece of masonary (technically the 
drum) containing windows for lighting 
the interior, while in the older style the 
light was admitted by openings in the 
dome itself. The Cathedral of Athens 
(shown in the accompanying cut) is an 
example of the Neo-Byzantine style. 
The Byzantine style had a great in¬ 
fluence on the architecture of Western 
Europe, especially in Italy, where St. 
Mark’s in Venice is a magnificent ex¬ 
ample, as also in Sicily. It had also 
material influence in Southern France 
and Western Germany. 

BYZANTINE EMPIRE, the Eastern 
Roman Empire, so called from its capital 
Byzantium or Constantinople. The 
Byzantine Empire was founded in a.d. 
395, when Theodosius at his death 
divided the Roman Empire between 
his sons Arcadius and Honorius. In this 
empire the Greek language and civili¬ 
zation were prevalent; but the rulers 
claimed still to be Roman emperors, and 
under their sway the laws and official 
forms of Rome were maintained. It 
lasted for about a thousand years after 
the downfall of the Western Empire. 
It is also known as the Greek Empire or 
Lower Empire. Its capital was natur¬ 
ally Constantinople, a city established 
by Constantine in 330 as the new capi¬ 
tal of the whole Roman Empire. 


The Eastern Empire, then comprising 
Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Greece,Thrace, 
Moesia, Macedonia, and Crete, fell to 
Theodosius’s elder son Arcadius, through 
whose weakness and that of several 
of his immediate successors it suffered 
severely from the encroachments of 
Huns, Goths, Bulgarians, and Per¬ 
sians. In 527 the celebrated Justinian 
succeeded, whose reign is famous for the 
codification of Roman law, and the 
victories of his generals Belisarius and 
Narses over the Vandals in Africa, and 
the Goths in Italy, which was hence¬ 
forth governed for the Eastern Empire 
by an exarch residing at Ravenna. But 
his energy could not revive the decaying 
strength of the empire, and Justin II. 
his successor (565—578), a weak and 
avaricious prince, lost his reason by the 
reverses encountered in his conflicts 
with plundering Lombards, Avars, and 
Persians. Tiberius, a captain of the 
guard, succeeded in 578, and in 582 
Mauricius; both were men of ability. In 
602 Phocas, proclaimed emperor by the 
army, succeeded, and produced by his 
incapacity the greatest disorder in the 
empire. 

The empire was in sore straits when 
Leo the Isaurian (Leo III.), general of 
the army of the East, mounted the 
throne (716), and a new period of com¬ 
parative prosperity began. Some writ¬ 
ers date the beginning of the Byzantine 
Empire proper, and the end of the 
Eastern Roman Empire, from this era. 
Numerous reforms, civil and military, 
were now introduced, and the worship 
of images was prohibited. After an 
interval of three centuries of indifferent 
history Isaac Comnenus, the first of 
the Comnenian dynasty, ascended the 
throne, but soon after became a monk. 
The three chief emperors of this dynasty 
were Alexius, John, and Manuel Com¬ 
nenus. During the reign of Alexius I. 
(1081-1118) the Crusades commenced. 
His son, John II., and grandson, Manuel 
I., fought with success against the 
Turks, whose progress also was con¬ 
siderably checked by the Crusaders. 
The Latins, the name given to the 
French, Venetian, etc., crusaders, now 
forced their way to Constantinople 
(1204), conquered the city, and retained 
it, together with most of the European 
territories of the empire. Baldwin, 
count of Flanders, was made emperor; 
Boniface, marquis of Montferrat, ob¬ 
tained Thessalonica as a kingdom, and 
the Venetians acquired a large extent of 
territory. Theodore Lascaris seized on 
the Asiatic provinces, in 1206 made Nice 
(Nicaea) the capital of the empire, and 
was at first more powerful than Baldwin. 
Neither Baldwin nor his successors, 
Henry, Peter, and Robert of Courtenay, 
were able to secure the tottering throne. 
John, emperor of Nice, conquered all the 
remaining Byzantine territory except 
Constantinople, and at last, in 1261, 
Michael Palaeologus, king of Nice, con¬ 
quered Constantinople, and thus over¬ 
threw the Latin dynasty. 

In 1361 Sultan Amurath took Adria- 
nople. Baj'azet conquered almost all the 
European provinces except Constanti¬ 
nople, and was pressing it hard when 
Timur’s invasion of the Turkish prov¬ 
inces saved Constantinople for this 
































































BYZANTIUM 


CABOT 


time (1402). Manuel then recovered his 
throne, and regained some of the lost 
provinces from the contending sons of 
Bajazet. To him succeeded his son 
John, Palaeologus II. (1425), whom 
Amurath II. stripped of all his terri¬ 
tories except Constantinople, and laid 
under tribute (1444). To the Emperor 
John succeeded his brother Constantine 
Palaeologus. With the assistance of his 
general Giustiniani, a Genoese, he with¬ 


stood the superior forces of the enemy 
with fruitless courage, and fell in the 
defense of Constantinople, by the con¬ 
quest of which (May 29, 1453) Mo¬ 
hammed II. put an end to the Greek or 
Byzantine Empire. The Byzantine 
Empire, which thus lasted for over a 
thousand years, was of immense service 
to the world in stemming the tide of 
Mohammedan advance, in spreading 
Christianity and civilization, and in 
maintaining a regular system of govern¬ 


ment, law, and policy in the midst of 
surrounding barbarism. 

BYZANTIUM, the original name of 
the city of Constantinople. It was 
founded by Greek colonists in 658 b.c., 
and owing to its favorable position for 
commerce it attained great prosperity, 
and survived the decay of most of the 
other Greek cities. In a.d. 330 a new 
era began for it when Constantine the 
Great made it the capital of the Roman 
Empire. See Constantinople. 


cr 


C, the third letter in the English al¬ 
phabet and the second of the consonants. 
In English it serves to represent two 
perfectly distinct sounds, namely, the 
guttural sound pertaining to k and the 
hard or thin sound of s, the former being 
that which historically belongs to it; 
while it also forms with h the digraph ch. 
The former sound it has before the 
vowels a, o, and u, the latter before e, i, 
and y. The digraph ch has three dif¬ 
ferent sounds, as in church, chaise, and 
chord. To these the Scotch adds a 
fourth, heard in the word loch. 

C, in music, (a) after the clef, the mark 
of common time, in which each measure 
is a semibreve or four minims, corre¬ 
sponding to f or | and when a bar is per¬ 
pendicularly drawn through it alla-breve 
time or a quicker movement is indicated, 
(b) The name of the first or key-note of 
the modern normal scale, answering to 
the do of the Italians and the ut of the 
French. 

CAAING WHALE (ka'ing), the round- 
headed porpoise, a cetaceous animal of 
the dolphin family, characterized by a 
rounded muzzle and a convex head, 
attaining a size of 16 to 24 feet. It 
frequents the shores of Orkney, Shet¬ 
land, the Faroe Islands, and Iceland, 
appearing in herds of from 200 to 1000, 
and numbers are often caught. They 
live on cod, ling, and other large fish, and 
also on molluscs, especially the cuttle¬ 
fishes. 

CAB, a kind of hackney-carriage with 
two or four wheels drawn by one horse. 
The original cab was for only one pas¬ 
senger besides the driver, and was a 
kind of hooded chaise. 

CABBAGE, the popular name of vari¬ 
ous species of cruciferous plants, espe¬ 
cially applied to the plain-leaved, heart¬ 
ing, garden varieties, cultivated for food. 
The kinds most cultivated are the com¬ 
mon cabbage, the savoy, the broccoli, 
and the cauliflower. The common cab¬ 
bage forms its leaves into heads or bolls, 
the inner leaves being blanched. Its 
varieties are the white, the red or pur¬ 
ple, the tree or cow cabbage for cattle 
(branching and growing when in flower 
to the height of 10 feet), and the very 
delicate Portugal cabbage. The garden 
sorts form valuable culinary vegetables, 
and are used at table in various ways. 
In Germany pickled cabbage forms a 
sort of national dish, known as sauer¬ 
kraut. 

CABBAGE-PALM, a name given to 
various species of palm-trees from the 
circumstance that the terminal bud, 


which is of great size, is edible and re¬ 
sembles cabbage, one of which is a 
native of the West Indies, the simple un¬ 
branched stem of which grows to a 
height of 150 or even 200 feet. The un¬ 
opened bud of young leaves is much 
prized as a vegetable, but the removal 
of it completely destroys the tree, as it 
is unable to produce lateral buds. 

CAB'INET, the collective body of 
ministers who direct the government of 
a country. In Britain, though the exec¬ 
utive government is vested nominally 
in the crown, it resides practically in a 
committee of ministers called the cabi¬ 
net. Every cabinet includes the first 
lord of the treasury, who is usually (not 
always) the prime-minister or chief of 
the ministry, and therefore of the cabi¬ 
net; the lord-chancellor, the lord-presi¬ 
dent of the council, the chancellor of 
the exchequer, the first lord of the 
admiralty, and the five secretaries of 
state. A number of other ministerial 
functionaries, varying from two to eight, 
have usually seats in the cabinet, and 
its members belong to both houses of 
parliament, but usually adhere to that 
political party which predominates for 
the time being in the House of Commons. 
Its meetings are secret, and no minutes 
of the proceedings are taken. Although 
the cabinet is regarded as an essential 
part of the institutions of Great Britain, 
it has never been recognized by act of 
parliament. It began to take its present 
form in the reign of William III. 

In the United States the cabinet of 
the president is appointed by him and 
assists him in his administration. It 
consists of the following officials: secre¬ 
tary of state, secretary of the treasury, 
secretary of war, attorney-general, post¬ 
master-general, secretary of the navy, 
secretary of the interior, secretary of 
agriculture, and secretary of commerce 
and labor. By an act of congress which 
went into effect Jan. 19, 1886, in case 
of removal by death, resignation, or 
inability of both the president and the 
vice-president, the secretary of state, and 
after him, in the order above given, the 
other members of the cabinet, shall 
act as president until the disability of 
the president is removed or a new 
president is elected. The departments 
of agriculture and of labor and commerce 
were created after the passage of the 
above law. 

CABLE, a large strong rope or chain, 
such as is used to retain a vessel at 
anchor. It is made usually of hemp or 
iron, but may be made of other mate¬ 


rials. A hemp cable is composed of three 
strands, each strand of three ropes, and 
each rope of three twists. A ship’s 
cable is usually 120 fathoms or 720 feet 
in length; hence the expression a cable’s 
length. Chain-cables have now almost 
superseded rope-cables. Although defi¬ 
cient in elasticity, heavier, and more 
difficult of management, yet their im¬ 
munity from chafing and rotting, their 
greater compactness for stowage, and 
the fact that from their greater weight 
the strain is exerted on the cable rather 
than on the ship, more than counter¬ 
balance these drawbacks.—A submarine 
telegraph cable is composed of one or 
more copper wires embedded in a com¬ 
pound of gutta percha and resinous sub¬ 
stances, encircled by layers of gutta 
percha or india-rubber, hemp or jute 
padding, and coils of iron wire. 

CABLE, a bundle of wires for the con¬ 
duction of electricity, covered with sub¬ 
stances which protect the wires from 
harm, the wires themselves being sepa¬ 
rately insulated. Cables are used in 
several ways: they are strung along 
posts exposed to the air, or upon houses, 
or other structures; they are plaoed 
underground in conduits, or otherwise; 
and they are laid in the beds of bodies 
of water. Various materials are used 
for their insulation and protection, such 
as rubber, bitumen, jute, hemp, or oil 
paper, wax or other resins, rubber tape, 
and other materials, depending upon the 
situation of the cable and the nature of 
the reagents which attack it. 

CABLE,George Washington, an Amer¬ 
ican writer and novelist, born in New 
Orleans in 1844. He was early engaged 
in journalism, and his first work of 
fiction was Old Creole Days, a number 
of short stoTies of Louisiana and New 
Orleans. He has published The Gran- 
dissimes, Madame Delphine, Dr. Sevier, 
Bonaventure, and other highly original 
works of fiction. Since 1885 he has been 
living in New England. 

CABLE-MOLDING, in architecture, 
a molding with its surface cut in im¬ 
itation of the twisted strands of a rope. 

CABOOSE', the cookroom or kitchen 
of a ship. In smaller vessels it is an 
inclosed fireplace, hearth, or stove for 
cooking on the main deck. 

CAB'OT, Sebastian, navigator, was 
born at Bristol about 1474, died about 
1557. He was the son of John Cabot, a 
Venetian pilot, who resided at Bristol, 
and was highly esteemed for his skill in 
navigation. In 1497, in company with 
his father and two brothers, he die- 











Mr. Burbank, the great creator of new species of plant life, spent ten years in producing a 
cactus that was without thorns and spines. In the production of this species, which shows no 
disposition to revert to its former armored state, the western desert country will become a par¬ 
adise for the herds of the rancher, and as the new species thrives without moisture it will, in 
making irrigation unnecessary, save the people and the government, millions of dollars. These 
cacti have become easily edible for stock, and are preferred to alfalfa or timothy. The fruit of 
the cactus is of a flavor to appeal to the palate of a Lucullus, being likewise wholesome and nu¬ 
tritious. 

The evolution of this plant is no more remarkable than Mr. Burbank’s “white” blackberry, 
or the hybrid English walnut and many other wonderful creations of his. Perhaps the most 
wonderful evidence of evolution in plant life is the Burbank potato, which has placed the most 
essential of all foods beyond possibility of the crop failure. 



















































































CACTI 






























CABRAL 


CADENCE 


covered the mainland of N. America, 
having visited Nova Scotia and New¬ 
foundland. In 1517 he made an attempt 
to discover the northwest passage, visit¬ 
ing Hudson’s Bay. In 1526, when in the 



Sebastian Cabot. 


Spanish service, he visited Brazil and 
the river Plata. In 1548 he again settled 
in England, and received a pension from 
Edward VI. He was the first who 
noticed the variations of the compass; 
and he published a large map of the 
world. 

CABRAL', Pedro Alvarez, the dis¬ 
coverer (or second discoverer) of Brazil, 
a Portuguese, born about 1460, died 
about 1526. In 1500 he received com¬ 
mand of a fleet bound for the East 
Indies, and sailed from Lisbon, but 
having taken a course too far to the west 
he was carried by the South American 
current to the coast of Brazil, of which 
he took possession in name of Portugal. 
Continuing his voyage, he visited Mo¬ 
zambique, and at last reached India, 
where he made important commercial 
treaties with native princes, and then 
returned to Europe. 

CABUL (ka-bul'), capital of the king¬ 
dom of Afghanistan, 165 miles from the 


and other public buildings, the fort, etc. 
Cabul carries on a considerable trade 
with Hindustan through the Khyber 
Pass. It was taken by the British in 
1839 and in 1842, and on the occasion of 
a subsequent war with the British in 
1879 Cabul was twice taken by their 
troops. Pop. 75,000.—The Cabul river 
rises in Afghanistan at the height of 
about 8400 feet, flows eastward, passes 
through the Khyber Pass into India, 
and falls into the Indus at Attock. 
Length 300 miles. 

CACA'O, or CO'COA, the chocolate- 
tree, and also the powder and beverage 
made with it obtained from the fruit 
of this tree. The tree is 16 to 18 feet 
high, a native of tropical America, and 
much cultivated in the tropics of both 
hemispheres, especially in the West India 
Islands, Central and South America. 
Its fruit is contained in pointed, oval, 
ribbed pods 6 to 10 inches long, each 
inclosing 50 to 100 seeds in a white, 
sweetish pulp. These are very nutritive, 
containing 50 per cent of fat, are of an 
agreeable flavor, and used, both in their 
fresh state and when dried, as an article 
of diet. Cocoa and chocolate are made 
from them, the former being a powder 
obtained by grinding the seeds, and 
often mixed with other substances when 
prepared for sale, the latter being this 
powder mixed with sugar and various 
flavoring matters and formed into solid 
cakes. The seeds when roasted and 
divested of their husks and crushed are 
known as cocoa nibs. The seeds yield 
also an oil called butter of cacao, used in 
pomatum and for making candles, soap, 
etc. The term cocoa is a corruption of 
cacao, but is more commonly used in 
commerce: cocoanuts, however, are ob¬ 
tained from an entirely different tree. 

CACHALOT (kash'a-lot). See Sperm- 
whale. 

CACHE (kash), a hole in the ground 
for hiding and preserving provisions 
which it is inconvenient to carry: used 



Cabal—The bazaar during the fruit season. 


Indian station and fort of Peshawur, 600 
from Herat, and 290 from Candahar. 
It stands on the Cabul river, at an eleva¬ 
tion of 6400 feet above sea-level. The 
citadel, Bala-Hissar, contains the palace 


by settlers in the western states of 
America and Arctic explorers. 

CACHET (ka-sha), Lettre de, a name 
given especially to letters proceeding 
from and signed by the kings of Fiance, 


and countersigned by a secretary of 
state. They were at first made use of 
occasionally as a means of delaying the 
course of justice, but they appear to 
have been rarely employed before the 
17th century as warrants for the deten¬ 
tion of private citizens, and for depriv¬ 
ing them of their personal liberty. Dur¬ 
ing the reign of Louis XIV. their use 
became frightfully common, and by 
means of them persons were imprisoned 
for life or for a long period on the most 
frivolous pretexts. They were abolished 
at the Revolution. 

CACHOU (ka-sho'), a sweetmeat in 
the form of a pill, made from the ex¬ 
tract of licorice, cashew-nut, gum, etc., 
used by smokers to sweeten the breath. 

CACIQUE (ka-sek'), in some parts of 
America the title of the native chiefs at 
the time of the conquest by the Span¬ 
iards. 

CACTUS, a Linnsean genus of plants, 
now used as a name for any of the 
Cactaceae, otherwise called the Indian 
fig order. The species are succulent 
shrubs, with minute scale-like leaves 



Cacti. 


(except in the genus Pereskia, tree- 
cactus, with large leaves), and with 
clusters and spines on the stems. They 
have fleshy stems, with sweetish watery 
or milky juice, and they assume many 
peculiar forms. The juice in some 
species affords a refreshing beverage 
where water is not to be got. All the 
plants of this order, except a single 
species, are natives of America. They 
are generally found in very dry localities. 
Some are epiphytes. Several have been 
introduced into the Old World, and in 
many places they have become natural¬ 
ized. The fruits of some species are 
edible, as the prickly-pear and the 
Indian fig, cultivated throughout the 
Mediterranean region. The flowers are 
usually large and beautifully colored, 
and many members of the order are 
cultivated in hot-houses. 

CADE, John (better known as Jack 
Cade), a popular agitator of the 15th 
century, leader of an insurrection of the 
common people of Kent (1450) in the 
reign of Henry VI. Having defeated a 
force sent against him he advanced to 
London, which he ruled for two days. 
On a promise of pardon being given the 
rebels soon dispersed, but Cade himself 
was killed by a gentleman of Kent 
named Iden. 

CA'DENCE,' the concluding notes of a 
musical composition or of any well- 
defined section of it. A cadence is per¬ 
fect, full, or authentic when the last 
chord is the tonic preceded by the 
dominent; it is imperfect when the 
chord of the tonic precedes that of the 







CADET 


•CAESAR 


dominant; it is plagal when the closing 
tonic chord is preceded by that of the 
sub-dominant; and it is interrupted, 
false, or deceptive when the base rises a 
second, instead of falling a fifth. Ca¬ 
dence, or cadenza, is the name also 
given to a running passage which a per¬ 
former may introduce at the close of 
a movement. 

CADET, a student in one of the mili¬ 
tary schools of the U. States, par¬ 
ticularly that of West Point. The 
appointment of cadets to West Point is 
generally made after competitive exam¬ 
ination, or from recommendation by a 
congressman, each congressional dis¬ 
trict being entitled to a cadet, each state 
to two cadets at large, and the U. States 
to thirty cadets at large. Cadets spend 
four years in school and then are com¬ 
missioned in the army. A naval cadet 
is the holder of the lowest grade in the 
uavy, being identical with that of mid¬ 
shipman. 

CADIZ (ka-deth'), a seaport of south¬ 
western Spain, situated at the extremity 
of a long tongue of land projecting from 
the island of Leon, which is separated 
by a narrow (bridged) channel from the 



coast of Andalusia. It is well built, well 
paved, and very clean, and is strongly 
fortified. The chief buildings are the 
great hospital, the custom-house, the 
old and new cathedrals, the theaters, 
the bull-ring, capable of accommodating 
12,000 spectators, and the lighthouse of 
St. Sebastian. The bay of Cadiz is a 
large basin inclosed by the mainland on 
one side and the projecting tongue of 
land on the other, with good anchorage, 
and protected by the neighboring hills. 
It has four forts, two of which form the 
defense of the grand arsenal, La Carraca 
(4 miles from Cadiz), at which are large 
basins and docks. Cadiz has long been 
the principal Spanish naval station. 
Its trade is large, its exports being 
especially wine and fruit. Cadiz was 
founded by the Phoenicians about b.c. 
1100, and was one of the chief seats of 


their commerce in the west of Europe. 
Pop. 70,177.—The province of Cadiz is 
the most southerly in Spain; area, 2809 
sq. miles; pop. 434,250. 

CAD'MIUM, a scarce metal which 
resembles tin in color and luster, but is 
a little harder. • It is very ductile and 
malleable; has a specific gravity of 8’6 
to 8’69; and fuses a little below a red 
heat. In its chemical character it re¬ 
sembles zinc. It occurs in the form of 
carbonate, as an ingredient in various 
kinds of calamine, or carbonate of zinc. 
It is also found in the form of a sulphide, 
as the rare mineral greenockite. It 
forms at least two oxides, one chloride, 
and one sulphide. 

CADMIUM YELLOW, a pigment pre¬ 
pared from the sulphide of cadmium. 
It is of an intense yellow color, and 
possesses much body. 

CADMUS, in Greek legend, the son of 
Agenor and grandson of Poseidon 
(Neptune). He was said to have come 
from Phoenicia to Greece about 1550 
b.c., and to have built the city of Cad- 
mea or Thebes, in Boeotia. Herodotus 
and other writers ascribe the introduc¬ 
tion of the Phoenician alphabet into 
Greece to Cadmus. The solar mythists 
identify him with the sun-god. 

CADU'CEUS, Mercury’s rod; a winged 
rod entwisted by two serpents, borne 
by Mercury as an ensign of quality and 
office. In modern times it is used as a 
symbol of commerce, Mercury being the 
god of commerce. The rod represents 
power; the serpents, wisdom; and the 
two wings, diligence and activity. 

CiEDMON (kad'mon), the first Anglo- 
Saxon of note who wrote in his own 
language, flourished about the end of 
the 7th century. His chief work (if it 
can all be attributed to him) consists of 
paraphrases of portions of the Scriptures, 
in Anglo-Saxon verse, the first part of 
which bears striking resemblances to 
Milton’s narrative in Paradise Lost. 

CAJ'SAR, a title, originally a surname 
of the Julian family at Rome, which, 
after being dignified in the person of the 
dictator Caius Julius Caesar, was adopted 
by the successive Roman emperors, and 
latterly came to be applied to the heir- 
presumptive to the throne. The title 
was perpetuated in the Kaiser of the 
Holy Roman Empire, and in the Czar 
of the Russian emperors. 

CAS'SAR, Caius Julius, a great Roman 
general, statesman, and historian, was 
born b.c. 100, died b.c. 44. He was the 
son of the praetor Caius Julius Caesar, and 
of Aurelia, a daughter of Aurelius Cotta. 
At the age of sixteen he lost his father, 
and shortly after he married Cornelia, 
the daughter of Lucius Cinna, the friend 
of Marius. This connection gave great 
offense to Sulla, the dictator, who pro¬ 
scribed him for refusing to put away his 
wife. His friends obtained his pardon 
with difficulty, and Caesar withdrew 
from Rome, and went to Asia, serving 
his first campaign under M. Minucius 
Thermus, the praetor in Asia. On the 
death of Sulla Caesar returned to Rome, 
where he distinguished himself as an 
orator. He afterward visited Rhodes, 
when he was taken by pirates, and com¬ 
pelled to pay fifty talents for his release. 
To revenge himself, he fitted out some 
vessels at Miletus, overtook the pirates, 


made the greater number of them 
prisoners, and had them crucified before 
Pergamus. He now returned to Rome, 
where his eloquence and liberality made 
him very popular. He was pontifex 



maximus in 63 b.c., praetor in 62 B.c., 
and governor of Spain in 61 b.c. On 
his return to Rome, having united with 
Pompey and Crassus in the memorable 
coalition called “the first triumvirate,” 
he became consul, and then obtained the 
government of Gaul with the command 
of four legions. His military career was 
rapid and brilliant. He compelled the 
Helvetii, who had invaded Gaul, to 
retreat to their native country, subdued 
Ariovistus, who'at the head of a German 
tribe had attempted to settle in the 
country of the ^Edui, and conquered the 
Belgae. In nine years he reduced all 
Gaul, crossed the Rhine twice (b.c. 55 
and 53), and twice passed over to Britain, 
defeated the gallant natives of this 
island in several battles, and compelled 
them to give him hostages. The senate 
had continued his government in Gaul 
for another period of five years, while 
Pompey was to have the command of 
Spain, and Crassus that of Syria, Egypt, 
and Macedonia for five years also. But 
the death of Crassus in his campaign 
against the Parthians dissolved the 
triumvirate; and about the same time 
the friendship between Caesar and 
Pompey cooled. The senate, influenced 
by Pompey, ordered that Caesar should 
resign his offices and command within a 
certain time, or be proclaimed an enemy 
to the state, and appointed Pompey 
general of the army of the Republic. 
Upon this Caesar urged his soldiers to 
defend the honor of their leader, passed 
the Rubicon (49 b.c.), and made himself 
master of Italy without striking a blow, 
Pompey retiring into Greece. Caesar 
then levied an army with the treasures 
of the state, and hastened into Spain, 
which he reduced to submission without 
coming to a pitched battle with Pom- 
pey’s generals. He next conquered Mas- 
silia (now Marseilles), and returned to 
Rome, where he was appointed dictator. 
He then followed Pompey into Greece, 
and defeated him at Pharsalia, from 
which Pompey escaped only to be assas¬ 
sinated in Egypt. In Rome the senate 
and the people strove eagerly to gain 
the favor of the victor. They appointed 
him consul for five years, dictator for a 
year, and tribune of the people for life. 
When his dictatorship had expired he 
caused himself to be chosen consul 
again, and without changing the ancient 
forms of government, ruled with almost 
unlimited power. In 46 b.c. he crossed 










CAESAREA 


CAIRO 


to Africa, defeated the Pompeians 
Scipio and Cato at Chapsus, and return¬ 
ing to Rome he was received with the 
most striking marks of honor. The term 
of his dictatorship was prolonged to ten 
years, the office of censor conferred on 
him alone; his person was declared 
inviolable, and his statue placed beside 
that of Jupiter in the capitol. He soon 
after was honored with four several 
triumphs, made perpetual dictator and 
received the title of imperator with full 
powers of sovereignty. In February, 
44, he declined the diadem which An-, 
tony publicly offered him, and next 
morning his statues were decked with 
diadems. His glory, however, was 
short-lived, for a conspiracy was set on 
foot by his enemy Cassius, and joined 
by many of his own friends, including 
M. Brutus; and, notwithstanding dark 
hints had been given to him of his dan¬ 
ger, he attended a meeting of the senate 
on 15th (ides) March, 44 b.c., and fell 
beneath the daggers of the conspirators. 
Of his writings, we still possess the 
history of his wars with the Gauls and 
with Pompey. Caesar was undoubtedly 
“the foremost man of all this world,” 
being great as a statesman, a general, an 
orator, a historian, and an architect and 
engineer, and his assassination was 
brought about more by jealousy and 
envy than by real patriotism. 

CjESARE'A, the ancient name of 
many cities, such as: (1) Caesarea 
Philippi in Palestine, north of the Sea of 
Galilee, rebuilt by Philip, tetrarch of 
Galilee, son of Herod the Great.—(2) 
Caesarea, on the shores of the Mediter¬ 
ranean, about 55 miles n.w. from Jeru¬ 
salem, enlarged and beautified by Herod 
the Great, and named in honor of Caesar 
Augustus; the place where St. Paul was 
imprisoned two years (Acts xxiii.—xxv.) 
—(3) The capital of Cappadocia in Asia 

Minor. . , 

CASSA'REAN OPERATION, a surgical 
operation, which consists in delivering a 
child by means of an incision made 
through the walls of the abdomen and 
womb; necessary when the obstacles to 
delivery are so great as to leave no other 
alternative. It is said to be so named 
because Julius Csesar was brought into 
the world in this way. 

CAESIUM, a rare metal, first dis¬ 
covered by Bunsen and Kirchoff by 
spectrum analysis in 1860; symbol Cs, 
atomic weight 133. It is soft, and of a 
6ilver-white color. It is always found 
in connection with rubidium. It be¬ 
longs to the same group of elements 
with lithium, sodium, potassium, and 
rubidium, viz. the group of the alkali- 


CAFF'EINE, or THE'INE, the active 
principle of tea and coffee, a slightly 
bitter, highly azotized substance, crys¬ 
tallizing in slender, silk-like needles, 
found in coffee-beans, tea-leaves, Para¬ 
guay tea, guarana, etc. Coffee contains 
from 0‘8 to 3 6, and tea from 2 to 4 per 
cent. Doses of 2 to 10 grains induce 
violent nervous and vascular excite¬ 


ment. 

CAGE-BIRDS, birds kept in cages as 
pets or songsters. A large traffic is done 
in birds of this description, particularly 
the so-called canary birds which are 
raised in the Hartz mountains and form 


a large industry. The tame bird has, 
under these conditions, altered con¬ 
siderably from its wild ancestor in the 
Canary Islands. Other song birds 
kept in cages are mockingbirds, bull¬ 
finches, nightingales, goldfinches, cardi¬ 
nal birds, parrots, parakeets, cockatoos, 
and others are kept for their power of 
speech or beauty of plumage. In keep¬ 
ing cage birds the cage should be regu¬ 
larly cleaned, should be large, and the 
bird should be fed generously with 
proper food. 

CAGLIOSTRO (kal-yos'tro), Count 
Alessandro (real name Giuseppe (Joseph) 
Balsamo), a celebrated charlatan, born 
in 1743 at Palermo. He was the son of 
poor parents, and entered the order of 
the Brothers of Mercy, where he ac¬ 
quired a knowledge of the elements of 
chemistry and physic. He left, or had 
to leave the order, and committed so 
many crimes in Palermo that he was 
obliged to abscond. He subsequently 
formed a connection with Lorenza 
Feliciani, whose beauty, ability, and 
want of principle made her a valuable 
accomplice in his frauds. With her he 
traveled through many countries, as¬ 
suming other names besides that of 
Count Cagliostro, pretending to super¬ 
natural powers, and wringing consider¬ 
able sums from those who became his 
dupes. In England he established an 
order of what he called Egyptian 
Masonry, in which, as grand kophta, he 
pretended to reveal the secrets of futu¬ 
rity, and made many dupes among the 
higher classes. In Paris he was im¬ 
plicated in the affair of the diamond 
necklace which caused so great a scan¬ 
dal in the reign of Louis XVI., and was 
imprisoned in the Bastile, but escaped 
by means of his matchless impudence. 
He afterward visited England, but met 
with little success. In 1789 he revisited 
Rome, where he busied himself about 
freemasonryj but being discovered, and 


of Cain and his descendants see Gen. 
iv.-vii. A Gnostic sect of the 2d cen¬ 
tury called Cainites held that Cain was 
the offspring of a superior power and 
Eve, and Abel of an inferior power— 
the Jewish God, and that the killing of 
Abel symbolized the defeat of the in¬ 
ferior by the superior power. 

CAINOZO'IC, a geological term ap¬ 
plied to the latest of the three divisions 
into which strata have been arranged, 
with reference to the age of the fossils 
they include. The Cainozoic system 
embraces the tertiary and postertiary 
systems of British geologists, exhibiting 
recent forms of life, in contradistinction 
to the Mesozoic, exhibiting intermediate, 
and the Palaeozoic, ancient and extinct, 
forms. It corresponds nearly with what 
has been called the age of mammals. 

CAIQUE (k&-ek')» a small skiff or 
rowing boat; especially a light skiff 
used in the Bosporus, where it almost 
monopolizes the boat traffic. It may 
have from one to ten or twelve rowers. 
The name is also given to a Levantine 
vessel of a larger size. 

CAIRN (karn), a heap of stones; espe¬ 
cially one of those large heaps of stones 
common in Great Britain, particularly 
in Scotland and Wales, and generally of 
a conical form. They are of various 
sizes, and were probably constructed for 
different objects. Some are evidently 
sepulchral, containing urns, stone chests, 
bones, etc. Some were erected to com¬ 
memorate some great event, others ap¬ 
pear to have been intended for religious 
rites, while the modem cairn is generally 
set up as a landmark. 

CAIRO (ki'rO), the capital of Modern 
Egypt, is situated on the right bank of 
the Nile, 12 miles above the apex of its 
delta, and 150 miles by rail from Alexan¬ 
dria. The character of the town is still 
mainly Arabic, though in modern times 
the European style in architecture and 
other matters has become more and 



Gateway or the citadel, Cairo. 


committed to the Castle of St. Angelo, 
he was condemned by a decree of the 
pope to imprisonment for life as a free¬ 
mason, an arch-heretic, and a very 
dangerous foe to religion. He died in 
prison in 1795. 

CAI'MAN, or CAY'MAN. See Alliga¬ 
tor. 

CAIN, the eldest son of Adam and 
Eve; the first murderer, who slew his 
brother Abel. For the biblical history 


more prevalent. The city is partly sur¬ 
rounded by a fortified wall, and is inter¬ 
sected by seven or eight great streets, 
from which run a labyrinth of narrow 
crooked streets and lanes. There are 
several large squares or places, the prin¬ 
cipal being the Ezbekiyeh. To the 
southeast of the town is the citadel, 
on the last spur of the Mokattam Hills, 
overlooking the city. It contains the 
fine mosque of Mohammed Ali, a well 
























CAIRO 


CALCULATORS, LIGHTNING 


270 feet deep called Joseph’s Well, cut 
in the rock, the palace of the viceroy, 
etc. There are upward of 400 mosques. 
The finest is that of Sultan Hassan. 
There are also some forty Christian 
churches, Jewish synagogues, etc. The 
tombs in the burying-grounds outside 
the city also deserve mention, especially 
those known as the tombs of the Caliphs. 
The trade of Cairo is large, and the 
bazaars and markets are numerous. 
Of these the Khan el Khalili, in the 
northeast of the town, consists of a 
series of covered streets and courts in 
which all kinds of eastern merchandise 
are displayed in open stalls. Cairo has 
railway communication with Alexan¬ 
dria, Suez, and Siout. It was occupied 
by the British, Sept. 1882. Pop. 570,062. 

CAIRO (ka'ro), a city, port of entry, 
and county-seat of Alexander Co., Ill., 
at the junction of the Mississippi and 
Ohio rivers, 150 miles southeast of 
Saint Louis, on the Illinois Central, 
Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and 
Saint Louis, and other railroads. Pop. 
15,141. 

CAIS'SON. In civil engin. (a) a vessel 
in the form of a boat used as a flood¬ 
gate in docks, (b) An apparatus on 
which vessels may be raised and floated ; 
especially a kind of floating-dock, which 
may be sunk and floated under a vessel’s 
keel, used for docking vessels while at 
their moorings, without removing stores 
or masts, (c) A water-tight box or 
casing used in founding and building 
structures in water too deep for the 
cofferdam, such as piers of bridges, 
quays, etc. 

CAITH'NESS, a county occupying the 
extreme northeast of the mainland of 
Scotland; area, 438,878 acres, of which 
about a fourth is under crop. Caithness 
gives the title of earl to the head of the 
Sinclair family. It returns one member 
to Parliament. Pop. 33,859. 

CALABAR BEAN, the seed of a legu¬ 
minous African plant, nearly allied to 
the kidney-bean. It is a powerful 
narcotic poison, operating also as a 
purgative and emetic, and in virtue of 
these last qualities is the famous “ordeal 
bean” of Africa, administered to per¬ 
sons suspected of witchcraft. If it 
causes purging it indicates crime; if 
vomiting, innocence. It induces faint¬ 
ing fits and asphyxia, and weakens or 
paralyzes the action of the heart. It is 
employed in medicine, chiefly (exter¬ 
nally) as an agent for producing con¬ 
traction of the pupil of the eye in certain 
cases; sometimes also (internally) in 
neuralgia, tetanus, and rheumatism. 

CAL'ABASH, a vessel made of a dried 
gourd-shell or of a calabash shell, used 
in some parts of America and Africa. 
They are so closely grained and hard 
that when they contain any liquid they 
may be put on the fire as kettles. 

GALA'BRIA, a name anciently given 
to the peninsula at the southeastern 
extremity of Italy, but now applied to 
the s.w. peninsula in which Italy ter¬ 
minates ; area 6663 sq. miles; pop. 1,304,- 
980. Scene in 1908 of the greatest 
earthquake of modern times. (See 
earthquake.) 

CALAIS (ka-la), a fortified seaport 
town of France, dep. Pas-de-Calais, on 
the Strait of, and 25 miles s.e. of Dover, 


and distant 184 miles by rail from Paris. 
Pop. 56,857. 

CALAMAN'DER WOOD, a beautiful 
species of wood, the product of Ceylon. 
It resembles rosewood, but is so hard 
that it is worked with great difficulty. 
It takes a very high polish, and is 
wrought into chairs and tables, and 
yields veneers of almost unequaled 
beauty. 

CAL'AMARY, the general name for 
two-gilled decapod cuttle-fishes. The 
body is oblong, soft, fleshy, tapering, 
and flanked behind by two triangular 
fins, and contains a pen-shaped gladius 
or internal horny flexible shell. They 
have the power of discharging, when 
alarmed or pursued, a black fluid from 
an ink-bag. The species are found in 
all seas, and furnish food to dolphins, 
whales, etc. Some species can dash out 
of the water and propel themselves 
through the air for 80 or 100 yards. 
It occasionally grows to the length of 
2£ feet. Called also Squid. 

CAL'AMUS, a genus of palms, the 
stems of the different species of which 
are the rattan-canes of commerce. The 
genus holds a middle station between 
the grasses and palms, with the habit of 
the former and the inflorescence of the 
latter. The species are principally 
found in the hotter parts of the East 
Indies. 

CALAS (ka-la), Jean, a memorable 
victim of fanaticism, born 1698, exe¬ 
cuted 1762. He was a Protestant, and 
was engaged as a merchant in Toulouse, 
when his eldest son committed suicide; 
and as he was known to be attached to 
the Roman Catholic faith, a cry arose 
that he had on that account been mur¬ 
dered by his father. Jean Calas and his 
whole family were arrested, and a prose¬ 
cution instituted against him, in support 
of which numerous witnesses came for¬ 
ward. The parliament of Toulouse 
condemned him, by eight voices against 
five, to be tortured and then broken on 
the wheel, which sentence was carried 
out, his property being also confiscated. 
Voltaire became acquainted with his 
family, and procured a revision of the 
trial, when Calas was declared innocent, 
and his widow pensioned. 

CALCA'REOUS, a term applied to 
substances partaking of the nature of 
lime, or containing quantities of lime. 
Thus we speak of calcareous waters, 
calcareous rocks, calcareous soils.—Cal¬ 
careous spar, crystallized carbonate of 
lime. It is found crystallized in more 
than 700 different forms, all having for 
their primitive form an obtuse rhomboid. 
—Calcareous tufa, an alluvial deposit 
of carbonate of lime, formed generally 
by springs, which, issuing through lime¬ 
stone strata, hold in solution a portion 
of calcareous earth; this they deposit on 
coming in contact with air and light. 
Calc-sinter is a variety of it. 

CALCINATION, the operation of 
roasting a substance or subjecting it to 
heat, generally with the purpose of 
driving off some volatile ingredient, 
and so rendering the substance suitable 
for further operations. The term was 
formerly also applied to the operation 
of converting a metal into an oxide or 
metallic calx: now called oxidation. 


CAL'CITE, a term applied to various 
minerals all of which are modifications 
of the rhombohedral form of carbonate 
of calcium. It includes limestone, all 
the white and most of the colored mar¬ 
bles, chalk, Iceland-spar, etc. 

CAL'CIUM, the metallic base of lime; 
in the metallic state, one of the rarest 
of substances; combined, one of the 
most abundant and most widely dis¬ 
tributed. As phosphate, it forms the 
main part of the mineral matter of the 
bones of animals; as carbonate, chalk, 
limestone, or marble, it forms mountain 
ranges; as sulphate or gypsum, large 
deposits in various geological forma¬ 
tions; it is a constituent of many miner- 
rals, as fluor-spar, Iceland-spar, etc., and 
is found in all soils, in the ash of plants, 
dissolved in seawater, and in springs, 
both common and mineral. It was first 
obtained in the metallic state by Sir 
H. Davy in 1808. When quite pure, it 
is a pale-yellow metal, with a high 
luster. It is about one and a half times 
as heavy as water, ductile, malleable, 
and very oxidizable. Its salts are for 
the most part insoluble or sparingly 
soluble in water, but dissolve in dilute 
acids. 

CALC-SINTER, a carbonate of lime, 
the substance which forms the stalac¬ 
tites and stalagmites that beautify many 
caves. 

CALCULATING MACHINES, contriv¬ 
ances by which the results of arithmet¬ 
ical operations may be obtained 
mechanically. Modern calculating ma¬ 
chines are those invented by Kummer 
in 1847, and by Lagrous, Djakoff and 
Webb. The most commonly used ma¬ 
chine is called the slide rule machine, 
by which the multiplication of large 
numbers can be quickly done. They 
are based upon the principle of log¬ 
arithms. The following machines are 
extensively used: Beher’s addition ma¬ 
chine (1892), of keyboard type, limited 
to sums under 500; Illgen’s calculator 
(1888), limited to sums under 1000; 
Runge’s addition machine, Berlin (1896), 
adding numbers of several figures; Felt’s 
comptometer, Chicago (1887), key¬ 
board type, performing all four opera¬ 
tions; Burrough’s registering account¬ 
ant, Saint Louis (1888), an addition 
machine of 81 keys, with a capacity of 
2000 entries per hour, and automatically 
printing both the addenda and the total 
sum; Carney’s cash register, Dayton 
(1890), an adding and printing machine 
of great perfection. 

CALCULATORS, LIGHTNING, prodi¬ 
gies having an unusual capacity for 
combining numbers. Thus, at the age 
of 6, T. H. Safford computed mentally 
the number (617,760) of barley corns in 
1040 rods, and could extract the cube 
roots of numbers of 9 and 10 figures. 
Buxton solved the problem, to find the 
product of doubling a farthing 139 
times, the result, expressed in pounds, 
being a number of 39 figures. Zerah 
Colburn, at 9 years of age, gave at sight 
the factors of 294,967,297, and in 20 
seconds found mentally the number of 
hours in 1811 years. Raising 991 to the 
fifth power in 13 operations, and giving 
the product of any pair of tow-figure 
numbers in 1^ seconds, are feats accom¬ 
plished by Arthur Griffith, who also 




CALCULUS 


CALENDAR 


memorized the squares of all numbers 
up to 130 and the cubes up to 100. 
Other noted prodigies are Annich, Bid¬ 
der, Vinckler, Pughiesi, Mondeux, Magi- 
meile, and Inaudi. 

CAL'CULUS, The Infinitesimal or 
Transcendental Analysis, a branch of 
mathematical science. The lower or 
common analysis contains the rules 
necessary to calculate quantities of any 
definite magnitude whatever. But 
quantities are sometimes considered as 
varying in magnitude, or as having 
arrived at a given state of magnitude 
by successive variations. This gives 
rise to the higher analysis, which is of 
the greatest use in the physico-mathe- 
matical sciences. Two objects are here 
proposed: First, to descend from 

quantities to their elements. The 
method of effecting this is called the 
differential calculus. Second, to ascend 
from the elements of quantities to the 
quantities themselves. This method is 
called the integral calculus. Both of 
these methods are included under the 
general name infinitesimal or trans¬ 
cendental analysis. Those quantities 
which retain the same value are called 
constant; those whose values are vary¬ 
ing are called variable. When variable 
quantities are so connected that the 
value of one of them is determined by 
value ascribed to the others, that vari¬ 
able quantity is said to be a function of 
the others. A quantity is infinitely 
great or infinitely small, with regard 
to another, when it is not possible 
to assign any quantity sufficiently 
large or sufficiently small to express 
the ratio of the two. When we con¬ 
sider a variable quantity as increas¬ 
ing by infinitely small degrees, if we 
wish to know the value of these 
increments, the most natural mode is to 
determine the value of this quantity 
for any given period, as a second of time, 
and the value of the same for the period 
immediately following. This difference 
is called the differential of the quantity. 
The integral calculus, as has been 
already stated, is the reverse of the 
differential calculus. There is no vari¬ 
able quantity expressed algebraically, 
of which we cannot find the differential; 
but there are differential quantities 
which we cannot integrate: some be¬ 
cause they could not have resulted from 
differentiation; others because means 
have not yet been discovered of inte¬ 
grating them. Newton was the first 
discoverer of the principles of the in¬ 
finitesimal calculus, having pointed 
them out in a treatise written before 
1669, but not published till many years 
after. Leibnitz, meanwhile, made the 
same discovery, and published it before 
Newton, with a much better notation, 
which is now universally adopted. 

CALCULUS, in pathology, a general 
term for the various inorganic concre¬ 
tions which are sometimes formed in the 
body. Such are biliary calculi or gall¬ 
stones, formed in the gall bladder, 
urinary calculi, formed by a morbid 
deposition from the urine in the kidney 
or bladder; and various others known as 
salivary, arthritic, pancreatic, lachry¬ 
mal, etc. Urinary and biliary calculi 
are the most common. The former, 
when the particles are comparatively 
P. E.—11 


small in size, are known as gravel, when 
larger as stone. Both cause painful and 
dangerous symptoms. 

CALCUTTA, capital of British India 
and of Bengal; situated about 80 miles 
from the sea, on the left bank of the 
Hooghly (Hugli'), a branch of the 
Ganges, navigable up to the city for 
large vessels. The river opposite the 
city varies in breadth from about two 
furlongs to three-quarters of a mile. 
Calcutta extends along the river for 
about five miles from north to south, 
stretching eastward for nearly two 
miles in the south and in the north nar¬ 
rowing to half a mile. Adj’acent to the 
city proper are extensive suburbs, which 
include the large town of Howrah on the 
opposite side of the Hooghly, connected 


educational institutions are Calcutta 
Medical College, government school of 
art, a school of engineering, and Calcutta 
University, an examining and degree- 
conferring institution. Pop. 1,026,987. 

CALDERON' DE LA BARCA, Don 
Pedro, the great Spanish dramatist, born 
at Madrid, 1600. Before his fourteenth 
year he had written his third play. 
Leaving Salamanca in 1625, he entered 
the army and served with distinction for 
ten years in Milan and the Netherlands. 
In 1636 he was recalled by Philip IV., 
who gave him the direction of the court 
entertainments. The next year he was 
made knight of the order of Santiago, 
and he served in 1640 in the campaign 
in Catalonia. Besides heroic comedies 
and historical plays, some of which merit 



Calcutta—Bazaar on the Chitpore road. 


with Calcutta by a pontoon bridge. 
The celebrated Fort William is a mag¬ 
nificent octagonal work, said to have 
cost altogether $10,000,000. It was 
built in 1757-73, being begun by Clive 
after the battle of Plassey. Govern¬ 
ment-house, or the palace of the gov¬ 
ernor-general, built by the Marquis 
Wellesley at an expense of $5,000,000, 
stands on the Esplanade, a street or road 
running along the north side of the 
Maidan. Here also are the high court 
and the town-hall, other buildings in 
this quarter being the currency-office, 
post-office, Bank of Bengal, mint, etc. 
The churches include the cathedral, 
St. John’s (the old cathedral), St. An¬ 
drew’s Scotch Church, Roman Catholic 
cathedral, etc. Calcutta has an exten¬ 
sive system of internal navigation 
through the Ganges and its connections, 
as also by the railways (the chief of 
which start from Howrah), and it almost 
monopolizes the external commerce of 
this part of India. The principal ex¬ 
ports are opium, cotton, rice, wheat, 
jute, gunny-bags, tea, indigo, seeds, 
raw 6ilk, etc. Of the imports the most 
important in respect of value are cotton 
goods. The j'ute manufacture is ex¬ 
tensively carried on, as also that of 
cottons. The religious, educational, and 
benevolent institutions of Calcutta are 
numerous. The educational institu¬ 
tions comprise the Presidency College, 
the Mohammedan College, and the 
Sanscrit College, all government colleges 
besides others mainly supported by 
missionary or native efforts. Other 


the name of tragedies, Calderon wrote 
hundreds of preludes, farces, etc. He 
wrote his last play in the eightieth year 
of his age. His smaller poems are now 
forgotten; but his plays have main¬ 
tained their place on the stage even 
more than those of Lope de Vega. He 
died May 25, 1681. 

CALEDO'NIA, Caledonians, the names 
by which the northern portion of Scot¬ 
land and its inhabitants first became 
known to the Romans, when in the year 
80 Agricola occupied the country up to 
the line of the Firths of Clyde and Forth. 
He defeated the Caledonians in 83, and 
again at Mons Grampius in 84, a battle 
of which a detailed description is given 
by Tacitus. In the early part of the 3d 
century they maintained a brave re¬ 
sistance to Severus, but the name then 
lost its historic importance. Caledonia 
is now used as a poetical name of Scot¬ 
land. 

CAL'ENDAR, a record or marking out 
of time as systematically divided into 
years, months, weeks, and days. The 
periodical occurrence of certain natural 
phenomena gave rise to the first division 
of time, the division into weeks being 
the only purely arbitrary partition. The 
year of the ancient Egyptians was based 
on the changes of the seasons alone, 
without reference to the lunar month, 
and contained 365 days divided into 
twelve months of thirty days each, with 
five supplementary days at the end of 
the year. The Jewish year consisted of 
lunar months of which they reckoned 
twelve in the year, intercalating a 












CALENDER 


CALIFORNIA 


thirteenth when necessary to maintain 
the correspondence of the particular 
months with the regular recurrence of 
the seasons. The Greeks in the earliest 
period also reckoned by lunar and inter¬ 
calary months, but after one or two 
changes adopted the plan of Meton and 
Euctemon, who took account of the fact 
that in a period of nineteen years, the 
new moons return upon the same days 
of the year as before. This period of 
nineteen years was found, however, to be 
about six hours too long, and subsequent 
calculators still failed to make the be¬ 
ginning of the seasons return on the 
same fixed day of the year. Each month 
was divided into three decade. The 
Romans at first divided the year into 
ten months, but they early adopted the 
Greek methods of lunar and intercalary 
months, making the lunar year consist 
of 354, and afterward of 355 days, 
leaving ten or eleven days and a fraction 
to be supplied by the intercalary 
division. This arrangement continued 
till the time of Caesar. The first day of 
the month was called the calends. In 
March, May, July, and October the 15th, 
in other months the 13th, was called the 
ides. The ninth day before the ides 
(reckoning inclusive) was called the 
nones, being therefore either the 7th or 
the 5th of the month. From the inac¬ 
curacy of the Roman method of reckon¬ 
ing the calendar came to represent the 
vernal equinox nearly two months after 
the event, and at the request of Julius 
Caesar, the Greek astronomer Sosigenes, 
with the assistance of Marcus Fabius 
contrived the so-called Julian calendar. 
The chief improvement consisted in 
restoring the equinox to its proper place 
by inserting two months between 
November and December, so that the 
year 707 (b.c. 46), called the year of 
confusion, contained fourteen months. 
In the number of days the Greek com¬ 
putation was adopted, which made it 
365. To dispose of the quarter of a 
day it was determined to intercalate a 
day every fourth year between the 23rd 
and 24th of February. This calendar 
continued in use among the Romans 
until the fall of the empire, and through¬ 
out Christendom till 1582. 

By this time, owing to the cumulative 
error of eleven minutes, the vernal 
equinox really took place ten days earlier 
than its date in the calendar, and 
accordingly Pope Gregory XIII. issued 
a brief abolishing the Julian calendar in 
all Catholic countries, and introducing 
in its stead the one now in use, the 
Gregorian or reformed calendar. In 
this way began the new style, as opposed 
to the other or old style. Ten days were 
to be dropped; every hundredth year, 
which by the old style was to have been 
a leap year, was now to be a common 
year, the fourth excepted; and the 
length of the solar year was taken to be 
365 days, five hours, forty-nine minutes, 
and twelve seconds, the difference be¬ 
tween which and subsequent obser¬ 
vations is immaterial. Russia alone 
retains the old style, which now differs 
twelve days from tne new. 

In France, during the revolution, a 
new calendar was introduced by a decree 
of the National Convention, Nov. 24, 
1793. The time from which the new 


reckoning was to commence was the 
autumnal equinox of 1792, which fell 
upon the 22nd of September, when the 
first decree of the new republic had been 
promulgated. The year was made to 
consist of twelve months of three 
decades each, and, to complete the full 
number, five fete days, or sansculotides 
(in leap years six) were added to the 
end of the year. The common Christian 
or Gregorian calendar was re-established 
in France on the 1st January, 1806, by 
Napoleon. For the Mohammedan cal¬ 
endar, see Hegira. 

CAL'ENDER, a machine consisting of 
two or more cylinders (calenders) re¬ 
volving so nearly in contact with each 
other that cloth or paper passed be¬ 
tween them is smoothed and glazed by 
their pressure, or some other kind of 
finish is imparted to the surface. 

CALHOUN (kal-hon'), John Caldwell, 
an American statesman, born in 1782, 
died 1850. He was admitted to the 
bar of S. Carolina in 1807, and in 1811 
was sent to Congress, where he distin¬ 



guished himself by his eloquence. In 
1817 he was made secretary of war 
under President Monroe; in 1825 he was 
elected vice-president of the United 
States; in 1831, a senator; in 1843 
secretary of state, and in 1845, again a 
senator. He continued till his death an 
advocate of extreme state rights, and of 
the policy of the slave-holding states. 

CAL'IBER, a technical term for the 
diameter of the bore of a firearm. 

CAL'ICO, a general term for any plain 
white cotton cloth: in America it is 
usually applied to printed cottons. 

CALICO-PRINTING is the art of 
applying colors to cloth after it has come 
from the hand of the weaver in such a 
manner as to form patterns or figures. 
This art, originally brought from India, 
is sometimes practised on linen, woolen, 
and silk, but most frequently upon that 
species of cotton cloth called calico. 
The process was first introduced into 
Britain in 1738, and was originally 
accomplished by means of hand-blocks 
made of wood on which patterns or 
parts of patterns for each different 
color were cut. The machinery now 
generally used consists of various mod¬ 
ifications of the cylinder printing- 


machine, in which a number of separate 
engraved cylinders are mounted, corres¬ 
ponding to the number of colors to be 
printed. Formerly the cloth had to 
pass once through the machine for every 
color; but now, by an arrangement of 
machinery equally ingenious and effec¬ 
tive, any number of ■cylinders are fitted 
on one machine, which act on the cloth 
one after the other, and by this means 
the pattern is finished with a corres¬ 
ponding number of colors in the same 
time that was formerly employed to 
give one. A great variety of methods 
are employed in calico-printing, but they 
ail fall under the general heads of dye- 
colors and steam-colors. Under the first 
head are included all the styles in which 
the pattern is printed on the cloth by a 
mordant—a substance which may have 
little or no color itself, but has an affin¬ 
ity for the fiber on the one hand, and 
for the coloring matter on the other— 
the dye or coloring matter being subse¬ 
quently fixed by dyeing on such parts 
of the cloth as have been impregnated 
with the mordant, and thus bringing 
out the pattern. In steam-color printing 
the coloring material is applied to the 
cloth direct from the printing-cylinder, 
and subsequently fixed by steaming. 
In steam-colors there is no limit to the 
number and variety of shades which 
may be produced, each color-box on the 
cylinder printing-machine containing 
the whole ingredients essential to the 
production and fixation of a separate 
and distinct shade of color. This pro¬ 
cess is superseding most of the other 
styles, the brilliant coal-tar colors so 
extensively used being almost entirely 
fixed by steaming. The bodies used for 
fixing are tin mordants, tannic acid, etc., 
which are mixed with the dye-colors and 
printed together. The effects of calico- 
printing are varied by numerous other 
operations, such as the discharge-style, 
in which the cloth is first dyed all over, 
then printed in a certain pattern with 
discharge-chemicals, which either pro¬ 
duce a pattern of some other color, or 
one purely white, as in the Turkey-red 
bandanna handkerchiefs. The resist- 
style, in some respects, is the reverse 
of the discharge-style; the process being 
to print a pattern in certain chemicals, 
which will enable those parts to resist 
the action of the dye subsequently ap¬ 
plied to all other parts of the cloth. 
After the prints have undergone the 
printing process they are submitted to 
a series of finishing operations, the 
object of which is to give to the fabrics 
a pleasing appearance to the eye. 

CAL'ICUT, a seaport of India, pres¬ 
idency of Madras, on the Malabar coast, 
which was ceded to the British in 1792. 
It was the first port in India visited by 
Europeans, the Portuguese adventurer, 
Pedro da Covilham having landed here 
about 1486, and Vasco da Gama in 1498. 
It has considerable trade, and manu¬ 
factures cotton cloth, to which it has 
given the name calico. Pop. 76,981. 

CALIF and CALIFATE. See Caliph. 

CALIFORNIA, one of the Pacific 
states, the second in size of the U. States, 
was ceded by Mexico to the United 
States in 1847, and in 1850 was ad¬ 
mitted to the Union. It is bounded 
on the north by Oregon, on the south 








CALIFORNIA 


CALIFORNIA 


i by Mexico (Lower California), on the 
east by Nevada and Arizona, and 
on the west by the Pacific Ocean. 
Its population in 1906 was 1,750,000. 
California in many ways is the most 
interesting state in the Union. It is 
750 miles long in a direct line, but 
has more than 800 miles of coast line. 
It has an average width of about 200 
miles and a measured area of 155,980 
sq. miles excluding bodies of water 
indented into the land, or a total of 
158,360 sq. miles, including bays, lakes 
and inlets. To make the dimensions 
more clear to persons familiar with the 
geography of the Atlantic coast, it may 
be stated as being approximately true 
that California equals in area all of that 
country lying east of the Appalachian 
chain of mountains and extending from 
Port Royal, Sduth Carolina to Boston, 
Massachusetts. The surface of Cali¬ 
fornia is extremely diversified. The 
Coast Range of mountains follows the 
coast line from the northern part of the 
6tate down two-thirds the length and 
then extends eastward to a junction 
with the Sierra Nevada range which 
parallels the Coast Range from the 
northern boundary to this junction, 
except that it is along the eastern bor¬ 
der. Between these two ranges is in¬ 
cluded the great valley of California, 
nearly 600 miles in length, the ranges 
being distant from each other from 100 
to 140 miles, a part of this distance 
being filled with local detached moun¬ 
tain areas and foot hill districts. The 
valley proper has an ordinary width of 
from 40 to 60 miles. Between the local 
detached ranges above mentioned and 
along the foot hills are many lesser 
valleys opening out into the big valley 
and on the western slope of the Coast 
Range are also many small valleys and 
some rather large ones opening out upon 
the sea coast. These valleys are ex¬ 
tremely fertile and attractive, as also is 
the great interior valley. This interior 
valley is divided at about the middle of 
the upper two-thirds of the state into 
the Sacramento Valley, lying to the 
north and the San Joaquin Valley run¬ 
ning to the south, each of these valleys 
being drained by rivers of the same 
name. The principal river is the Sacra¬ 
mento, which flows s. for upward of 300 
miles, receiving numerous affluents from 
the Sierra Nevada, and falls into the 
Bay of Suisun. The San Joaquin rises 
in the Sierra Nevada, flows n. for about 
250 miles, and j'oins the Sacramento 
about 15 miles above Suisun Bay. It 
receives the waters of Lake Tule or Tu- 
lares, and has numerous tributaries. 
The Bay of San Francisco, forming the 
most capacious harbor on the Pacific 
coast, is about 60 mil es in length, 14 
broad, and with a coast-line of 275 miles. 
It is connected with the ocean by a 
strait about 2 miles wide and from 5 to 
7 long, called the Golden Gate. The 
city of San Francisco stands on the n.w. 
shore of the southern arm. 

The peaks of the Sierra Nevada— 
Mount Shasta, Lassen’s Butte, Spanish 
Peak, Pyramid Peak, Mounts Dana, 
Lyell. Brewer, Tyndall, Whitney, and 
others — reach from 10 000 to nearly 
15,000 feet above the sea (Mount Whit¬ 
ney is 14,886). The volcanic character 


of the state is manifested by the moun¬ 
tain formations; and earthquakes are 
frequent. California is celebrated for 
its many wonderful natural objects and 
remarkable scenery. Noteworthy are 
the Yosemite Valley (which see) and the 
“ big tree groves” containing groups of 
giant redwood trees — some of which 
reach the height of nearly 400 feet. 

The climate of California is peculiarly 
its own. Nothing else on the North 
American continent is comparable with 
it. In the valley portions of the state 
the year is divided into two seasons of 
approximately equal duration, common¬ 
ly known as the wet and the dry sea¬ 
son. The wet season extends from 
November to May, and during this 
part of the year the rains fall about as 
they do in the eastern states during the 
spring and summer, although, as a rule, 
less copiously. In the northern part 
of the state the rains are abundant; in 
the central part sufficient, and in the 
southern part half scanty to such an ex¬ 
tent that irrigation must be employed in 



Seal of California. 


order to make agriculture certainly 
profitable. During the dry season rains 
seldom fall, although there may be 
showers earlier than November and 
later than May. The summers in the 
interior are warm. Along the coast the 
sun is warm, but the ocean breezes are 
always cool. California offers no 
climatic hardships. In the higher 
mountain altitudes there is a wintry 
season, not as cold as in the Atlantic 
states, but with a very much heavier 
snow fall. 

Politically speaking, California is 
divided into fifty-seven counties. The 
legislature consists of forty senators, 
elected for four years and eighty 
assemblymen, elected for two years, and 
the legislature convenes biennially. 
The legislators draw pay at the rate of 
$8.00 per day for 60 days and if the 
legislature sits longer than 60 days the 
legislators must serve without further 
compensation. The governor and other 
state officers are elected every four years, 
elections falling in mid-presidential 
terms so that national and state general 
elections do not occur simultaneously. 
In national elections the state in 1892 
gave Cleveland eight and Harrison one 
electoral votes; in 1896 it gave McKinley 
eight and Bryan one. In the elections 
of 1900, 1904 and 1908, it went Republi¬ 
can. 


For the fiscal year ending June 30, 
1906, the property tax levied and col¬ 
lected in California amounted to $7,590 
387.87. There were collected from all 
other sources $5,644,195.99, being a 
total of $13,234,583.86. The disburse¬ 
ments on account of state government 
were $12,945,862.73. 

Included in this disbursement is one 
item of state aid to the common schools 
amounting to $3,952,806.75, state aid 
to high schools being $238,522.62,. 
making a total of $4,191,329.37. 

California regards education as pre¬ 
eminently of concern to the whole 
commonwealth and therefore collects 
a large part of the entire educational 
fund from the state as a whole and 
disburses it to the several schools in a 
way that materially aids in supporting 
schools in sparsely settled districts. 

California is liberal in sustaining 
educational institutions. Its support 
of the State University, with its 3300 
students, is chiefly given in the form of 
a levy of two cents on each $100 of 
assessed valuation of all property, al¬ 
though the university has special 
sources of revenue in addition to this. 
Besides the common and high school® 
and the State University, the state 
supports five normal training schools, 
two industrial state schools and one 
polytechnic and elementary agricul¬ 
tural school. Stanford University, 
with an endowment valued at twenty 
millions of dollars bears an important 
part in the educational work of the 
state and there are also many denomina¬ 
tional colleges and preparatory school® 
which unite in making the school system 
of California the equal of that of any 
other state in the union. 

The wealth of the state, as ascertained 
for purposes of taxation for the year 
1906, is as follows: 

Assessed value of real estate other 


than city and town lots. 1416,238,885 

City and town lots. 503,934,230 

Total real estate. 8919,173,119 

Assessed value of improvements ~ 
on other than city and town lots $ 87,613,284 

City and town lots. 238,242,091 

Total value of improvements.. 83 25,855,375 

Total value of all real estate and 

improvements thereon. $1,245,028,494 

Assessed value of personal prop¬ 
erty, other than money and solv¬ 
ent credits. 237,929.012 

Money and solvent credits. 31,929,084 

Assessment of railroads within 

state. 81,010,821 

Total assessed valuation of all 
property. 81,595,897,411 

The Forestry interests of California 


are very important. The entire stand 
of merchantable forests originally 
amounted to about 17,000,000 acres, 
but § of this has been cut over, at least 
in part, leaving only about 6,000,000 
acres as yet untouched. Most of the 
cut over areas are capable of being 
speedily reforested, a work to which 
the general government, as well as the- 
State of California is now addressing 
itself. The U. States government has 
withdrawn from sale about 20,000,000 
acres of lands either forested or sus¬ 
ceptible of becoming forested, which 
has been set apart as forest reserve* 
or national parks. 

The gold mines of California stilK 
yield about $20,000,000 a year in gold,, 
silver and platinum and the tendency 


























CALIFORNIA 


CALOMEL 


is to increase rather than diminish the 
yield. 

The manufacturing interests of Cali¬ 
fornia are steadily developing. Census 
Bulletin 49, issued by the U. States 
department of commerce and labor, 
gives the following figures for manufac¬ 
tures in California: 

Between 1900 and 1905, the number 
of manufacturing establishments in¬ 
creased .369 per cent and now total 
6,839 The capital invested increased 
.611 per cent and now totals $282,647,- 
201.00. The value of the product in¬ 
creased .427 per cent and now totals 
$367,218,494.00. The number of wage 
earners increased 30 per cent and totals 
100,355. The total wages increased 
.621 per cent and for the year 1905 
amounted to $64,850,686.00. This 
development is largely the result of the 
discovery of petroleum, of which Cali¬ 
fornia is now a larger producer than any 
other state in the Union, and the de¬ 
velopment of electrical power through 
the utilization of the streams flowing 
down from the higher altitudes of the 
Sierra Nevada mountains. 

California’s fruit and fruit products 
are annually sufficient to load from 
75,000 to 85,000 ten-ton freight cars, 
and this product is shipped to nearly 
all of the markets of the world. The 
canning industry now ranks first among 
the manufacturing interests of the state. 
The wool industry adds about 20,000,- 
000 pounds of wool per year to the 
country’s wool supply. The develop¬ 
ment of the open door in Asia and 
trade with the Philippine Islands affords 
a ready market for every pound of 
agricultural products at remunerative 
prices. 

Ocean steamers run regularly between 
San Francisco and Australia, Panama, 
Mexico, China and Japan. 

California has 19 railroads, having a 
total mileage of 5,489 miles, not count¬ 
ing electrical lines, of which there are 
about a thousand miles of road in the 
state, including the state railways. The 
total assessed value of these railroads 
for purposes of taxation, including 
Pullman Car Company's rolling stock 
is $81,010,821.00. There are already 
4 trans-continental lines and a fifth line 
is building and will be completed within 
two or three years. There are also three 
other great railroad companies that are 
heading toward California and it is not 
improbable that the close of the present 
decade will witness the completion of 
at least two of these to a termination at 
San Francisco Bay. 

The principal city and port is San 
Francisco, the capital is Sacramento. 
Of the other cities the most important 
are Oakland and Los Angeles. 

California is a very prosperous and 
growing commonwealth and notwith¬ 
standing the great catastrophe of April 
18, 1906, which resulted in the destruc¬ 
tion of property having an assessed 
value of $150,000,000.00, the assessed 
valuation for the entire state for 
1906 is only about $39,000,000.00 less 
than for 1905. The general prosper¬ 
ity has come so near to making good 
the destruction of property by the 
great San Francisco fire of 1906. Pop. 
1909, about 1,800,000. 


CALIFORNIA, Gulf of, a gulf on the 
w. coast of N. America, in Mexico, lying 
between the peninsula of Lower Cali¬ 
fornia and the mainland. It is about 
700 miles long, and, through most of its 
length, is less than 100 miles wide. It 
has long had a pearl fishery. 

CALIFORNIA, Lower, a territory of 
Mexico, comprising a peninsula jutting 
into the Pacific Ocean, and separated 
from the mainland throughout its entire 
length by the Gulf of California. It is 
nearly 800 miles in length, and in dif¬ 
ferent places 30, 60, 90, and 120 miles 
wide; area 61,562 sq. miles. It is largely 
mountainous and arid, but is said to 
possess valuable agricultural and mineral 
resources. The chief towns are Loretto 
and La Paz, the capital* Pop. 47,082, 
of whom perhaps a half are Indians. 

CALIG'ULA, Caius Caesar Augustus 
Germanicus, Roman emperor, son of 
Germanicus and Agrippina, was born 
a.d. 12, in the camp at Antium; assas¬ 
sinated by conspirators a.d. 41. He 



Caligula. 


received from the soldiers the surname 
of Caligula, on account of his wearing 
the caligse, a kind of boots in use among 
them. He succeeded Tiberius, a.d. 37, 
and made himself very popular by his 
mildness and ostentatious generosity; 
but at the end of eight months he was 
seized with a disorder, caused by his 
irregular mode of living, which appears 
to have permanently deranged his in¬ 
tellect. After his recovery, he suddenly 
showed himself the most cruel and un¬ 
natural of tyrants—a monster of de¬ 
bauchery and prodigality, a perpetrator 
of the greatest crimes and follies. The 
most exquisite tortures inflicted on the 
innocent served him for enjoyments. 
In the madness of his arrogance he even 
considered himself a god, and caused 
sacrifices to be offered to himself. One 
of his greatest follies was the building 
of a bridge between Baise and Puteoli 
(Puzzuoli), in order that he might be 
able to boast of marching over the sea 
on dry land. He projected expeditions 
to Gaul, Germany and Britain, and 
having reached the sea, he bade his 
soldiers gather shells for spoils, and then 
led them back to Rome. At last a band 
of conspirators put an end to his career 
in the 29th year of his age. 

CAL'IPER COMPASSES, compasses 
made either with arched legs to measure 
the diameters of cylinders or globular 
bodies, or with straight legs and re¬ 
tracted points to measure the interior 
diameter or bore of anything. 


CAL'IPH, CALIF, or KHALIF is the 

name assumed by the successors of 
Mohammed in the government of the 
faithful and in the high-priesthood. 
Caliphate is therefore the name given 
to the empire of these princes which the 
Arabs founded in Asia, and enlarged, 
within a few centuries, to a dominion, 
exceeding even the Roman empire in 
extent. The appellation of caliph has 
long ago been swallowed up in Shah, 
Sultan, Emir,and other titles peculiar to 
the East. 

CALISTHENICS, a less correct spell¬ 
ing of Callisthenics. (Which see.) 

CALIX'TUS, the name of three popes. 
—Calixtus I. was a Roman bishop from 
217 to 224, when he suffered martyrdom. 
Calixtus II. was elected in 1119, in the 
monastery of Clugny, successor of the 
expelled pope, Gelasius II., who had 
been driven from Italy by the Emperor 
Henry V., and had died in this monas¬ 
tery. He excommunicated the Emperor 
Henry V. on account of a dispute re¬ 
specting the right of investiture; as also 
the anti-pope Gregory ‘VIII., whom 
he drove from Rome. He availed him¬ 
self of the troubles of the emperor to 
force him, in 1122, to agree to the Con¬ 
cordat of Worms. He died in 1124.— 
Calixtus III., chosen in 1168 in Rome, 
as anti-pope to Paschal III., and con¬ 
firmed by the Emperor Frederick I., 
in 1178, was obliged to submit to Pope 
Alexander III. As he was not counted 
among the legal popes, a subsequent 
pope, Alfonso Borgia, made pope in 
1455, was called Calixtus III. He died 
in 1458. 

CALLAO (k&Lya'6), a seaport town 
of Peru, the port of Lima, from which 
it is 6 miles distant, and with which it 
is connected by a railway; pop. 60,000. 
Callao is the emporium of the whole of 
the trade of Peru, importing manu¬ 
factured goods, and exporting guano, 
copper ore, cubic nitre, wool, bark, etc. 
In 1746 the old town was destroyed by 
an earthquake, with much loss of life 
and damage to shipping. 

CAL'LIPERS. See Calliper Com¬ 
passes. 

CALLISTHEN'ICS, the art or practice 
of exercising the body for the purpose of 
giving strength to the muscles and 
grace to the carriage. The term is 
usually applied to the physical exer¬ 
cises of females, as gymnastics is to those 
of males. 

CALLOS'ITY, any thickened or hard¬ 
ened part of the human skin caused by 
pressure and friction. Also the natural 
cutaneous thickenings on the buttocks 
of monkeys. 

CAL'LUS, a callosity; also a new 
growth of osseous matter between the 
extremities of fractured bones, serving 
to unite them. 

CALMS, Regions of, tracts in the 
Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, on the con¬ 
fines of the trade-winds, where calms of 
long duration prevail. About the winter 
solstice their average northern limit is 
in 5° n. lat., and in the months about the 
summer solstice about 12° n. lat. The 
southern limit lies nearly always to the 
north of the equator, varying between 
1° and 3° n. lat. 

CAL'OMEL, mercurous chloride; a 
preparation of mercury much used in 




CALORESCENCE 


CALYX 


medicine, and also found native as horn- 
quicksilver. It is prepared by grinding 
in a mortar sulphate of mercury with 
as much mercury as it already contains, 
and heating the compound which is 
formed with common salt in a retort 
until the mercury sublimes. The calo¬ 
mel is thus produced as a white powder. 
It is used in a variety of ailments, as a 
purgative, a vermifuge, etc. 

CALORES'CENCE, the transmutation 
of heat rays into light rays; a peculiar 
transmutation of the invisible calorific 
rays, observable beyond the red rays 
of the spectrum of solar and electric 
light, into visible luminous rays, by 
passing them through a solution of 
iodine in bisulphide of carbon, which 
intercepts the luminous rays and trans¬ 
mits the calorific. The latter, when 
brought to a focus, produce a heat strong 
enough to ignite combustible substances, 
and to heat up metals to incandescence; 
the less refrangible calorific rays being 
converted into rays of higher refran- 
gibility, whereby they become luminous. 

CALORIM'ETER, an apparatus for 
measuring absolute quantities of heat or 
the specific or latent heat of bodies, as 
an instrument for measuring the heat 
given out by a body in cooling from the 
quantity of ice it melts or from the rise 
of temperature it produces in water 
around it. 

CALTANISSET'TA, a town, Sicily, 
capital of the province of the same 
name, on the right bank of the Salso, 
62 miles s. e. of Palermo. In the vicinity 
are springs of petroleum and of hydrogen 
gas, a mud-volcano, and important sul¬ 
phur mines. Pop. 44,600.—The prov¬ 
ince has an area of 1445 sq. miles, with 
a pop. of 330,972. 

CAL'UMET, a kind of pipe used by 
the American Indians for smoking 
tobacco. Its bowl is usually of soft red 
soapstone, and the tube a long reed, 
oramented with feathers. The cal¬ 
umet is (or was) used as a symbol or 
instrument of peace and war. To accept 
the calumet is to agree to the terms of 

? eace, and to refuse it is to reject them. 

he calumet of peace is used to seal or 
ratify contracts and alliances, to receive 
strangers kindly, and to travel with 
safety. The calumet of war, differently 
made, is used to proclaim war. 

CALVADOS (kal-v4-dos), a French 
dep., part of the old province of Nor¬ 
mandy, bounded on the n. by the Eng¬ 
lish Channel, and e. w. and s. by the 
deps. Eure, La Manche, and Orne. 
Area, 2145 sq. miles. It is named from 
a dangerous ridge of rocks which extends 
along the coast for 10 or 12 miles. The 
dep. is undulating and picturesque, and 
possesses rich pastures. Chief town, 
Caen. Pop. 410,178. 

CAL'VARY, applied to the place out¬ 
side Jerusalem where Christ was cruci¬ 
fied, usually identified with a small 
eminence on the north side of the city. 
The term is also applied in Roman 
Catholic countries to a kind of chapel, 
sometimes erected on a hill near a city 
and sometimes on the exterior of a 
church, as a place of devotion, in mem¬ 
ory of the place where our Savior 
suffered; as also to a rocky mound or 
hill on which three crosses are erected, 
an adjunct to religious houses. 


CALVIN, John, reformer and Protes¬ 
tant theological writer, born at Noyon, 
in Picardy, 1509, died at Geneva 1564. 
He went to Paris and entered on a 
course of regular study. He became dis¬ 
satisfied with the teaching of the Roman 
Catholic Church; in consequence he 
gave up his cure, and took to the study 
of the law in Orleans. In 1532 he re¬ 
turned to Paris a decided convert to the 
reformed faith, and was soon compelled 
to fly, when, after various wanderings, 
he found a protector in Margaret of 
Navarre. In 1534 he returned to Paris; 
but, finding that the persecution against 
those who were inclined to the doctrines 
of the reformers was still raging, he 
retired to Basel in the autumn of the 
same year. At Basel he completed and 
published his great work, The Institutes 
of the Christian Religion. In 1538 he 
was expelled from Geneva. Here he 
married a widow, Idelette de Burie, 
and had one son, who died early. In 
1541 his friends in Geneva succeeded in 
effecting his recall, when he laid before 
the council the draft of his ordinances 
respecting church discipline, which were 
immediately accepted and published. 
Michael Servetus, passing through 
Geneva in 1553, was arrested, and 
through Calvin’s instrumentality was 
burnt alive because he had attacked the 
mystery of the Trinity in a book which 
was neither written nor printed at 
Geneva. This has been regarded as the 
great blot on Calvin’s career, though 
approved of by many others of the 
reformers. His energy and industry 
were enormous: he preached almost 
daily, delivered theological lectures 
three times a week, attended all delibera¬ 
tions of the consistory, all sittings of the 
association of ministers, and was the 
soul of all the councils. He was con¬ 
sulted, too, upon points of law as well 
as of theology. Besides this, he found 
time to attend to political affairs in the 
name of the Republic, to publish a mul¬ 
titude of writings in defense of his 
opinions, and to maintain a corres¬ 
pondence through all Europe. Up to 
1561 the Lutherans and the Calvinists 
were as one, but in that year the latter 
expressly rejected the tenth article of 
the Confession of Augsburg, besides 
some others, and hence arose the name 
of Calvinists Calvin retained his per¬ 
sonal influence to the last ; but a year 
or two before his death his health had 
broken down. As a theologian Calvin 
was equal to any of his contemporaries 
in profound knowledge, acuteness of 
mind, and in the art of making good a 
point in question. As an author he 
merits great praise. His Latin works 
are^written with much method, dignity, 
and correctness. He was also a great 
jurist and an able politician. 

CALVINISM, the theological tenets or 
doctrines of John Calvin, including a 
belief in predestination, election, total 
depravity, original sin, effectual calling, 
and the final perseverance of the saints. 
The system also includes several other 
points of controversy, such as that of 
free-will, the Sonship of the Second 
Person of the Trinity, and other dif- 
erences in doctrine as between Calvinists 
and Arminians. Calvinism is the theo¬ 
logical system expounded in the West¬ 


minster Confession of Faith, and is 
therefore the faith officially held by the 
Presbyterian churches generally; it is 
also substantially Identical with what 
is known as “evangelicalism” in any 
of the churches or religious bodies. 

CAL'YDON, an ancient city of north¬ 
ern Greece, in ^Etolia, celebrated in 
Greek mythology on account of the 
ravages of a terrible boar. All the 
princes of the age assembled at the 
famous Hunt of the Calydonian Boar, 
which was finally despatched by Melea¬ 
ger. 

CALYP'SO, in Greek mythology, a 
nymph who inhabited the island Ogygia, 
on the shores of which Ulysses was ship¬ 
wrecked. She promised him immor¬ 
tality if he would consent to marry her 
but after a seven year’s stay she was 
ordered by the gods to permit his de¬ 
parture. 

CALYP'TRA, the hood of the theca or 
capsule of mosses. The same name is 



a. Moss. 6, Cassule with calyptra. e, Do, 
with calyptra removed. 

given to any hood-like body connected 
with the organs of fructification in 
flowering plants. 

CA'LYX, in botany, the name given 
to the exterior covering of a flower, that 
is, the floral envelope consisting of » 
circle or whorl of leaves external to the 
corolla, which it incloses and supports. 
The parts or leaves which belong to it 
are called sepals; they may be united by 
their margins, or distinct, and are 



Forms of calyx. 


usually of a green color and of less 
delicate texture than the corolla. In 
many flowers, however, there is little or 
no difference in character between calyx 
and corolla, in which case the whole gets 
the name of perianth. When the calyx 
leaves are distinct the calyx is called 
polysepalous (a a a in accompanying 








CAM 


CAMEL 


cut); when united, gamosepalous or 
monosepalous (b b). 

CAM, in machinery, a simple contri¬ 
vance for converting a uniform rotatory 
motion into a varied rectilinear motion, 
usually a projecting part of a wheel or 
other revolving piece so placed as to 
give an alternating or varying motion to 
another piece that comes in contact with 
it and is free to move only in a certain 
direction. 

CAMBACERES (kan-b&-sa-ra), Jean 
Jacques R6gis de, Duke of Parma, born 
in 1753 at Montpellier; died at Paris, 
1824. He was trained a lawyer, and by 
liis talents soon attracted the notice of 
the Convention, and was appointed to 
various judicial offices. In the discus¬ 
sion relative to the fate of the king he 
declared Louis guilty, but disputed the 
right of the Convention to judge him, 
and voted for his provisory arrest, and 
. in case of a hostile invasion, death. 
For a time he had the management of 
foreign affairs; and when Bonaparte was 
first consul, Cambac6res was chosen 
second. After the establishment of the 
empire, Cambacdres was created arch¬ 
chancellor, grand officer of the Legion 
•of Honor, and ultimately Duke of Parma. 
He was banished on the second restora¬ 
tion of Louis XVIII., but was subse¬ 
quently permitted to return. 

CAM'BAY, a feudatory state in India, 
Bombay Presidency; lying at the head of 
the gulf of the same name in the western 
part of Gujarat. Area, 350 sq. miles; 
pop. 89,722. Also, chief town of above 
state, situated at the head of the Gulf 
of Cambay, formerly a flourishing port, 
but now decayed. Pop. 31,390.—The 
■gulf separates the peninsula of Kathia¬ 
war from the northern coast of Bombay, 
having a length of about 80 miles, and 
an average breadth of 25 miles. 

CAMBO'DIA, or CAMBO'JA, a coun¬ 
try in the Indo-Chinese peninsula, 
bounded n. by Siam, e. by Anam, s. by 
French Cochin-China and Gulf of Siam, 
and w. by Gulf of Siam Pop. estimated 
at 1,500,000, partly Cambodians proper, 
partly Siamese, Annamese, etc. 

CAMBRIAN ROCKS, in geology, an 
extensive series of gritstones, sand¬ 
stones, conglomerates, slates, and shales, 
lying under the Lower Silurian beds, 
and above the Archaean, and divided 
into the Upper and Lower Cambrian. 
Many fossils occur in the series, in¬ 
cluding sponges, star-fishes, trilobites, 
ibrachiopods, lamellibranchs, pteropods, 
.•gasteropods, cephalopods, etc. They 
may be regarded as the bottom rocks of 
the Silurian system, and are well de¬ 
veloped in N. Wales (hence the name), 
but can be recognized in many other 
regions. 

CAM'BRIC, the name of a fine kind 
of linen which was originally manufac¬ 
tured principally at Cambria, in French 
Flanders, whence the name. It is also 
applied to a cotton fabric, which is very 
extensively manufactured in imitation 
of the true cambric, and which is in 
reality a kind of muslin. 

CAM'BRIDGE (kam'brij), an inland 
•county of England, bounded by the 
•counties of Lincoln, Northampton, 
Huntingdon, Bedford, Hertford, Essex, 
Suffolk, and Norfolk; area, 524,935 
acres. The soil is diversified and gen¬ 


erally fertile; a large part belongs to the 
fen country. The principal rivers are 
the Cam or Granta, and the Ouse. The 
county abounds in dairy farms, cele¬ 
brated for the production of excellent 
butter and cheese. The county town 
is Cambridge; other towns are Ely, 
Wisbech, Newmarket, and March. Pop. 
190,687. —Cambridge, the county town, 
is situated on the river Cam, 50 miles 
n. of London. It occupies a perfect 
level encompassed by the colleges, and 
their beautiful grounds and gardens, on 
both sides of the Cam. The town is 
supported mainly by the presence of the 
university; but has some manufactures. 
Pop. 38,393. 

CAMBRIDGE, a city separated from 
Boston by the Charles River. It is well 
laid out, with fine broad streets and 
avenues, and many open spaces adorned 
with shrubs and trees. The most im¬ 
portant institution it contains is Har¬ 
vard University (which see). Though 
distinct from Boston it really forms 
part of it. Pop. 100,000. See Boston. 

CAMBRIDGE, University of, one of 
the two great English universities, as 
old at least as the thirteenth century, 
situated in the above town. The fol¬ 
lowing list contains the names of the 
colleges or distinct corporate bodies 
comprised in the university, with the 
time when each was founded: 

1. St. Peter’s College, or Peter House.1357 


2. Clare College, formerly Clare Hall.1326 

3. Pembroke College.1347 

4. Gonville and Caius College..’ 1348 

5. Trinity Hall.1350 

6. Corpus Christi College.1352 

7. King’s College.1441 

8. Queen’s College.1448 

9. St.Catherine’s College, or Catherine Hall 1473 

10. Jesus College.1496 

11. Christ’s College.1505 

12. St. John’s College.1511 

13. Magdalene College.1519 

14. Trinity College.1546 

15. Emmanuel College.1584 

16. Sidney Sussex College.1598 

17. Downing College.1800 


There is also Selwyn College (or 
hostel), founded in 1882, for Church of 
England students. Each of the colleges 
is a separate corporation, which is gov¬ 
erned by laws and usages of its own 
although subject to the paramount laws 
of the university. The university is 
composed of a chancellor, vice-chancel¬ 
lor, the masters or heads of colleges, 
fellows of colleges, and students, and is 
incorporated as a society for the study 
of all the liberal arts and sciences. The 
senate, which is composed of all who 
have taken the degree of Doctor or 
Master, is the great legislative assembly 
of the university. The chief executive 
power is vested in the chancellor, the 
high-steward, and the vice-chancellor, 
who is the head of some college. Two 
proctors superintend the discipline of all 
pupils. The number of undergraduate 
students is about 3000. There are over 
forty professors in the various depart¬ 
ments. A botanic garden, an anatomi¬ 
cal school, an observatory, and a valua- 
able library containing more than 
300,000 printed volumes, besides many 
manuscripts, are attached to the uni¬ 
versity. The museums and laboratories 
for the study of science are among the 
most complete in the country. 

CAMBY'SES, (1) a Persian of noble 
blood, to whom King Astyages gave his 


daughter Mandane in marriage. Asty¬ 
ages w r as dethroned by Cyrus, the off¬ 
spring of this union. (2) The 6on of 
Cyrus the Great, and grandson of the 
preceding, became, after the death of 
his father, King of the Persians and 
Medes, b.c. 529. In the fifth year of his 
reign he invaded Egypt, conquering the 
whole kingdom within six months. But 
his expeditions against the Ammonites 
and Ethiopians having failed, his 
violent and vindictive nature broke out 
in cruel treatment of his subjects, his 
brother Smerdis and his own wife being 
among his victims. He died in 521 b.c. 

CAMDEN, a town of New Jersey, 
on the left bank of the Delaware, and 
connected with Philadelphia, on the 
opposite side, by a steamboat service. 
There are manufactories of various 
kinds, foundries, saw-mills, etc. Pop. 
100,000. 

CAMEL, a genus of ruminant quad¬ 
rupeds, characterized by the absence of 
horns; the possession of incisive, canine, 
and molar teeth; a fissure in the upper 
lip; a long and arched neck; one or two 
humps or protuberances on the back; 



Bactrian camel. 

a broad elastic foot ending in two small 
hoofs, which does not sink readily in 
the sand of the desert. The native 
country of the camel is said to extend 
from Morocco to China, within a zone of 
900 or 1000 miles in breadth. The com¬ 
mon camel, having two humps, is only 
found in the northern part of this 
region, and exclusively from the ancient 
Bactria, now Turkestan, to China. The 
dromedary, or single-hump camel, or 
Arabian camel, is found throughout the 
entire length of this zone, on its southern 
side, as far as Africa and India. The 
Bactrian species is the larger, more 
robust, and more fitted for carrying 
heavy burdens. The dromedary has 
been called the race-horse of its species. 
To people residing in the vicinity of 
the great deserts the camel is an invalu¬ 
able mode of conveyance. It will travel 
three days under a load and five days 
under a rider without drinking. The 
stronger varieties carry from 700 to 1000 
lbs. burden. The camel’s power of 
enduring thirst is partly due to the pecu¬ 
liar structure of its stomach, to which 
are attached little pouches or water-cells, 
capable of straining off and storing up 
water for future use, when journeying 
across the desert. It can live on little 
food, and of the coarsest kind, leaves of 
trees, nettles, shrubs, twigs, etc. In 
this it is helped by the fact that its 
humps are mere accumulations of fat 
























CAMEL 


CAMEROONS 


(the back-bone of the animal being quite 
straight) and form a store upon which 
the system can draw when the outside 
supply is defective. Hence the camel- 
driver who is about to start on a journey 
takes care to see that the humps of his 
animal present a full and healthy ap¬ 
pearance. Camels which carry heavy 

r 


one 135°, and the other two each 67° 30'. 
One of the two faces which contain the 
right angle is turned toward the object 
to be sketched. Rays falling in a 
straight line on this face, as from f, are 
totally reflected at g from the face c b to 
the next face at h, whence they are 
again totally reflected to the fourth face, 



of light passing through a convex lens at 
a, being reflected from the mirror m 
(which is at a slope of 45°) to the glass 
plate n, where they form an image that 
may be traced. Another arrangement 
is a kind of tent surrounded by opaque 
curtains, and having at its top a revolv¬ 
ing lantern, containing a lens with its 
axis horizontal, and a mirror placed 
behind it at a slope of 45°, to reflect the 
transmitted light downward on the 
paper. It is still better to combine lens 
and mirror in one by using a glass of 
peculiar shape, in which rays from ex¬ 
ternal objects are first refracted at a 
convex surface, then totally reflected 
at the back of the lens, which is plane, 
and finally emerge through the bottom 
of the lens, which is concave, but with 
a larger radius of curvature than the 
first surface. The camera obscura em¬ 
ployed by photographers is commonly 
a box, one half of which slides into the 
other, with a tube in front containing 
an object-glass at its extremity. At the 
back of the box is a slide of ground glass, 
on which the image of the object or ob¬ 
jects to be depicted is thrown, in setting 
the instrument. The focussing is per¬ 
formed in the first place by sliding the 
one half of the box into the other, and by 
means of a pinion attached to the tube 



Camera obscura. 


in front which moves the lens. When 
the image has thus been rendered as 
sharp as possible, the ground-glass slide 
is removed, and a sensitized plate sub¬ 
stituted, which not only receives, but 
retains the image. 

CAMERON, Simon, an American 
statesman, born in Pennsylvania in 
1799, died in 1889. In 1845 he became 
a United States senator, and was ap¬ 
pointed by Lincoln to be secretary of 
war, a position which contributed the 
largest part to his reputation. After 
serving (1862-66) as minister to Russia 
he returned to the United States and 
used his influence for the second nomina¬ 
tion of Lincoln. He was a strong 
opponent of civil service reform. 

CAMEROONS, (1) a district on the 
West Coast of Africa, on the Bight of 
Biafra, now belonging to Germany, and 
one of the most suitable districts for 
colonization in this region. (2) A river 
in the Cameroons territory. It falls 
into a broad estuary, on approaching 
which it has a width of about 400 yards. 
There are several large and thriving 
towns (including King Bell’s town) on 
the river, through which an extensive 
trade is carried on in ivory and palm-oil. 
(3) A mountain range in the territory, 
the highest peak of which has been 
estimated at over 13,000 feet. It is 
volcanic in character, and is clothed with 



Figs. 1 and 2, Arabian camels and camel-driver. Fig. 3, Bactrian or two-humped camel. 


burdens will do about 25 miles a day, 
those which are used for speed alone, 
from 60 to 90 miles a day. The camel 
is rather passive than docile, showing 
less intelligent co-operation with its 
master than the horse or elephant; but 
is is very vindictive when injured. It 
lives from forty to fifty years. Its 
flesh is esteemed by the Arab and its 
milk is his common food. The hair 
of the camel serves in the East for mak¬ 
ing cloth for tents, carpets and wearing 
apparel. It is imported into European 
countries, for the manufacture of fine 
pencils for painting and for other pur¬ 
poses. The South American members 
of the family Camelidse constitute the 
genus Auchenia, to which the llama and 
alpaca belong; they have no humps. 

CAMEL, a water-tight box or caisson 
used to raise a sunken vessel, or to float a 
vessel over a shoal or bar. It is let down 
with water in it, and is attached to the 
vessel, after which the water is pumped 
out, and the camel rises from its buoy¬ 
ancy. 

CAMELLIA (ka-mel'ya), a genus of 
plants, with showy flowers and elegant 
dark-green, shining, laurel-like leaves, 
nearly allied to the plants which yield 
tea. 

CAM'EO, a general name for all gems 
cut in relief, in contradistinction to 
those hollowed out, or intaglios. More 
particularly, a cameo is a gem composed 
of several different-colored layers having 
a subject in relief cut upon one or more 
of the upper layers, an under layer of a 
different color forming the ground. For 
this purpose the ancients used the onyx, 
sardonyx, agate, etc. The shells of 
various molluscs are now much used for 
making cameos; and they are also imi¬ 
tated on glass. 

CAM'ERA LU'CIDA, an optical in¬ 
strument employed to facilitate the 
sketching of objects from nature by pro¬ 
ducing a reflected picture of them upon 
paper. Wollaston’s apparatus is one of 
the commonest. The essential part is 
a totally-reflecting prism with four 
angles, one of which is 90°, the opposite 


from which they emerge in a straight 
line. An eye (e) placed so as to receive 
the emergent rays, will see an image of 
the object in the direction m, and by 
placing the sketching paper below in 
this place, the image may be traced with 
a pencil. As the paper, for convenience 
of drawing, must be at a distance of 
about a foot, a concave lens, with a focal 
length of something less than a foot, is 
placed close in front of the prism in 
drawing distant objects. By raising or 
lowering the prism in its stand, the 
image of the object to be sketched may 
he made to coincide with the plane of 
the paper. The prism is mounted in 
such a way that it can be rotated either 
about a horizontal or a vertical axis; 
and its top is usually covered with a 
movable plate of blackened metal, 
having a semicircular notch at one edge, 
for the observer to look through. This 
form of camera has undergone various 
modifications. It is very convenient 
on account of its portability. 



Camera lucida. 

CAM'ERA OBSCU'RA, an optical in¬ 
strument employed for exhibiting the 
images of objects in their forms and 
colors, so that thej may be traced and 
a picture drawn, or may be represented 
by photography. A simple camera 
obscura is presented by a darkened 
chamber into which no light is permitted 
to enter excepting by a small hole in the 
window-shutter. A picture of the ob¬ 
jects opposite the hole will then be seen 
on the wall, or on a white screen placed 
opposite the opening. A simple camera 
obscura is shown in the figure; the rays 
























CAMILLUS 


CAMPHOR 


a dense growth of forest to the height of 
4000 or 5000 ft. 

CAMIL'LUS, Marcus Furius, a Roman 
patrician, famous as the deliverer of the 
city of Rome from the Gauls. In b.c. 
396 he was made dictator during the 
Veientine war, and captured the town of 
Veii by mining, after it had defied the 
Roman power for ten years. In b.c. 
394 Camillus besieged the Falerii, and 
by an act of generosity induced them to 
surrender. Three years after, Camillus 
was appointed dictator a second time, 
and was successful in repelling the in¬ 
vaders. After having been four times 
appointed dictator, a new t invasion of 
the Gauls called Camillus, now eighty 
years old, again to the front, and for the 
fifth and last time, being appointed 
dictator, he defeated and dispersed the 
barbarians. He died in b.c. 365. 

CAM'OENS, Luis de, the most cele¬ 
brated poet of the Portuguese, born at 
Lisbon of a good family, probably in 
1524 or 1525. An affray into which he 
was drawn was the cause of his embark¬ 
ing in 1553 for India. He landed at Goa, 
but, being unfavorably impressed with 
the life led by the ruling Portuguese 
there, wrote a satire which caused his 
banishment to Macao (1556). Here, 
however, he was appointed to an honor¬ 
able position as administrator of the 
property of absentee and deceased 
Portuguese, and here, too, in what were 
the quietest and most prosperous years 
of his life, he wrote the earlier cantos 
of his great poem, the Lusiads. The 
Lusiads was printed at Lisbon (1572), 
and celebrating, as it did, the glories of 
the Portuguese conquests in India, 
acquired at once a wide popularity. 
The king himself accepted the dedica¬ 
tion of the poem. He died on the 18th 
June, 1579. Fifteen years after his 
death a magnificent monument was 
erected to his memory, with an inscrip¬ 
tion on it which called him the prince of 
poets. The Lusiads is an epic poem in 
ten cantos. Its subject is the voyage of 
Vasco da Gama to the East Indies; but 
many other events in the history of 
Portugal are also introduced. 

CAMP, the place and aggregate body 
of tents for soldiers in the field. Among 
the Greeks, the Lacedaemonians seem to 
have been the first who devoted atten¬ 
tion to the art of forming military 
camps, adopting a circular form with 
the general’s tent in the center; but the 
Romans, who had so often to carry on 
wars in distant and thinly-populated 
regions, were the first to carry the art of 
encampment to a high degree of per¬ 
fection. Their camps as a rule were 
square, and were strongly intrenched 
so as to provide against the danger of 
surprise. Since the invention of gun¬ 
powder intrenched camps have become 
much more elaborate affairs and cover 
a much greater area. They may con¬ 
sist of intrenched areas permanently 
connected with and under the protection 
of fortified places; thus they are some¬ 
times attached to certain large cities on 
the chief roads, partly in order to de¬ 
fend them against the first attack of the 
enemy, partly, to give to retreating 
armies rallying-points able to furnish 
support to numerous soldiers. Camps 
which, though intrenched, are to be 


occupied merely for the period of a 
campaign, or which serve as a refuge for 
a few days only to a subordinate army, 
are termed "lines” or "temporary posi¬ 
tions.” From the perfection of modern 
artillery strong detached forts form the 
chief defensive feature of intrenched 
camps of the present day. 

CAMPAGNA DI ROMA (kam-pan'y4), 
the coast region of Middle Italy, in 
which Rome is situated, from 30 to 40 
miles wide and 100 long, and forming 
the undulating, mostly uncultivated 
plain which extends from near Civita 
Vecchia or Viterbo to Terracina, and 
includes the Pontine Marshes. The 
district is volcanic, and its lakes, Regil- 
lus, Albano, Nemi, etc., are evidently 
craters of extinct volcanoes. The soil 
is very fertile in the lower parts, though 
its cultivation is much neglected, owing 
to the malaria which makes residence 
there during midsummer very danger¬ 
ous; and during the months of July, 
August, and September its inhabitants, 
chiefly herdsmen and peasants, seek 
refuge in Rome or the neighboring towns. 

CAMPAIGN (kam-pan'), generally de¬ 
notes the series of operations of an army 
during the time it keeps the field in one 
season or accomplishes a determinate 
object. Formerly campaigns lasted 
only during the warmer months, and 
were terminated by the troops retiring 
into winter quarters. 

CAMPA'NIA, the ancient name of a 
province of Italy, in the former king¬ 
dom of Naples, which, on account of its 
beauty and fertility, was a favorite 
resort of wealthy Romans, who built 
there magnificent country houses. It 
comprises the modern provinces of 
Caserta, Naples, and parts of Salerno 
and Avellino. Cumae (the oldest Greek 
settlement in Italy), Puteoli, Naples, 
Herculaneum, Pompeii, Baiae, Stabiae, 
Salernum, and Capua (its ancient capi¬ 
tal) were the principal cities of Cam- 
ania. Even now Campania is the most 
eautiful and fruitful part of Italy. 

CAMPBELL, Alexander, an American 
religious minister, founder of the Dis¬ 
ciples of Christ, widely known as Camp- 
bellites. Campbell was born in Ireland 
in 1788, and died in the U. States in 
1866. The principle upon which he 
founded the new method of interpreting 
the Scriptures was based on the idea 
that where the Scriptures are silent 
the interpreter should be silent. The 
new method spread rapidly and now 
numbers nearly 2,000,000 adherents. 

CAMPBELL, Bartley, an American 
dramatic writer, born in Pennsylvania 
in 1843, died 1888. He was early a 
journalist but left that profession for 
play-writing. His principal works are 
Through Fire and My Partner. 

CAMPBELL, Thomas, a distinguished 
modern poet, was born at Glasgow 27th 
July, 1777, and educated at its uni¬ 
versity. After leaving the university he 
resided for a short time in Edinburgh; 
and all at once attained the zenith of 
his fame by publishing, in 1799, his 
Pleasures of Hope. In 1803, after 
spending some time in Germany, Camp¬ 
bell published an edition of the Pleasures 
of Hope with the addition of some of the 
finest lyrics in the English language, 
including Hohenlinden, Ye Mariners of 


England, and the Exile of Erin. In 1809 
he again made his appearance as a poet, 
and published Gertrude of Wyoming, 
Lord Ullin’s Daughter, and the Battle 
of the Baltic. He died at Boulogne, 
15th June, 1844, and was interred at 
Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey, 
close to the tomb of Addison. 

CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN, Sir 
Henry, a British statesman, premier of 
England. Was born in 1836. He has 
been financial secretary of the war office, 
admiralty secretary, chief secretary for 
Ireland, and secretary of state for war. 
In 1899 he became leader of the liberal 
party. In 1906 he became premier. He 
died in 1908. 

CAMPEACHY, or CAMPECHE (kam'- 
pechi, kam'pech-e), a seaport of Mexico, 
in the state and on the bay of the same 
name, on the w. coast of the peninsula 
of Yucatan, a mart for logwood and 
wax. Cigars are manufactured, and 
ships are built, though the harbor can 
only admit small vessels. Pop. 15,196. 
—The state of Campeachy has an area 
of 25,832 sq. miles; a pop. of 90,413. 

CAMP FOLLOWERS, a term applied 
to servants, small merchants, pur¬ 
veyors, women, and others who follow 
an army while on the march. In former 
times these camp followers often ex¬ 
ceeded in number the army itself, thus 
becoming a source of insurmountable 
difficulty to the commander. Their 
function, however, was very useful to 
the daily life of the soldiers. 

CAMPHENE (kam'fen), the generic 
name for the volatile oils or hydrocar¬ 
bons, isomeric or polymeric with oil 
of turpentine, as oil of bergamot, 
cloves, copaiba, hops, juniper, orange, 
pepper, etc. They are liquid at ordi¬ 
nary temperatures, and are distin¬ 
guished from each other by their odors. 

CAMPHINE (kam'fen), the commer¬ 
cial term for purified oil of turpentine, 
obtained by distilling the oil over quick¬ 
lime to free it from resin. It is used in 
lamps, and gives a very brilliant light; 
but, to prevent smoking, the lamp must 
have a very strong draft. With oxy¬ 
gen it forms camphor. 

CAM'PHOR, a whitish translucent 
substance, of a granular or foliated 
fracture, and somewhat unctuous to the 



Camphor-tree. 


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CAMPI 


CANADA 


hor laurel, a native of China and 
apan, now naturalized in many other 
countries. The camphor is chiefly pre¬ 
pared in the island of Formosa, though 
also exported from Japan, and to a 
small extent from China. The common 
camphor is obtained from the wood by 
distillation and sublimation. Borneo 
camphor, on the other hand, is not pro¬ 
cured by distillation, but is found in 
masses, secreted naturally in cavities 
in the trunk and greater branches. 
Numerous other vegetables, such as 
thyme, rosemary, sage, etc., are found 
to yield camphor by distillation. In 
medicine camphor is used both as an 
external and internal stimulant. In 
small doses it acts as an anodyne and 
antispasmodic; in large doses it acts as a 
poison. Its effluvia being very noxious 
to insects, it is much used to protect 
specimens in natural history. It readily 
dissolves in alcohol, oils, etc., and in this 
way is much used as a liniment. It 
evaporates or volatilizes at ordinary 
temperatures. A third kind of camphor, 
blumea camphor, is prepared in China 
from BlumCa balsamifSra, a tall com¬ 
posite plant. 

CAMPI, a family of Italian artists 
who founded what is known in painting 
as the school of Cremona. Of the four 
of this name, Giulio, Antonio, Vincenzo, 
and Bernardino, the first and last are 
the best known. Giulio (1502-72), the 
eldest and the teacher of the others, was 
a pupil of Giulio Romano, and acquired 
from the study of Titian and Pordenone 
a skill in coloring which gave the school 
its high place. Bernardino (1525-90), 
was the greatest of the school. He took 
Romano, Titian, Correggio in succession 
as his models, but without losing his 
own individuality as an artist. 

CAMP-MEETING, religious gather¬ 
ings held in the open air in which the 
audiences are addressed by prominent 
or able exhorters, scholars, enter¬ 
taining lecturers, etc. They were origi¬ 
nated in Kentucky by a Methodist 
and a Presbyterian preacher, two 
brothers named McGee. Camp-meet¬ 
ings are now held yearly in the summer 
by many methodist conferences, and 
are among the most cherished institu¬ 
tions of that church, although in Eng¬ 
land the church itself has refused them 
its countenance. 

CAMPOBAS'SO, a town of Italy, 
province of Campobasso, on a hill-slope, 
52 miles n.e. Naples; has manufactures 
of cutlery, and a good trade. Pop. 
14,818.—The prov. (formerly Molise) 
has an area of 1771 sq. miles; pop. 
385,140. 

CAMPUS MARTIUS, was a large 
place in the suburbs of ancient Rome, 
consisting of the level ground between 
the Quirinal, Capitoline, and Pincian 
hills, and the river Tiber, set apart for 
military exercises and sacred to the god 
Mars. In the later period of the re¬ 
public it was a suburban pleasure- 
ground for the Romans, and was laid 
out with gardens, shady walks, baths, 
etc. A large part of the modern city 
stands on it. 

CANAAN (ka'nan). See Palestine. 

CANAANITES, the general name for 
the heathen peoples (Jebusites, Hittites, 
Amorites, etc.) whom the Israelites 


found dwelling in Canaan (Palestine) 
west of the Jordan, and whom latterly 
they utterly subdued, though the sub¬ 
jugation was not quite complete till 
Solomon’s time. They are believed to 
have been, in part at least, of kindred 
race with the Israelites; and some 
authorities find traces of their descend¬ 
ants among the present inhabitants of 
Palestine. 

CANADA, Dominion of, an extensive 
series of British territories in North 
America, the greatest of Britain’s 
colonial possessions, comprising the 
provinces of Ontario (formerly Upper 
Canada), Quebec (formerly Lower 
Canada), Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, 
British Columbia, Prince Edward Is¬ 
land, and Manitoba, along with the vast 
regions in the north and northwest 
known as the Northwest Territories, 
and another vast region north of Quebec 
known as the Northeast Territory. 
The Dominion thus embraces the whole 
of British North America, with the ex¬ 
ception of Newfoundland and part of 
Labrador (which belongs to Newfound¬ 
land), and its area, 3,729,620 sq. miles, 
is not much less than that of Europe. 

The southern boundary is most re¬ 
markable for passing through the 
system of great lakes—Superior, Huron, 
Erie, and Ontario, between the last two 
of which are the Falls of Niagara, partly 
belonging to Canada, partly to the 
United States. To the Atlantic the 
drainage of these lakes is carried by 
the St. Lawrence, with which river, and 
the great gulf into which it expands, are 
connected the provinces of Ontario, 
Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, 
and Prince Edward Island, together 
containing by far the greater portion 
of the population of the Dominion. 

The chief mountain ranges of the 
east are north and south of the St. 
Lawrence, and run nearly parallel to 
that river. On the Pacific slope we have 
a distinctly mountainous region, in¬ 
cluding the Rockies, some peaks of 
which (Mt. Hooker, Mt. Brown) attain 
a height of about 16,000 feet, as also 
the Gold and the Cascade Ranges. In 
the prairie region and the northwest are 
great lake and river systems, formed 
by the Saskatchewan, Nelson, Churchill, 
Athabasca, and Mackenzie rivers, and 
the great lakes Winnipeg, Athabasca, 
Great Slave and Great Bear. The Sas¬ 
katchewan, lying in the heart of the 
rich wheat-growing district, must in 
time prove a far more important water¬ 
way than at present. The Mackenzie 
and its connected lakes and rivers form 
the most remarkable feature of the far 
northwest. This river, including its 
tributary the Peace, has a length of 
perhaps 2500 miles, and drains an area 
of 550,000 sq. miles, or almost double 
that of the St. Lawrence basin. Be¬ 
tween the Mackenzie system and 
Hudson Bay is a great region called 
from its desolate character the Barren 
Grounds. 

Canada has great mineral wealth. 
Iron of the best quality has been found 
in great abundance in Quebec, Ontario, 
and British Columbia. The district 
round Lake Superior and the upper 
part of Lake Huron abounds in copper 
and has much silver as well; and Nova 


Scotia, Assiniboia, Alberta, and British 
Columbia are rich in coal. In Nova 
Scotia there are a number of coal-mines 
worked; gold is also obtained in some 
quantity, as well as iron. Coal is worked 
in the northwest, and more extensively 
in British Columbia; but the most 
valuable mineral of the latter is gold. 
British Columbia is very rich in iron. 
Gold is also found in the Klondike 
region, near Alaska. 

The chief wild animals (some of them 
represented by several species) are the 
deer, buffalo, musk-ox, bear, wolf, fox, 
otter, beaver, squirrel, raccoon, musk¬ 
rat, marten, etc. The buffalo is now 
scarce, and will probably soon be exter¬ 
minated. The largest of the deer kind 
is the moose, or elk, which is found in 
New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the 
northern parts of Quebec, as well as in 
the far west and northwest. The rein¬ 
deer occurs in the north. The grizzly 
bear is met with in the Rocky Moun¬ 
tains, and the polar bear in the extreme 
north and northeast. Fur-bearing ani¬ 
mals are so numerous as to have been 
a source of revenue to a large trading 
company like the Hudson Bay Co., for 
over two centuries. There are birds in 
great variety, Canada having more than 
700 of these altogether. They include 
the wild swan, wild turkey, geese and 
ducks of various kinds, partridges, quail, 
prairie-fowl, pigeon, woodcock, snipe, 
plover, etc.; besides eagles, hawks, owls, 
and many smaller birds, among which 
are two species of humming-bird. Ex¬ 
cept at certain seasons game of all kinds 
may be shot at will. The rattle-snake 
and other snakes occur, but are less 
common than in the States. The seas, 
lakes, and rivers, especially the Gulf of 
St. Lawrence and the neighboring 
waters, abound in almost all kinds of 
fish, and the fisheries are extremely 
valuable, employing over 250,000 
people. The chief sea fish caught are 
cod, herring, mackerel, halibut, had¬ 
dock, hake, shad, salmon, etc. The 
rivers and lakes abound with salmon, 
white-fish, bass, trout, sturgeon, maski- 
nonge (or maskelonge), pike, pickerel, 
etc. The seal and whale fisheries are 
also valuable. Lobsters and oysters 
are abundant and excellent. 

In the forests grow more than sixty 
kinds of trees. 

Generally the climate of the Dominion 
shows considerable extremes of heat and 
cold, but, except in some of the coast 
regions, the exceeding dryness of the 
Canadian atmosphere makes both 
extremes of temperature pleasant and 
healthy. 

The chief crops are wheat, barley, 
oats, rye, pease, maize, buckwheat, 
potatoes, turnips, mangel-wurzel, etc. 
The breeds of cattle are now being 
much improved, partly by the intro¬ 
duction of high-class cattle; and cattle, 
horses, and sheep are exported. 

The trade of the Dominion is chiefly 
with Great Britain and the United 
States. About four-fifths of the whole 
exports are sent to these two countries, 
while nearly nine-tenths of the imports 
come from them. Besides timber, 
animals and their produce, and agri¬ 
cultural products, the chief articles of 
export are fish, coal and other minerals, 




CANADA BALSAM 


CANAL 


leather, and wooden goods. The im¬ 
ports chiefly consist of manufactured 
goods, coal, iron, tea, coffee, sugar, 
cotton, etc. Canada grain and flour, 
timber, cattle, bacon and hams, cheese, 
butter, furs, and fish are exported to 
Great Britain and U. States. 

Of the railways the greatest is the 
Canadian Pacific Railway, running 
from Montreal across the whole con¬ 
tinent to Vancouver on the Pacific 
coast in British Columbia; length, about 
2900 miles, exclusive of branches. The 
Grand Trunk Railway connects the 
maritime provinces and the North¬ 
eastern U. States with the western rail¬ 
ways, running from Portland, Maine, to 
Sarnia on the Detroit River. 

Some of the canals are stupendous 
achievements. The most important, 
from a commercial point of view, are the 
St. Lawrence Canals and the Welland 
Canal. The last Canadian canal neces¬ 
sary to complete the navigation of the 
St. Lawrence to Lake Superior is St. 
Mary’s Canal, opened in 1895, avoiding 
the St, Mary rapids (Sault Ste. Marie), a 
tumultuous descent by which Lake 
Superior pours its waters into Lake 
Huron. Next after those mentioned, 
the most important of the Canadian 
canals is the series of locks and short 
artificial connections known as the 
Rideau Canal. It connects Lake Ontario 
at Kingston with the Ottawa near the 
city of that name. By means of these 
works large vessels can now sail by the 
St. Lawrence route from the Atlantic 
to the head of Lake Superior. 

By the Act of Confederation of 1867 
the constitution of the Dominion was 
required to be similar in principle to 
that of the United Kingdom. There is 
a central federal government and 
separate provincial governments and 
legislatures. The central executive 
government is vested in the sovereign 
of Great Britain and Ireland, and is 
carried on in his name by a governor 
general appointed by the crown, and a 
rivy-council. The governor-general 
as a salary of $50,000 per annum. He 
is assisted by a privy-council consisting 
of the prime-minister and twelve other 
ministers or heads of departments. The 
legislative authority rests with a Par¬ 
liament consisting of two houses, the 
Senate and the House of Commons. 
The Senate consists of eighty-one mem¬ 
bers, nominated by the governor-general. 
The House of Commons is elected by the 
people for five years, there being one 
member for about every 22,000 of the 
population. Each of the provinces has 
a separate parliament and administra¬ 
tion, independent in its own sphere, 
at the head being a lieutenant-governor 
appointed by the central government. 
The provinces of Quebec and Nova 
Scotia have each two chambers; the 
other provinces have only one There 
is also a very perfect system of municipal 
government throughout the Dominion, 
the counties and townships having 
local governments or councils which 
regulate their local taxation. The ad¬ 
ministration of justice is based on the 
English model, except in Quebec prov¬ 
ince, where the old French law prevails. 
The only court that has jurisdiction 
throughout the Dominion (except the 


Exchequer and the Maritime Court), is 
the Supreme Court, the ultimate court 
of appeal in civil and criminal cases. 
In certain cases an appeal may be had 
to his Majesty’s Privy Council. The 
capital of the Dominion is Ottawa, but 
the largest cities are Montreal, Toronto, 
and Quebec. Canada has both a large 
volunteer force and a militia. The 
former comprises many well-equipped 
organizations in infantry, cavalry, and 
artillery. A military college for the 
training of officers is maintained by the 
Dominion government at Kingston. 

There is no state church in the 
Dominion. The prevailing religion in 
Quebec is that of the Roman Catholic 
Church. In Ontario Methodists pre¬ 
dominate, then Presbyterians, the Eng¬ 
lish Church, and the Roman Catholics. 
Of the total population in 1901,2,229,600 
were Roman Catholics, 916,886 Metho¬ 
dists, 842,442 Presbyterians, 680,620 
Anglicans. Education is well attended 
to, being everywhere more or less under 
the supervision of government, and 
excellent free schools being provided. 

The population is increasing rapidly 
both naturally and by means of immi¬ 
gration. Ontario is settled principally 
by emigrants from Great Britain and 
their descendants, with considerable 
numbers of Germans and Americans. 
In the province of Quebec the people 
are mostly French in origin, speech, and 
customs, being mainly descendants of 
the French colonists who inhabited the 
region before it became British. There 
are, besides, the Indian tribes and the 
Eskimos, the latter in the extreme 
north. The Indians number about 
130,000. Population about 6,000,000. 

CANADA BALSAM, a fluid oleo-resin 
obtained from the balsam-fir common in 
Canada and the U. States, and also from 
Fraser’s balsam-fir and the hemlock 
spruce. It is used in medicine and in 
making varnishes, etc. 

CANADA GOOSE, an American wild 
goose 30 to 35 inches long, brownish 
above, lighter below, head, neck, bill, 



Canada goose, or wild goose. 


and feet black, a white patch on the 
cheek; breeds in the north of the con¬ 
tinent, and migrates southward when 
the frost becomes severe. 


CANADA HEMP, a perennial herb, 

of the dogbane family, native of N. 
America. It has a strong fiber used for 
twine, nets, woven fabrics, etc. 

CANADA RICE, a floating grass grow¬ 
ing in lakes and sluggish streams in 
Canada and the northern U. States, 
yielding a grain that forms part of the 
food of the Indians, and is eaten by 
whites also. 

CANAL, an artificial water-course for 
the transportation of goods or passen¬ 
gers by boats or ships, or for purposes 
of drainage or irrigation. The canals 
most familiar to ordinary readers are for 
navigation. These consist usually of a 
number of different sections, each on one 
level throughout its course, but differing 
in relative height from the others. From 
one section to another boats are trans¬ 
ferred by means of locks, or it may be by 
inclines or lifts. The lock is a water¬ 
tight inclosure with gates at either end, 
constructed between two successive 
sections of a canal. When a vessel is 
descending, water is let into the lock 
till it is on a level with the higher water, 
and thus permits the vessel to enter; 
the upper gates are then closed, and by 
the lower gates being gradually opened, 
the water in the lock falls to the level of 
the lower water, and the vessel passes 
out. In ascending the operation is 
reversed. The incline conveys the 
vessel from one reach to another, gen¬ 
erally on a specially-constructed carriage 
running on rails, by means of drums 
and cables. The lift consists of two 
counterbalancing troughs, one going 
up as the other descends, carrying the 
vessel from the higher to the lower level, 
or vice versa. Works of great magni¬ 
tude in the way of cuttings, embank¬ 
ments, aqueducts, bridges, tunnels, 
reservoirs for water-supply, etc., are 
often necessary in constructing canals. 
Canals have been known from remote 
times, Egypt being intersected at an 
early period by canals branching off 
from the Nile to distant parts of the 
country, for purposes of irrigation and 
navigation. 

The chief canal in Germany is the 
great North Sea and Baltic Canal for 
sea-going vessels, constructed at a cost 
of $40,000,000, starting near the mouth 
of the Elbe and reaching the Baltic near 
Kiel. The greatest British canal is the 
Manchester Canal, a waterway for 
ocean-going vesesls from the estuary of 
the Mersey, near Runcorn, to Man¬ 
chester, through a few locks and partly 
in the beds of the Mersey and the Irwell, 
begun in 1887, opened in 1894; total 
cost, about $75,000,000. In the U. 
States the most extensive undertakings 
of this kind are the canal connecting the 
Hudson with Lake Erie and the Chicago 
drainage canal. In Canada, besides the 
Welland Canal, uniting Lakes Erie and 
Ontario, and avoiding the Niagara river 
and its falls, there are several other 
important canals. As yet the greatest 
achievement in canal-making has been 
the Suez Canal. It is an example of a 
ship-canal without locks, open at both 
ends to the sea. A similar but much 
smaller canal is that of Corinth. Two 
great American canals, the Panama 
Canal and the Nicaragua Canal—the 
one of very different character from the 














CANAL 














































CANAL 


CANEBRAKE 


other—remain as yet uncompleted. 
See separate articles. 

CANAL, Chicago drainage, for the re¬ 
moval of Chicago’s sewage was begun 
Sept. 3,1892, and opened Jan. 2, 1900. 
Some sections are excavated in solid 
rock, are 160 ft. wide, with perpendicu¬ 
lar walls, and 30 to 35 ft. deep. Where 
it is full earth-cut the bottom of the 
channel is 202 ft. wide. The full length 
of the channel is 28)4 mi. Its capacity 
per minute is 600,000 cubic ft; maxi¬ 
mum velocity of current per hour, 3 mi.; 
length of spillway, 397 ft. The total 
cost of construction was about 
$33,000,000. 

CAN'ARA, a maritime region of Hin¬ 
dustan, now partly in the Madras 
presidency (south Canara), and partly 
in the Bombay presidency (north 
Canara), extending along the Indian 
Ocean for 180 miles, with a mean 
breadth of 40 miles. The Bombay portion 
has an area of 3910 sq. miles and a pop. 
of 446,351; the Madras portion 3902 sq. 
miles and 1,056,081 inhabitants. 

CANA'RY, a wine not unlike Madeira, 
made in the Canary Islands, chiefly at 
Teneriffe. 

CANARY-BIRD, an insessorial sing¬ 
ing bird, a kind of finch from the Canary 
Islands. Many of the cage canaries are 
really mules, produced by the inter¬ 
breeding of canaries with allied spe¬ 
cies, such as the goldfinch, siskin, lin¬ 
net, etc. 

CANARY, GRAND, or GRAN CANA¬ 
RIA, an island in the Atlantic Ocean, 
about 180 miles from the coast of Africa. 
It is the most fertile and important of 
the Canary Islands, to which it gives 
name. Area, 650 sq. miles; pop. 93,653. 
Canary, or Cividad de Palmas, is the 
capital. 

CANA'RY ISLANDS, or CANARIES, a 

cluster of islands in the Atlantic, 60 or 
70 miles from the n.w. coast of Africa, 
and belonging to Spain. They are 
thirteen in number, seven of which are 
considerable, viz.: Palma, Ferro, Gom- 
era, Teneriffe, Grand Canary, Fuer- 
teventura, and Lancerota. The other 
six are very small: Graciosa, Roca or 
Rocca, Allegranza, Sta. Clara, Inferno, 
and Lobos. All are volcanic, rugged 
and mountainous, frequently presenting 
precipitous cliffs to the sea. The prin¬ 
cipal peak is that of Teneriffe, 12,182 
feet; El Cumbre in Gran Canaria is 6650 
feet. The area of the whole has been 
estimated at 2808 sq. miles. Their fine 
climate and their fertility, which owes 
little to cultivation, justified their 
ancient name of Fortunate Islands. 
The Canaries form a Spanish province; 
pop. 358,564. 

CANARY-SEED, the seed of the 
canary-grass, order Graminacese, is used 
as food in the Canaries, Barbary, and 
Italy, and is largely collected for canary- 
birds. 

CANA'RY-WOOD, the light orange- 
colored wood of trees of the laurel family 
belonging to the Canaries and Madeira. 

CANBY, Edward Richard Sprigg, an 
American soldier, born in Kentucky 
in 1819, died in 1873. He graduated 
at West Point, served in the Indian and 
Mexican wars, and during the civil 
war repelled the attacks of Sibley on 
New Mexico. In 1873 he was killed by 


the treachery of the Modoc Indians in 
Oregon. 

CANCER, in astronomy, the fourth 
sign in the zodiac, entered by the sun on 
or about the 21st of June, and quitted 
about the 22d of July. The constellation 
Cancer is no longer in the sign of Cancer, 
but at present occupies the place of the 
sign Leo. 

CANCER, or CARCINO'MA, a malig¬ 
nant growth or structure in some part 
of the human body, which can extend 
itself and spread to neighboring parts, 
and even form again after removal, and 
usually causes death. Cancer is often a 
very painful disease, but in many cases 
is not attended with pain. No cure for 
it can be said to exist, though excision, 
if performed in time, may not be fol¬ 
lowed by a recurrence. 

CANCER, Tropic of. See Tropics. 

CANDAHAR. See Kandahar. 

CANDELA'BRUM, an ornamental 
candlestick or lamp-holder, often of a 
branched form. Ancient candelabra 
frequently display much ingenious treat¬ 
ment in the design, presenting columns, 
figures, etc., and the branches from the 
central shaft were often numerous. In 
ancient times Tarentum and Atgina 
were famous for their elegant candela¬ 
bra. Marble, earthenware, and other 
materials, as well as metal, were em¬ 
ployed in their structure, which was 
sometimes on a large scale. 

CAN'DIA, one of the most important 
islands of the Turkish Empire, situated 
in the Mediterranean, 81 miles from 
the southern extremity of the Morea and 
230 miles from the African coast, 160 
miles long, 14 to 50 broad; area, 4026 
sq. miles. The inhabitants (estimated 
at 1,200,000 in ancient times) now num¬ 
ber about 309,349, of whom 269,246 
are Greek Christians (rapidly increas¬ 
ing), and 38,281 Mahometans. The cap¬ 
ital, Canea, the seat of the governor 
and chief place of trade, has 24,537 in¬ 
habitants; Candia, 22,774. 

CAN'DIDATE, a term taken from the 
Latin candidatus, a candidate, literally 
a person dressed in white, because, 
among the Romans, a man who solicited 
an office, such as the praetorship or con¬ 
sulship, appeared in a bright white 
garment—toga Candida. 

CANDLE, a solid cylindrical rod of 
some fatty substance, with a small 
bundle of loosely-twisted threads placed 
longitudinally in its center, used for a 
portable light. The chief material used 
for making candles is tallow, either in a 
pure state or in mixture with other fatty 
substances, as palm-oil, spermaceti, 
wax, etc: Paraffin candles are now 
made in considerable quantities also. 
Ordinarily tallow candles are either 
dipped or moulded. The former, gen¬ 
erally composed of the coarser tallow, 
are made by attaching a number of 
separate wicks to a frame and dipping 
the whole into a cistern of melted tallow 
as often as may be necessary to give 
the candle the required thickness. 
Moulded candles, as their name implies, 
are formed in moulds. These, made 
generally of pewter, are hollow cylinders 
of the length of the candle, and open at 
both ends, but provided at the upper 
end with a conical cap, in which there is 
a hole for the wick. A number of these 


moulds are inserted in a wooden frame 
or trough with their heads downward; 
the wick is then drawn in through the 
top hole by means of a wire, and kept 
stretched while the moulds are filled by 
running melted tallow from a boiler into 
the trough. Considerable modern im¬ 
provements have been made in the 
I manufacture of candles. One of the 
most important of these consists in not 
employing the whole of the fatty or oily 
substances, but in decomposing them, 
and then using only the stearine of the 
former and the palmitine of the latter 
class of substances. Wax cannot be 
formed into candles by melting it and 
then running it into moulds. Instead, 
the wicks, properly cut and twisted, are 
suspended by a ring over a basin of 
liquid wax, which is poured on the tops 
of the wicks until a sufficient thickness 
is obtained, when the candles, still hot, 
are placed on a smooth walnut table, 
kept constantly wet, and rolled upon it 
by means of a flat piece of boxwood. 
The large wax candles used in Roman 
Catholic churches are merely plates of 
wax bent round a wick and then rolled. 

CANDLEBERRY, Candleberry Myrtle, 
Wax Myrtle, etc., a shrub growing from 
4 to 18 feet high, and common in N. 
America, where candles are made from 
its drupes or berries, which are about the 



Candleberry or wax myrtle. 


size of peppercorns, and covered with a 
greenish-white wax popularly known as 
Blayberry tallow. The wax is collected 
by boiling the drupes in water and skim¬ 
ming off the surface. A bushel of berries 
yields from 4 to 5 lbs. of wax. 

CANDLE-FISH, a sea-fish of the 
salmon family, frequenting the north¬ 
western shores of America, of about the 
size of the smelt. It is converted by the 
Indians into a candle simply by passing 
the pith of a rush or a strip of the bark 
of the cypress-tree through it as a wick, 
when its extreme oiliness keeps the 
wick blazing. 

CAN'DLEMAS, a church feast, in¬ 
stituted in 492 in commemoration of the 
presentation of Christ in the temple and 
of the purification of Mary. It falls on 
February 2, and on this day among 
Roman Catholics lighted candles are 
carried about in procession, and all 
candles and tapers which are to be used 
in the churches during the entire year 
are consecrated. 

CANE. See Bamboo, Rattan, Sugar¬ 
cane. 

CANEBRAKE, a reed or grass, in¬ 
digenous to the warmer parts of the U. 
States. It grows in marshy situations, 






CANEPHORUS 


CANOE 


where it attains a height of 10 to 30 
feet. It is of a genus allied to the 
bamboo. The flowers are in panicles. 
The young growth of this cane is used 
as fodder, but the quality is rather poor. 
The stems supply fishing-rods, pipe- 
stems, splints for baskets, chair-bottoms, 
mats, etc. 

CANE'PHORUS, one of the bearers of 
the baskets containing the implements 
of sacrifice in the processions of the 
Dionysia, Panathenea, and other ancient 
Grecian festivals an office of honor 



Canephorus, from terra cotta in British 
Museum. 

much coveted by the virgins of antiq¬ 
uity; The term is applied to archi¬ 
tectural figures bearing baskets on 
their head, sometimes improperly con¬ 
founded with Caryatides. 

CAN'IDjE, the dog family of animals. 

CANIS MAJOR, a constellation of the 
southern hemisphere, remarkable as 
containing Sirius, the brightest star.— 
Ganis Minor, is a constellation in 
the northern hemisphere, immediately 
above Canis Major, the chief star in 
which is Procyon 

CANISTER SHOT. Same as Case- 
shot. 

CANKER, (1) in medicine, a collection 
of small sloughing ulcers in the mouth, 
especially of children; called also water 
canker. (2) In horticulture, a kind of 
grangrenous disease to which fruit-trees 
especially are liable, beginning in the 
younger shoots and gradually extending 
to the trunk. (3) In farriery, a disease 
in horses’ feet causing a discharge of 
fetid matter from the cleft in the middle 
of the frog, generally originating in a 
diseased thrush. 

CANKER-WORM, a worm or larva 
destructive to trees or plants; in Amer¬ 
ica specifically applied to moths. 

CANNA, a genus of plants, order 
Marantacese, some species of which have 
fine flowers, and some from their black, 
hard, heavy seeds are called Indian shot. 

CANNEL COAL. See Coal. 

CANNES (kan), a seaport of France, 
on the shore of the Mediterranean, dep. 
Alpes-Maritimes; famous as a winter 
residence, and as the place where Na¬ 
poleon landed when he returned from 
Elba, March 1, 1815. Pop. 34,151. 

CANNIBALISM, or ANTHROPOPH¬ 
AGY, the eating of human flesh as 
food, a practice that has been known 
from the earliest times, and in the most 
widely spread localities. See Anthro¬ 
pophagi. 


CANNING, Charles John, Earl, son of 
George Canning, born in 1812; educated 
at Eton and Oxford, and in 1856 went 
out to India as governor-general. 
Throughout the mutiny he showed a 
fine coolness and clear-headedness, and 
though his carefully-pondered decisions 
were sometimes lacking in promptness, 
yet his admirable moderation did much 
to re-establish the British Empire in 
India. He was raised to the rank of 
earl and made viceroy, but returned 
to England with shattered health in 
1862, dying in the same year.—CAN¬ 
NING, George, a distinguished orator 
and statesman, born in London in 1770; 
educated at Eton and at Oxford. He 



George Canning. 


was first brought into parliament by 
Pitt in 1793, and in 1796 became under¬ 
secretary of state. In 1814 he was ap¬ 
pointed minister to Portugal, and re¬ 
mained abroad about two years. He 
refused to take any part in the proceed¬ 
ings against the queen, and in 1822, 
having been nominated governor-gen¬ 
eral of India, he was on the point of 
embarking when the death of Castlereagh 
called him to the cabinet as foreign 
secretary. — CANNING, Stratford, Vis¬ 
count Stratford de Redcliffe, an Eng¬ 
lish diplomatist, son of a London 
merchant and cousin of George Canning, 
born in 1788. He retired from diplo¬ 
matic work in 1858, but exercised no 
small influence in the House of Lords, 
and as late as 1880 drew up a paper on 
the Greek claims. He died in the August 
of that year, having done more than 
any one man to establish British prestige 
in the East. 

CANNON, a big gun or piece of ord¬ 
nance. The precise period at which 
engines for projecting missiles by 
mechanical force (catapults, etc.) were 
supplanted by those utilizing explosive 
materials is a matter of controversy, the 
invention of cannon being even attri¬ 
buted to the Chinese, from whom the 
Saracens may have acquired the knowl¬ 
edge. A doubtful authority asserts 
their use at the siege of Belgrade in 
1073; but they were certainly brought 
into use in France as early as 1338. 

Great improvements and changes in 
the manufacture of cannon have been 
introduced in recent times. Those that 
are now made of bronze have often 
their bore widened by strong cylinders 
of steel successively forced into them, 
a process which condenses and hardens 
the surrounding bronze, giving it a 
tenacity approaching that of cast-steel. 


The heavy guns of the British service, 
made on the “Woolwich” system, 
have a steel tube to form the bore, over 
which are shrunk coils of wrought iron, 
increasing in thickness about the breech. 
This method of manufacture was first in¬ 
troduced by Sir W. (later Lord) Arm¬ 
strong about 1858. This construction 
presents the hard steel to meet the wear 
and tear on the bore of the gun, while 
great support is given by shrinking on 
the wrought-iron hoops, which contract 
with a tight grip upon the steel. In 
the U. States enormous cast - iron 
smooth-bore guns have been made on 
the Rodman system ( throwing very 
heavy spherical projectiles at a low 
velocity, intended by their great weight 
to bend and open armor at the joints, 
thus destroying the vessel by what is 
termed “racking.” But the common 
system is to punch holes in the armor 
by means of rather smaller projectiles, 
made of chilled iron, which strike at a 
high velocity, and the range and pene¬ 
tration of modern ordnance are some¬ 
thing enormous. Thus some of the 
larger guns are sighted for 5 miles, and 
they can penetrate 30 inches of armor 
at the distance of 1000 yards. Eighty- 
ton, 100-ton, and 110-ton guns have 
been constructed for the navy and land 
defenses. 

Rifled cannon load either at the 
muzzle or breech. The former system 
is simpler and stronger. The latter 
facilitates loading and exposes the 
gunners less to the fire of the enemy’s 
riflemen, especially when the gun is 
firing through a ship’s port or the em¬ 
brasure of a fort. The projectiles for 
rifled guns are not spherical, but elon¬ 
gated, their length being perhaps 2£ or 
3 times their diameter; and they re¬ 
quire to be so constructed that they 
may take hold of the grooves of the 
bore and thus get the required rotation 
to send them at a high speed point 
first through the air. For this purpose 
they used to have rows of studs pro¬ 
jecting and fitting into the grooves, 
or a coating of lead, which served the 
same purpose; but the projectile now 
usually has a flanged copper disc fitted 
on to the base, and the pressure of the 
gas when the charge is exploded forces 
out the flanges into the grooves. Among 
recent improvements may be mentioned 
the use of a “powder chamber” of 
greater diameter than the rest of the 
bore, and the adoption of an increased 
twist in the rifling instead of a uniform 
one. Guns for firing charges of dyna¬ 
mite or other powerful explosive have 
recently been experimented with. See 
also Gun-carriage, Artillery, Mortar, 
Howitzer, Machine Gun, Shell, etc. 

CANNON, Joseph G., an American 
politician and congressman, born at 
Guilford, N. C., in 1836. He removed 
to Illinois and from 1873 to 1906 has 
been successively elected to the con¬ 
gresses between those years. He was 
elected speaker of the house of repre¬ 
sentatives in 1903. 

CANOE (ka-no'), a light boat narrow 
in the beam, and adapted to be pro¬ 
pelled by paddles, often in conjunction 
with sails. The name was originally 
given to the boats of uncivilized races, 
but its application has been consider- 























CANON 


CANTILEVER 


ably extended, and canoes of home 
make may be seen on the waters of the 
most civilized countries. They are of 
the most diverse materials and con¬ 
struction. Often they are hollowed 
out of a single log. The Indian canoes 
are of bark on a wooden frame. The 
Eskimo kaiaks consist of a light 
wooden frame, covered with seal-sluns 
sewed together with sinews, and having 
only one opening to admit the boatman 
to his seat. In the islands of the Pacific 
the natives have double canoes, united 
by a strong platform, serving in this 
way as one vessel. 

CAN'ON, a term given collectively to 
the books of the Holy Scriptures uni¬ 
versally received as genuine by Chris¬ 
tian churches. See Bible, Apocrypha. 

CAN'ON, a church dignitary who 
possesses a prebend, or revenue allotted 
for the performance of divine service in a 
cathedral or collegiate church. 

CANON (kan-yon'), the Spanish word 
for tube, funnel, cannon; applied by 
the Spanish Americans, and hence in 
N. America generally (often with the 
spelling Canyon), to long and narrow 
river gorges or deep ravines with pre¬ 
cipitous and almost perpendicular sides 
occurring frequently in the Rocky 
Mountains, the Sierra Nevada, and great 
western plateaux of N. America. 

CANONICAL BOOKS, the books of 
Scripture belonging to the canon. See 
Canon. 

CANONICAL HOURS, certain stated 
times of the day appropriated by ecclesi¬ 
astical law to the offices of prayer and 
devotion in the Roman Catholic Church, 
viz.: matins with lauds, prime, tierce, 
sext, nones, evensong or vespers, and 
compline. 

CANONICALS, the dress or vestments 
of the clergy. 

CANONIZATION, a ceremony in the 
Roman Church, by which deceased per¬ 
sons are declared saints. The pope in¬ 
stitutes a formal investigation of the 
miraculous and other qualifications of 
the deceased person recommended for 
canonization; and an advocate of the 
devil, as he is called, is appointed to op¬ 
pose the canonization and submit evi¬ 
dence. If the examination is satisfac¬ 
tory, the pope pronounces the beatifica¬ 
tion of the candidate, the actual canon¬ 
ization generally taking place some 
years afterward, when a day is dedicated 
to his honor, his name inserted in the 
calendar of the Saints, a solemn mass is 
celebrated by the pope, and his remains 
preserved as holy relics. 

CANON LAW, a collection of eccle¬ 
siastical constitutions for the regulation 
of the Church of Rome, consisting for 
the most part of ordinances of general 
and provincial councils, decrees promul¬ 
gated by the popes with the sanction of 
the cardinals, and decretal epistles and 
bulls of the popes. There is also a 
canon law for the regulation of the 
Church of England, which under certain 
restrictions is used in ecclesiastical 
courts and in the courts of the two uni- 
vsrsitiGs 

CAN'OPY, a raised and ornamental 
covering above a throne, a bed, or the 
like; in architecture, a decorative struc¬ 
ture serving as a hood or cover above an 
altar, pulpit, niche, etc. 


CANO'VA, Antonio, an Italian sculp¬ 
tor, born in 1757 at Possagno, in Vene¬ 
tian territory. He was first an appren¬ 
tice to a statuary in Bassano, from whom 
he went to the Academy of Venice, 
where he had a brilliant career. In 
1779 he was sent by the senate of Venice 
to Rome with a salary of 300 ducats, and 
there produced his Theseus and the 
Slain Minotaur. In 1783 Canova under¬ 
took the execution of the tomb of Pope 
Clement XIV. in the Church of the 
Apostles, a work in the Bernini manner, 
and inferior to his second public monu¬ 
ment the tomb of Pope Clement XIII. 
(1792) in St. Peter’s. From 1783 his 
fame rapidly increased. He established 
a school for the benefit of young Vene¬ 
tians, and among other works produced 
his group of Venus and Adonis, the 
Psyche and Butterfly, a Repentant 
Magdalene, the well-known Hebe, the 
colossal Hercules hurling Lichas into the 
Sea, the Pugilists, and the group of 
Cupid and Psyche. In 1796 and 1797 
Canova finished the model of the cele¬ 
brated tomb of the Archduchess Chris¬ 
tina of Austria, and in 1797 made the 
colossal model of a statue of the King of 
Naples executed in marble in 1803. 
He afterwards executed in Rome his 
Perseus with the Head of Medusa, 
which, when the Belvidere Apollo was 
carried to France, was thought not un¬ 
worthy of its place and pedestal. In 
1802 he was invited by Bonaparte to 
Paris to make the model of his colossal 
statue. Among the later works of the 
artist are a colossal Washington, the 
tombs of the Cardinal of York and of 
Pius VII.; a Venus Rising from the 
Bath; the colossal group of Theseus 
Killin g the Minotaur; the tomb of 
Alfieri; the Graces Rising from the 
Bath; a Dancing Girl; a colossal Hector; 
a Paris, etc. After the second fall of 
Napoleon, in 1815, Canova was com¬ 
missioned by the pope to demand the 
restoration of the works of art carried 
from Rome. He went from Paris to 
London, and returned to Rome in 1816, 
where he was made Marquis of Ischia, 
with a pension of 3000 scudi. He died at 
Venice, Oct. 13, 1822. 

CANROBERT (kan-ro-bar), Fran?ois 
Certain, French marshal, born 1809. 
He commanded in the Crimean war 
under St. Arnaud, and after his death 
received the chief command, but could 
not work in harmony with the British 
and made way for Pclissier. In the 
Italian war (1859) he commanded the 
3d division, and distinguished himself 
at Magenta. In the Franco-German 
war he belonged to the force that was 
shut up in Metz and had to capitulate. 
He was latterly a French senator. He 
died in 1895. 

CANTAL', a central department in 
France, area 2217 sq. miles; capital, 
Aurillac. This department, formerly 
part of Upper Auvergne, is named from 
its highest mountain, the Plomb du 
Cantal, 6094 feet in height. The prin¬ 
cipal crops are rye, buckwheat, potatoes, 
and chestnuts, hemp and flax. Cattle, 
sheep, pigs, horses, and mules are 
reared in large numbers. Large quan¬ 
tities of cheese (“Auvergne cheese”) are 
made. Hot mineral springs are abund¬ 
ant. Pop. 241,742. 


CAN'TALIVER, Cantilever, a wooden 
or iron block framed into the wall of a 
house and projecting from it to carry 
mouldings, eaves, balconies, etc. Also 
a large projecting framework forming 
part of an iron bridge directly carrying 
part of the roadway, and also supporting 
beams or girders bridging over a space 
between it and another similar structure. 

CANTALOUPE (-lop), a small round 
variety of musk-melon, globular, ribbed, 
of pale green or yellow color, and of 
delicate flavor; first grown in Europe at 
the castle of Cantaloupe. 

CANTATA (kan-ta'ta), a vocal com¬ 
position, consisting of an intermixture 
of air, recitative, duet, trio, quartette, 
and chorus, often taking the form of a 
short oratorio or unacted opera. 

CANTEEN', in military language, a 
regimental establishment managed by a 
committee of officers, for the sale of 
liquors, tobacco, groceries, etc., to the 
soldiers at reasonable prices. The 
profits are employed for the benefit of 
the soldiers themselves. 

CANTERBURY, a city, and pari., 
mun., and county borough of England, 
in Kent, 55 miles s.e. of London, giving 
name to an archiepiscopal see, the 
occupant of which is primate of all 
England. The foundation of the archi¬ 
episcopal see took place soon after the 
arrival of St. Augustine in 596. In the 
8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th centuries the 
city was dreadfully ravaged by the 
Danes, but at the Conquest its build¬ 
ings exceeded in extent those of London. 
The ecclesiastical importance of the 
place was consummated by the murder 
of Thomas a Becket in the cathedral, 
the priory and see benefiting by the 
offerings of devotees and pilgrims at his 
shrine. Henry VIII. dissolved the 
priory in 1539, and ordered the bones 
of Becket to be burned; and the troopers 
of Oliver Cromwell made a stable of the 
cathedral.—The cathedral, one of the 
finest ecclesiastical structures in Eng¬ 
land, 530 feet in length and 154 in 
breadth, has been built in different ages, 
the oldest part dating from about 1174. 
The great tower, 235 feet in height, is a 
splendid specimen of the Pointed style. 
Other ecclesiastical buildings are St. 
Augustine’s monastery, now a Church 
missionary college, St. Margaret’s 
Church, and the church dedicated to 
St. Martin, believed to be one of the 
oldest existing Christian churches. Can¬ 
terbury has a royal grammar-school, 
founded by Henry VIII., numerous 
other schools, art gallery, etc. There 
are breweries and malting establish¬ 
ments; and the principal articles of 
trade are corn and hops. There are 
extensive barracks for cavalry and 
infantry. It returns one member to 
parliament. Pop. 24,868. 

CANTERBURY, a district occupying 
most of the center of South Island, New 
Zealand, with a coast Tine of 200 miles, 
and a greatest breadth of about 150 
miles. The western part is traversed 
by mountains, from which a fertile 
plain of 2,500,000 acres slopes gradually 
down to the sea. The chief places in the 
province are Christchurch, the capital; 
and Lyttelton, the port town, 8 miles 
from Christchurch. Pop. 143,040. 

CANTILEVER. See Cantaliver. 




CANTON 


CAPE COLONY 


CAN'TON, a large and important city 
of Southern China, 80 miles from the sea, 
on the Pearl River, in the province of 
Quangtung (of which name Canton is a 
corruption). The city proper is enclosed 
by walls 25 feet high and 20 feet thick, 



forming a circuit of six miles, with 12 
gates; and it is divided into two parts 
by a wall running east and west; the 
larger portion north of this wall being 
called the old, that on the south of it the 
new city. The streets are long, straight, 
and in general paved, but very narrow, 
and gaudy with painted signs. The 
houses of the poorer classes are mere 
mud hovels; those of the shop-keeping 
class are commonly of two stories, the 
lower serving as the shop. The foreign 
mercantile houses, and the British, 
French, and American consulates, have 
as their special quarter an area in the 
suburbs in the southwest of the city, 
with water on two sides of it. In the 
European quarter are churches, schools, 
and other buildings in the European 
style. The river opposite the city for 
the space of four or five miles is crowded 
with boats, a large number of which— 
as many it is said as 40,000—are fixed 
residences, containing a population of 
200,000. The industries of Canton are 
varied and important, embracing silk, 
cotton, porcelain, glass, paper, sugar, 
lacquered ware, ivory carving, metal 
goods, etc. It was the chief foreign 
emporium in China until 1850, when 
Shanghai began to surpass and other 
ports to compete with it but it exports 
and imports together often still amount 
to about $40,000,000. Since the estab¬ 
lishment of the colony of Hong-Kong a 
flotilla of river steamers ply daily be¬ 
tween Canton, Hong-Kong, and Macao. 
In 1856 the foreign factories were pil¬ 
laged and destroyed by the Chinese, and 
about a year after this Canton was taken 
by an English force, and occupied by an 
English and French garrison until 1861. 
Pop. estimated at over 1,600,000. 

CANTON, a city and county-seat of 
Stark Co., Ohio, 60 miles south-south- 
east of Cleveland, on the Nimishillen 
Creek, and on the Cleveland, Canton & 
Southern, the Baltimore & Ohio, and 
the Pennsylvania railroads. Pop. 36,140. 

CANUCK, in the U. States, a term 
used to designate a Canadian. In 
Canada it is applied to French Canadians. 
It is thought by some to have an Indian 
origin, by others to be a corruption of 
Connaught. 

CANUTE, or CNUT (ka-nut', knut), 
King of England and Denmark, suc¬ 


ceeded his father Swegen or Sweyn on 
his death in England in 1014 a.d., and 
confirmed the Danish power in England. 
He began by devastating the eastern 
coast, and extended his ravages in the 
south, where, however, he failed to 
establish himself until after the assas¬ 
sination of Edmund Ironside, when he 
was accepted king of the whole of Eng¬ 
land (1017). Canute, who began his 
reign with barbarity and crime, after¬ 
ward became a humane and wise mon¬ 
arch. He restored the English customs 
at a general assembly, and ensured to 
the Danes and English equal rights and 
equal protection of person and property, 
and even preferred English subjects to 
the most important posts. His power 
was confirmed by his marriage with 
Emma, Ethelred’s widow. At Harold’s 
death in 1018 he gained Denmark; in 
1028 he conquered Norway; and in 1031 
he made Malcolm of Scotland admit his 
superiority. Sweden also was vassal 
to nim. He died in 1036 at Shaftesbury, 
leaving Norway to his eldest son, Sweyn; 
to the second, Harold, England; to the 
third, Hardicanute, Denmark. 

CAN'VAS, a coarse and strong cloth, 
made of flax or hemp, and used for sails, 
tents etc 

CANVAS-BACK DUCK, a bird pecu¬ 
liar to N. America, and considered the 
finest of the water-fowl for the table. 
They arrive in the U. States from the 
north about the middle of October, 
sometimes assembling in immense num¬ 
bers. The plumage is black, white, 
chestnut-brown, and slate color; length 
about 20 inches. 

CAOUTCHOUC (ko'chok or kou'- 
chok), an elastic gummy substance 
chemically a hydrocarbon, contained 
in the milky j’uice of a number of tropical 
trees of various orders, growing in S. 
America. The name is also used as an 
equivalent of india-rubber, but strictly 
caoutchouc is only the chief ingredient 
of india-rubber. The crude india-rubber 
is most commonly obtained by making 
incisions in the trunks of the trees, 
whence the sap exudes in the form of a 
milky fluid which gradually thickens 
and solidifies. Caoutchouc is a non¬ 
conductor of electricity and a bad con¬ 
ductor of heat. It is not dissolved by 
water, hot or cold, but chloroform, oil 
of turpentine bi-sulphide of carbon, etc., 
dissolve it. India-rubber was at first 
only used to rub out pencil-marks, but 
before the end of last century it was 



Caoutchouc tree. 


used to render leather and other sub¬ 
stances water-tight, and in 1823 Macin¬ 
tosh took out a patent for the water¬ 
proof materials prepared with caout¬ 
chouc which bear his name. Latterly its 
uses have become innumerable. Gutta 


percha is a similar substance to caout¬ 
chouc, and is often popularly con¬ 
founded with it. See India-rubber. 

CAP, in ships, a strong piece of tim¬ 
ber placed over the head or upper end 
of a mast, having in it a round hole to 
receive the top or top-gallant masts, 
which are thus kept steady and firm. 

CAP, a covering for the head, usually 
of softer materials and less definite 
form than a hat. Cap of maintenance, 
a cap formerly worn by dukes and com- 



Cap of maintenance, from great seal of 
Henry VII. 

manders in token of excellency, now an 
ornament of state carried before the 
sovereigns of England at their corona¬ 
tion, and also before the mayors of 
some cities. 

CAPE BRETON, an island of the 

Dominion of Canada, separated from 
Nova Scotia, to which province it 
belongs, by the narrow Gut or Strait of 
Canso; area 3120 sq. miles. Chief town, 
Sydney. Pop. of Cape Breton, 97,605. 

CAPE COD, a noted peninsula of the 
United States on the s. side of Massa¬ 
chusetts Bay; 65 miles long and from 1 
to 20 broad. It is mostly sandy and 
barren, but populous. 

CAPE COLONY, a British colony oc¬ 
cupying the southern extremity of 
Africa. Area (including southern 
Bechuanaland), 276,700 sq. miles; pop. 
about 1,738,000. The coast is not much 
indented; the principal bays are St. 
Helena, Saldanha, Table, False, Walker, 
Mossel, and Algoa. In the interior al¬ 
most every variety of soil and surface is 
found, but a great part of the colony is 
arid and uninviting in appearance. 
Several ranges of mountains, running 
nearly parallel to the southern coast, 
divide the country into successive ter¬ 
races, rising as they recede inland, be¬ 
tween which lie belts of fertile land, or 
vast barren-looking plains, one of them 
the Great Karroo, being 300 miles long 
and 100 broad. The principal and 
furthest inland mountain terrace, aver¬ 
aging 6000 or 7000 ft. in height, com¬ 
mences in Namaqualand and runs to 
the northeast frontier. The culminating 
point is the Compass Berg, over 8000 ft. 
The Table Mountain at Cape Town 
rises almost perpendicularly about 3585 
feet in height. The climate is very 
healthy and generally pleasant. Ex¬ 
cept along the coast, especially the 
southeast coast district, where there are 
extensive forests, timber is scarce, but 
with irrigation trees can be grown any¬ 
where. The quadrupeds of the colony 
comprise the African elephant, still 
found in the forests of the southeast 
coast region; buffalo, wild-boar, zebra, 
quagga, leopard, hyena, numerous ante¬ 
lopes, baboon, armadillo, etc. The 
birds include vultures, eagles, the ser¬ 
pent-eater, pelicans, flamingoes, and, 
most important of all, the ostrich, now 
bred in farms for the sake of its feathers. 
The cobra and other reptiles are found. 









CAPE HORN 


CAPILLARITY 


The principal minerals are copper ore, 
coal, iron ore, manganese, and dia¬ 
monds, amethysts, agates, etc. Coal and 
copper are worked, and the diamonds 
have brought a great amount of money 
into the colony since 1869, and have 
given rise to the town of Kimberley, the 
center of the diamond-fields. Wheat, 
maize, and other cereals can be grown 
almost everywhere, if there is sufficient 
moisture, in some years yielding a sur¬ 
plus for exportation. Sheep-rearing, 
especially that of pure merinos, is the 
most important industry, and wool the 
chief export. Ostrich feathers, hides, 
and skins are also exported. Both 
native and Angora goats are bred, and 
the export of mohair is important. 
Cattle breeding is also carried on to 
some extent. The colony is intersected 
by 2252 miles of railway, far-inland 
Kimberley, and still farther Johannes¬ 
burg and Pretoria, being now thus con¬ 
nected with Cape Town and Port Eliza¬ 
beth. The total value of diamonds pro¬ 
duced is over $400,000,000. The 
European inhabitants consist in part of 
English and Scottish settlers and their 
descendants, but, notwithstanding the 
recent influx of settlers from Britain, 
the majority are still probably of Dutch 
origin. The colored people are chiefly 
Hottentots, Kaffirs, Basutos, Griquas, 
Malays, and a mixed race. The laborers 
are chiefly Hottentots and Kaffirs. For 
the higher education there are four col¬ 
leges, besides a university (at Cape 
Town) incorporated in 1873. Respon¬ 
sible government has been possessed by 
the colony since 1872. The executive 
is vested in the governor (who is ap¬ 
pointed by the crown and is also com¬ 
mander-in-chief) and an executive coun¬ 
cil of office-holders appointed by the 
crown. The legislative is in the hands 
of a council of twenty-three members 
(the Upper House); and a representa¬ 
tive house of assembly of ninety-five 
members (the Lower House), elected for 
five years. After Cape Town the chief 
towns are Kimberley, Port Elizabeth, 
Grahamstown, Beaconsfield, Paarl, and 
King William’s Town. The Dutch first 
colonized the Cape in 1652, and till the 
end of the 18th century the colony was 
under, the Dutch East India Company. 
It was held by the British from 1795- 
1801, and it came finally into British 
possession in 1806. The progress of the 
colony was long retarded by a series of 
Kaffir wars, the last of which was in 
1851-53. Its involvements in the Boer 
war of 1899-1902 are still fresh in the 
memory of everyone. 

CAPE HORN, or THE HORN, the 
southern extremity of an island of the 
same name, forming the most southerly 
point of South America. It is a dark, 
precipitous headland, 500 to 600 feet 
high, running far into the sea. Navi¬ 
gation round it is dangerous on account 
of frequent tempests. The cape was 
first doubled in 1616 by Schouten, a 
native of Hoorn, in Holland, whence 
its name. 

CAPE OF GOOD HOPE, a celebrated 
promontory near the southern extrem¬ 
ity of Africa, at the termination of a 
small peninsula extending south from 
Table Mountain which overlooks Cape 
Town. This peninsula forms the west 


side of False Bay, and on its inner coast 
is Simon’s Bay and Simon’s Town, 
where there is a safe anchorage and a 
British naval station. Bartholomew 



Diaz, who discovered the Cape in 1487, 
called it Cape of Storms; but John II. of 
Portugal changed this to its present 
designation. It was first doubled by 
Vasco de Gama in 1497. 

CA'PER, the unopened flower-bud of a 
low trailing shrub, which grows from the 
crevices of rocks and walls, and among 
rubbish, in the countries bordering the 
Mediterranean. Picked and pickled in 
vinegar and salt they are much used as a 
condiment (caper-sauce being especially 
the accompaniment of boiled mutton). 
The plant was introduced into Britain 
as early as 1596, but has never been 
grown on a large scale. The flower-buds 
of the marsh-marigold and nasturtium 
are frequently pickled and eaten as a 
substitute for capers. 

CAPERNAUM (ka-per'na-um), a town 
in ancient Palestine, on the w. side of 
the Sea of Tiberias. Nothing of it now 
remains, but the site is identified with 
Tel Hum. 

CA'PET, the name of the French race 
of kings which has given 118 sovereigns 
to Europe, viz. 36 kings of France, 22 
kings of Portugal, 11 of Naples and 
Sicily, 5 of Spain, 3 of Hungary, 3 
emperors of Constantinople, 3 kings of 
Navarre, 17 dukes of Burgundy, 12 
dukes of Brittany, 2 dukes of Lorraine, 
and 4 dukes of Parma. The first of the 
Capets known in history was Robert the 
Strong, a Saxon, made Count of Anjou by 
Charles the Bold, and afterward duke 
of the lie de France. His descendant, 
Hugh, son. of Hugh the Great, was in 
987 elected king of France in place of 
the Carlovingians. On the failure of 
the direct line at the death of Charles IV. 
the French throne was kept in the 
family by the accession of the indirect 
line of Valois, and in 1589 by that of 
Bourbon. Capet being thus regarded 
as the family name of the kings of 
France, Louis XVI. was arraigned be¬ 
fore the National Convention under the 
name of Louis Capet. 

CAPE TOWN, capital of the Cape 
Colony, S. Africa, at the head of Table 
Bay, and at the base of Table Mountain, 
30 miles from the Cape of Good Hope. 
The port has a break-water 3554 feet 


long, two docks 16 acres in area, a large 
graving-dock, etc. Pop. 83,718. 

CAPE VERD, the extreme w. point 
of Africa, between the Senegal and the 
Gambia, discovered by Fernandez, 1445. 

CAPE VERD ISLANDS, a group of 
ten or fifteen volcanic islands and rocks 
in the Atlantic, 320 miles west of Cape 
Verd (see above), belonging to Portugal. 
They produce rice, maize, coffee, tobac¬ 
co, the sugar-cane, physic-nuts, and 
various fruits. Coffee, hides, archil, 
physic-nuts, etc., are exported. Most 
of the inhabitants are negroes or mixed 
race. Porto Grande, on Sao Vicente, is 
a coaling station for steamers. Pop. 
about 147,000. 

CA'PIAS, in English law, a writ of 
two sorts: one before judgment, called 
a capias ad respondendum, to take the 
defendant and make him answer to the 
plaintiff; the other, which issues after 
judgment, of divers kinds; as, a capias 
ad satisfaciendum, or writ of execution. 

CAPTLLARIES, in anatomy, the fine 
blood-vessels which form the links of 
connection between the extremities of 
the arteries and the beginnings of the 
veins. 

CAPILLAR'ITY, the general name for 
certain phenomena exhibited by fluid 
surfaces when the vessels containing 
the liquid are very narrow, and also ex¬ 
hibited by that portion of the fluid sur¬ 
face which is in close proximity to the 
sides of a larger vessel, or to any inserted 
object. Thus if an open tube of small 
bore be inserted in water, it will be 
noted that the liquid rises within it 
above its former level to a height vary¬ 
ing inversely as the diameter of the bore, 
and that the surface of this column is 
more or less concave in form (as in Fig. 
1). The same phenomenon occurs in any 
fluid which will wet the tube; but in the 
case of a fluid like mercury, which does 
not wet the glass, the converse phenom¬ 
enon appears, the liquid being de¬ 
pressed in the tube below its former 
level, and the portion within the tube 
exhibiting a convex surface (see Fig. 2). 
Similarly round the sides of the respec¬ 
tive vessels, and round the outsides of 



Fig. l. Fig, a. 

Capillarity. 


the inserted tubes, we find in the first 
case an ascension, and in the second a de¬ 
pression of the liquid, with a correspond¬ 
ing concavity or convexity at its ex¬ 
treme edge. Two parallel plates im¬ 
mersed in the liquids give kindred 
results. As these phenomena occur 
equally in air and in vacuo they cannot 
be attributed to the action of the atmos¬ 
phere, but depend upon molecular 
actions taking place between the parti¬ 
cles of the liquid itself, and between the 











































CAPITAL 


CAPSICUM 


liquid and the solid, these actions being 
confined to a very thin layer forming the 
superficial boundary of the fluid. Every 
liquid, in fact, behaves as if a thin film 
in a state of tension formed its external 
layer; and although the theory that 
such tension really exists in the super¬ 
ficial layer must be regarded as a scien¬ 
tific fiction, yet it adequately representis 
the effects of the real cause, whatever 
that may be. Scientific calculations 
with respect to capillary depressions 
and elevations proceed, therefore, on 
the working theory that the superficial 
film at the free surface is to be regarded 
as pressing the liquid inward, or pulling 
it outward according as the surface is 
convex or concave—the convex or con¬ 
cave film being known as the meniscus 
(crescent). The part which capillarity 
plays among natural phenomena is a 
very varied one. By it the fluids circu¬ 
late in the porous tissues of animal 
bodies; the sap rises in plants, and 
moisture is absorbed from air and soil by 
the foliage and roots. For the same rea¬ 
son a sponge or lump of sugar, or a piece 
of blotting-paper soaks in moisture, the 
oil rises in the wick of a lamp, etc. 

CAP'ITAL, in trade, the term applied, 
as the equivalent of “stock,” to the 
money, or property convertible into 
money, used by a producer or trader 
for carrying on his business; in political 
economy, that portion of the produce of 
former labor which is reserved from con¬ 
sumption for employment in the further 
production of wealth—the apparatus of 
production. It is commonly divided 
under two main heads—circulating 
capital and fixed capital. Circulating 
capital comprises those forms of capital 
which require renewal after every use 
in production, being consumed (absorb¬ 
ed or transformed) in the single use, e.g. 
raw materials and wages. Fixed capital, 
on the other hand, comprises every 
form of capital which is capable of use 
in a series of similar productive acts, 
e.g. machinery, tools, etc. From the 
ordinary economic point of view capital 
is conveniently limited to material 
objects directly employed in the repro¬ 
duction of material wealth, but from 
the higher social point of view many 
things less immediately concerned in 
productive work may be regarded as 
capital. Thus Adam Smith includes in 
the fixed capital of a country, “the ac¬ 
quired and useful abilities of all the in¬ 
habitants;” and the wealth sunk in 
prisons, educational institutions, etc., 
plays ultimately a scarcely less im¬ 
portant part in production than that 
invested in directly productive machin¬ 
ery. 

CAPITAL, an architectural term, usu¬ 
ally restricted to the upper portion of a 
column, the part resting immediately 
on the shaft. In classic architecture 
each order has its distinctive capital, 
but in Egyptian, Indian, Saracenic, 
Norman, and Gothic they are much 
diversified. See Column. 

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT, in criminal 
law, the punishment by death. For¬ 
merly it was the ordinary form of pun¬ 
ishment for felonies of all kinds; but a 
more accurate knowledge of the nature 
and remedies of crime, a more discrimi¬ 
nating sense of degrees in criminality, 


and an increased regard for human life 
have latterly tended to restrict, if not 
to abolish, the employment of the 
penalty of death. In several Euro¬ 
pean countries—Sweden, Denmark, 
North Germany, Bavaria, Austria— 
there is great unwillingness to enforce 
capital punishment, though the penalty 
remains upon the statute books. In 
Belgium there has been no execution 
since 1863. In Switzerland capital 
punishment was abolished in 1874, and 
though the right of restoring it was 
allowed to each canton in consequence 
of an increase of murders, only 7 out of 
a total of 22 have availed themselves 
of it. In Roumania it was abolished in 
1864; in Holland in 1870; and it has also 
been discontinued in Portugal and Italy. 
In several of the U. States—Michigan, 
Wisconsin, Rhode Island, and Maine, 
imprisonment for life has been substi¬ 
tuted for murder in the first degree; 
in the remainder capital punishment is 
retained, though the experiment of its 
abolition was made for a short time in 
New York and Iowa. 

The manner of inflicting the punish¬ 
ment of death has varied greatly. Bar¬ 
barous nations are generally inclined to 
severe and vindictive punishments; and 
even in civilized countries, in cases of a 
political nature, or of very great atroc¬ 
ity, the punishment has been sometimes 
inflicted with many horrible accompani¬ 
ments, such as tearing the criminal to 
pieces, starving him to death, breaking 
his limbs upon the wheel, pressing him 
to death in a slow and lingering manner, 
burning him at the stake, crucifixion, 
etc. In modern times among civilized 
nations, public opinion is strongly dis¬ 
posed to discountenance the punishment 
of death by any but simple means; and 
even in governments where torture is 
still countenanced by the laws it is rarely 
or never resorted to. In the U. States, 
except New York, where it is done by 
electric shock, the method of execution 
is by hanging. In Germany and France 
the sword and the guillotine are the 
usual means; in Spain, strangulation by 
means of the garrote, a sort of iron 
collar tightened by a screw. Capital 
punishment cannot be inflicted, by the 
general humanity of the laws of modern 
nations, upon persons who are insane 
or who are pregnant, until the latter are 
delivered and the former become sane. 
In military law, sentence of death may 
be passed for various offenses, such as 
sedition, violence and gross neglect of 
duty, desertion, assault upon superior 
officers, disobedience to lawful com¬ 
mands, etc. 

CAPITALS, the large letters used in 
writing and printing, most commonly as 
the initial letters of certain words. 
As among the ancient Greeks and 
Romans, so also in the early part of the 
middle ages, all books were written 
without any distinction in the kind of 
letters, large letters (capitals) being the 
only ones used; but gradually the prac¬ 
tice became common of beginning a 
book, subsequently, also, the chief 
divisions and sections of a book, with a 
large capital letter, usually illuminated 
and otherwise richly ornamented. 

CAPTTOL, now Campidoglio, the 
1 citadel of ancient Rome, standing on the 


Capitoline Hill, the smallest of the seven 
hills of Rome. It is used as a hotel de 
ville, museum, etc., contains some fine 
statues and paintings, and commands a 
superb view of the Campagna. — The 
name of capitol is also given to the 
edifice in Washington where Congress 
assembles. The various states also call 
their state-houses capitols. 

CAPITULATION, in military lan¬ 
guage, the act of surrendering to an 
enemy upon stipulated terms, in oppo¬ 
sition to surrender at discretion. 

CAPO D’ISTRIA, John Antony, Count, 
Greek statesman, born at Corfu in 1776. 
In 1809 he entered the service of Russia 
and obtained an appointment in the de¬ 
partment of foreign affairs. As im¬ 
perial Russian plenipotentiary he sub¬ 
scribed the Treaty of Paris, Nov. 20 
1815. In 1828 he became president of 
the Greek Republic, in which office he 
was very unpopular, and in 1831 he was 
assassinated. 

CAP'RICORNUS, Capricorn, a con¬ 
stellation of the southern hemisphere, 
and one of the twelve signs of the zodiac, 
the one to which belongs the winter 
solstice, represented by the figure of a 
goat or a figure having the fore-part like 
a goat and the hind-part like a fish. 

CAPRIVI, Georg Leo, Count von, a 
German statesman, successor to Bis¬ 
marck in the chancellorship of the Ger¬ 
man empire. He was born at Charlotten- 
burg, in 1831, died in Brandenburg, 
1899. Caprivi distinguished himself in 
the Franco-Prussian war, and after 
serving in high commands in the army 
was made chief of the admiralty in 1883. 
After Bismarck’s decline in health, 
Caprivi took the reins of government, 
but his administration was not satis¬ 
factory. He retired in 1894. 

CAP'SICUM, a genus of annual, sub- 
shrubby plants, with a wheel-shaped 
corolla, projecting and converging 
stamens, and a many-seeded berry. 
They are chiefly natives of the East and 



West Indies, China, Brazil, and Egypt, 
but have spread to various other tropi¬ 
cal or sub-tropical countries, being cul¬ 
tivated for their fruit, which in some 
reaches the size of an orange, is fleshy 
and variously colored, and contains a 
pungent principle which is present also 
and more largely in the seed. The fruit 
or pod is used for pickles, sauces, etc., 
and also medicinally. Several of them 









CAPSTAN 


CARBON 


yield Cayenne pepper, and are originally 
a native of S. America. 

CAP'STAN, a strong upright column 
of timber, movable round a strong iron 
spindle, and having its upper extremity 
pierced to receive bars or levers, for 
winding a rope round it to raise weights, 
such as the anchors of a vessel, or to per¬ 
form other work that requires great 
power. It is distinguished from a wind¬ 
lass by the axis, and consequently the 
barrel, being vertical. 

CAPTAIN, one who is at the head or 
has authority over others, especially: 
(1) The military officer who commands 
a company, whether of infantry, cavalry, 
or artillery. (2) An officer in the navy 
commanding a ship of war. Captains of 
ships were formerly designated post¬ 
captains.—Captain of the fleet (in 
Britain), a flag-officer temporarily ap¬ 
pointed by the admiralty, who acts as 
adjutant-general of the force, sees to the 
carrying out of the orders of the com- 
mander-in-chief, and to proper dis¬ 
cipline being maintained in the fleet. 
(3) The master of a merchant vessel. 

CAPTION, in law, a certificate stating 
the time and place of executing a com¬ 
mission in chancery, or of taking a 
deposition, or of the finding of an indict¬ 
ment, and the court or authority before 
which such act was performed, and such 
other particulars as are necessary to 
render it legal and valid. 

CAPUCHIN MONKEY (kap-u-shen'), 
a name given to various species of S. 
American monkeys. The hair of their 
heads is so arranged that it has the 
appearance of a capuchin’s cowl, hence 
the name. 

CAPUCHINS (kap-u-shenz'), monks 
of the order of St. Francis, so called 
from the capuchon or capuce, a stuff 
cap or cowl, the distinguishing badge 
of the order. They are clothed in brown 
or gray, go barefooted, and never shave 
their beard. 

CAPYBA'RA, a species of rodent, 
sometimes known by the name of the 
water-hog, and of the family Cavidte 
(guinea-pig). It attains the length of 



Capybara. 


about 3 feet, and has a very large and 
thick head, a thick body covered with 
long, coarse, brown hair, and short legs, 
with long feet, which, being in a manner 
webbed, fit it for an aquatic life. It has 
no tail. It is common in several parts 
of S. America, and particularly in Brazil. 
It feeds on vegetables and fish, which it 
catches somewhat in the manner of the 
otter. 

CARABO'BO. a state of Venezuela, 
washed on the n. by the Caribbean Sea. 
Area about 2984 sq. miles; pop. 167,499. 
P. E.—15 


The capital is Valencia, the chief port 
Puerto Cabello. 

CARACAL'LA, Marcus Aurelius An¬ 
tonins, eldest son of the Emperor 
Severus, was born at Lyons a.d. 188, 
died 217. On the death of his father 
he succeeded to the throne with his 
brother Antoninus Geta, whom he 
speedily murdered. To effect his own 
security upward of 20,000 other victims 
were butchered. He was himself assassi¬ 
nated by Macrinus, the pretorian perfect, 
who succeeded him. 

CARAC'AS, a city of S. America, capi¬ 
tal of Venezuela, situated in a fine valley 
about 3000 feet above the Caribbean 
Sea, connected by railway with the port 
La Guayra, about 10 miles distant. In 
1812 it was in great part destroyed by 
an earth-quake, and nearly 12,000 per¬ 
sons buried in the ruins. Pop. 72,429. 

CARAFE (ka-raf'), the French name 
for an ordinary glass bottle or decanter 
for holding drinking water. 

CAR'AMEL, the brown mass which 
cane-sugar becomes at 220° C., used in 
cookery as a coloring and flavoring in¬ 
gredient, in giving a brown color to 
spirits, etc. The name is also given to a 
kind of candy. 

CAR'AT, a weight of 3T7 troy grains, 
used by jewelers in weighing precious 
stones and pearls. The term is also used 
to express the proportionate fineness of 
gold. The whole mass of gold is divided 
into twenty-four equal parts, and it is 
called gold of so many carats as it con¬ 
tains twenty-fourth parts of pure metal. 
Thus if a mass contain twenty-two parts 
of pure gold out of every twenty-four 
it is gold of twenty-two carats. 

CARAVAGGIO, Michel Angelo Ameri- 
ghi, or Merighi da, a celebrated painter, 
born at Caravaggio 1569, died 1609. 
He attained distinction as a colorist of 
the Neapolitan school, being considered 
the head of the so-called Naturalists’ 
school. He was coarse and violent in 
his character and habits, and was in con¬ 
tinual trouble through his quarrelsome 
disposition. Among his chief pictures 
are the Card Player (at Dresden), the 
Burial of Christ, St. Sebastian, Supper 
at Emmaus, and a Holy Family. 

CAR'AVAN, a Persian word used to 
denote large companies which travel 
together in Asia and Africa for the sake 
of security from robbers, having in view, 
principally, trade or pilgrimages. In 
Mohammedan countries caravans of 
pilgrims are annually formed to make 
the journey to Mecca. The most im¬ 
portant are those which annually set 
out from Damascus and Cairo. Camels 
are used as a means of conveyance on 
account of their remarkable powers of 
endurance. 

CAR'AVEL, the name of different 
kinds of vessels, particularly a small 
ship used by the Spaniards and Por¬ 
tuguese in the 15th and 16th centuries 
for long voyages. It was narrow at the 
poop, wide at the bow, and carried a 
double tower at its stern and a single 
one at its bows. It had four masts and a 
bowsprit, and the principal sails were 
lateen sails. It was in command of three 
such caravels that Columbus crossed the 
Atlantic and discovered America. 

CAR'AWAY, an umbelliferous bien¬ 
nial plant, with a tapering fleshy root, 


a striated furrowed stem, and white or 
pinkish flowers. It produces a well- 
known seed used in confectionery, and 
from which both a carminative oil is 
extracted and the liquor called kiimmel 
prepared. 



Caravel of the fifteenth century- 


CARBAZOTTC ACID, a crystallizable 
acid and bitter substance obtained by 
the action of nitric acid on indigo and 
some other animal and vegetable sub¬ 
stances. It is of great importance in 
dyeing. When silk which has been 
treated with a mordant of alum or cream 
of tartar, is immersed in a solution of 
this acid, it is dyed of a beautiful per¬ 
manent yellow color. It is also called 
Picric Acid, and is used as an explosive. 

CAR'BIDE, a compound of carbon 
with a metal, the usual effect of which 
is to render it hard and brittle. From 
calcium carbide acetylene gas is pre- 
pErcd 

CARBOLTC ACID, an acid obtained 
from coal-tar. It is, when pure, a color¬ 
less crystalline substance, but it is 
usually found as an oily liquid, colorless, 
with a burning taste and the odor of 
creosote. Carbolic acid is now much 
employed as a therapeutic and disin¬ 
fectant. It may be taken internally in 
cases in which creosote is indicated; but 
its principal use in medicine is as an 
external application to unhealthy sores, 
compound fractures, and to abscesses 
after they have been opened, over which 
it coagulates, forming a crust imperme¬ 
able to air and to the organic germs 
floating in the atmosphere, which pro¬ 
duce decomposition in the wound. The 
action of the acid is not only to exclude 
these germs but also to destroy such as 
may have been admitted, for which 
reason it is introduced into the interior 
of the wound. Called also Phenic Acid 
and Phenol. 

CARBON, one of the elements, exist¬ 
ing uncombined in three forms, char¬ 
coal, graphite or plumbago, and the 
diamond. The diamond is the purest 
form of carbon; in the different varieties 
of charcoal, in coal, anthracite, etc., it 
is more or less mixed with other sub¬ 
stances. Pure charcoal is a black, 
brittle, light, and inodorous substance. 
It is usually the remains of some vege¬ 
table body from which all the volatile 
matter has been expelled by heat; but 
it may be obtained from most organic 
matters, animal as well as vegetable, 
by ignition in close vessels. Carbon 
being one of those elements which exist 
in various distinct forms is an example 
of what is called allotropy. The com- 







CARBONATES 


CARDINAL 


pounds of this element are more numer¬ 
ous than those of all the other elements 
taken together. With hydrogen espe¬ 
cially it forms a very large number of 
compounds, called hydrocarbons, which 
are possessed of the most diverse prop¬ 
erties, chemicals and physical. With 
oxygen, again, carbon forms only two 
compounds, but union between the two 
elements is easily effected. It is one of 
the regular and most characteristic 
constituents of both animals and plants. 
See Diamond, Charcoal, Graphite, Bone 
Black, Carbonic Acid, Coke, etc. 

CAR'BONATES, compounds formed 
by the union of carbonic acid with a 
base, as the carbonate of lime, the car¬ 
bonate of copper, etc. Carbonates are 
an important class of salts, many of 
them being extensively used in the arts 
and in medicine. 

CAR'BONDALE, a city in Pennsyl¬ 
vania, about 110 miles n.n.w. of Phila¬ 
delphia. It is the center of a rich coal¬ 
field. Pop. 17,000. 

CARBON'IC ACID, a gaseous com¬ 
pound of 12 parts by weight of carbon 
and 32 of oxygen, colorless, without 
smell, twenty-two times as heavy as 
hydrogen, turning blue litmus slightly 
red, and existing in the atmosphere to 
the extent of 1 volume in 2500. It is 
incapable of supporting combustion or 
animal life, acting as a narcotic poison 
when present in the air to the extent of 
only 4 or 5 per cent. It is disengaged 
from fermenting liquors and from de¬ 
composing vegetable and animal sub¬ 
stances, and is largely evolved from 
fissures in the earth, constituting the- 
choke-damp of mines. From its weight 
it has a tendency to subside into low 
places, vaults and wells, rendering some 
low-lying places, as the upas valley of 
Java, and many caves, uninhabitable. 
It has a pleasant, acidulous, pungent 
taste, and aerated beverages of all kinds 
kinds—beer, champagne, and carbon¬ 
ated mineral water—owe their refresh¬ 
ing qualities to its presence, for though 
poisonous when taken into the lungs, 
it is agreeable when taken into the 
stomach. This acid is formed and given 
out during the respiration of animals, 
and in all ordinary combustions, from 
the oxidation of carbon in the fuel. It 
exists in large quantity in all limestones 
and marbles. It is evolved from the 
colored parts of the flowers of plants 
both by night and day, and from the 
green parts of plants during the night. 
During the day plants absorb it from 
the atmosphere through their leaves 
and it forms an important part of their 
nourishment. 

CARBONIC OXIDE, a substance ob¬ 
tained by transmitting carbonic acid 
over red-hot fragments of charcoal, con¬ 
tained in a tube of iron or porcelain, and 
also by several other processes. It is a 
colorless inodorous gas, has neither acid 
nor alkaline properties, is very poison¬ 
ous, and burns with a pale lavender 
flame. 

CARBONIF'EROUS SYSTEM, in ge¬ 
ology, the great group of strata which 
lie between the Old Red Sandstone 
below and the Permian or Dyas forma¬ 
tion above, named from the quantities 
of coal, shale, and other carbonaceous 
matter contained in them. They in¬ 


clude the coal measures, millstone grit, 
and mountain limestone, the first being 
uppermost and containing the chief 
coal-fields that are worked. Iron-ore, 
limestone, clay, and building-stone are 
also yielded abundantly by the car¬ 
boniferous strata which are found in 
many parts of the world often covering 
large areas. As coal consists essentially 
of metamorphosed vegetable matter, 
fossil plants are very numerous in the 
carboniferous rocks, more than 1500 
species of them having been named, a 
large proportion of whch are ferns, tree 
lycopods, and large horse-tail-like plants. 
The animals include insects, scorpions, 
amphibians, numerous corals, crinoids, 
molluscs, cephalopods, sharks, and other 
fishes. 

CARBON POINTS, in electric lighting, 
two pieces of very nard, compact car¬ 
bon, between which the electric current 
is broken, so that the resistance which 
they offer to the passage of the current 
produces a light of extraordinary 
brilliancy. 

CARBUN'CLE, a beautiful gem of a 
deep red color with a mixture of scarlet, 
found in the East Indies. When held 
up to the sun it loses its deep tinge, and 
becomes exactly of the color of a burn¬ 
ing coal. The carbuncle of the ancients 
is supposed to have been a garnet. 

CARBUN'CLE, in surgery, an in¬ 
flammation of the true skin and tissue 
beneath it akin to that occurring in boils. 
It is more extensive than the latter, and 
instead of one has several cores. It is 
associated with a bad state of general 
health, from which condition its danger 
arises, for it may threaten life by ex¬ 
haustion or blood poisoning. With 
regard to the local treatment, the prin¬ 
cipal thing to be done is to make a free 
incision into the tumor; as much of the 
contents as possible should then be 
pressed out, and a poultice applied. The 
atient’s strength should be supported 
y nourishing and easily-digested food, 
and tonics and cordials should be ad¬ 
ministered. 

CAR'BURETTED HYDROGEN, the 

name given to two compounds of carbon 
and hydrogen, one known as light car-- 
buretted hydrogen, and the other as 
olefiant gas. The former is the com¬ 
pound which occurs in coal-mines (fire¬ 
damp) and about the neighborhood of 
stagnant pools. Mixed with atmos¬ 
pheric air from 7 to 14 times that of the 
gas it explodes The latter is obtained 
from distilling coal or fat substances in 
close vessels. It explodes when mixed 
with ten or twelve volumes of atmos¬ 
pheric air. 

CARD, an instrument for combing, 
opening, and breaking wool, flax, etc., 
freeing it from the coarser parts and 
from extraneous matter. It is made by 
inserting bent teeth of wire in a thick 
piece of leather, and nailing this to a 
piece of oblong board to which a handle 
is attached. But wool and cotton are 
now generally carded in mills by teeth 
fixed on a wheel moved by machinery. 

CARD, an oblong piece of thick paper 
or pasteboard prepared for various pur¬ 
poses. (1) A piece of card-board With 
one’s name written or printed on it, used 
in visiting, and generally for indicating 
the name of the person presenting it. 


(2) A piece of card-board on which are 
printed certain colored devices or figures 
forming one of a pack, and used in play¬ 
ing games. A modern pack of playing- 
cards numbers fifty-two, and consists 
of four suits, two red (hearts and dia¬ 
monds), and two black (spades and 
clubs), each suit comprising thirteen 
cards—three picture-cards (court-cards), 
the king, queen, and knave; and ten 
other cards numbered from one, the ace, 
to ten, according to the pips or marks 
belonging to the respective suits printed 
on them. 

CAR'DAMOMS, the aromatic cap¬ 
sules of different species of plants em¬ 
ployed in medicine as well as an in¬ 
gredient in sauces and curries. 

CARD'BOARD, a kind of stiff paper 
or paste-board for cards, etc., usually 
made by sticking together several sheets 
of paper. 

CARDIAC MEDICINES, medicines 

which act upon the heart. 

CAR'DIFF, a municipal, county, and 
pari, borough and seaport, the county 
town of Glamorganshire, Wales, situated 
at the mouth of the Taff on the estuary 
of the Severn. Iron ship-building is 
carried on, and there are iron and other 
works on a large scale. Among the ohief 
buildings are the county Buildings, 
town-hall, infirmary, university college 
(for S. Wales and Monmouthshire), 
law courts, free library and museum, 
etc. The docks are extensive and well 
constructed. There is here a castle 
which dates from 1080. It is the prop¬ 
erty of the Marquis of Bute, and has 
been modernized and part of it con¬ 
verted into a residence. Pop. 164,420. 

CAR'DIGAN, the county town of Car¬ 
diganshire, S. Wales, on the river Teifi, 
about 3 miles from its mouth in Cardigan 
Bay. The salmon fishery is extensively 
carried on. Pop. 3511.—The county of 
Cardigan has an area of 443,387 acres, of 
which two-thirds is under crops or pas¬ 
ture. Pop. 60,237. 

CAR'DINAL, an ecclesiastical prince 
in the Roman Catholic Church, who has 
a voice in the conclave at the election of 
a pope, the popes being taken from the 
cardinals. The cardinals are appointed 
by the pope, and are divided into three 



classes or orders, comprising six bishops, 
fifty priests, and fourteen deacons, 
making seventy at most. These con¬ 
stitute the Sacred College and compose 
the pope’s council. Originally they 
were subordinate in rank to bishops; 
but they now have the precedence. The 
chief symbol of the dignity of cardinal 
is a low-crowned, broad-brimmed red 
hat, with two cords depending from it, 
one from either side, each having fifteen 
tassels at its extremity. Other insignia 





CARDINAL BIRD 


CARLOS DE BOURBON 


are a red biretta, a purple cassock, a 
sapphire ring, etc. 

CARDINAL BIRD, a North American 
bird of the finch family, with a fine red 
plumage, and a crest on the head. Its 
song resembles that of the nightingale, 
hence one of its common names, Vir¬ 
ginian Nightingale. In size it is about 
equal to the starling. Called also Scarlet 
Grosbeak or Cardinal Grosbeak and Red- 
bird. 

CARDINAL-FLOWER, the name com¬ 
monly given, because of its large, very 
showy, and intensely red flowers; it is a 
native of North America. 

CARDINAL POINTS, the n., s., e., and 
w. points of the horizon; the four inter¬ 
sections of the horizon with the meridian 
and the prime vertical circle. 

CARDINAL VIRTUES, or PRINCIPAL 
VIRTUES, in morals, a name applied to 
justice, prudence, temperance, and forti¬ 
tude. 

CARDING, the process wool, cotton, 
flax, etc., undergo previous to spinning, 
to lay the fibers all in one direction, and 
remove all foreign substances. See Card. 

CARDITIS, inflammation of the heart 
substance. Inflammation of the lining 
membrane is endocarditis, of the ex¬ 
ternal membrane pericarditis. See 
Heart. 

CARDS, PLAYING. See Card. 

CA'REY, Henry, a composer, dram¬ 
atist, and poet, born at London in 1696. 
He composed the words and music of 
many popular songs, including Sally 
in Our Alley, God Save the King, etc. 
He also wrote farces and other works. 
He is said to have committed suicide, 
1743. 

CAREY, Henry Charles, American 
economist, born in Philadelphia 1793, 
died 1879. In that year he published an 
essay on the Rate of Wages, which he 
afterward expanded into Principles of 



William Carey. 


Political Economy. His other im¬ 
portant works are The Credit System, 
The Past, the Present, and the Future, 
The Principles of Social Science, etc. 
Originally a free-trader he became an 
advocate for protection; held that the 
growth of population was self-regulating; 
and was opposed to the theories of 
Ricardo and others on the law of dimin¬ 
ished returns from the soil and on rent. 
He was also opposed to any arrange¬ 
ment on the subject of international 
copyright. 

CAREY, William, D.D., an English 
oriental scholar and Christian mis¬ 


sionary, born in 1761, died at Serampore 
1834. In 1793 he sailed for the East 
Indies as a Baptist missionary, and in 
1800, in conjunction with Marshman, 
Ward, and others, he founded the mis¬ 
sionary college at Serampore. Here he 
had a printing-press, and issued various 
translations of the Scriptures. His 
first work was a Bengali Grammar. 
Under his direction the whole Bible was 
translated into six, and the New Testa¬ 
ment into twenty-one Hindustani dia¬ 
lects. He was long professor of San¬ 
skrit, Mahratta, and Bengali, in Cal¬ 
cutta. 

CARGO, the goods or merchandise 
carried by a trading vessel from one 
place to another. When part of the 
cargo is on deck it is called the deck 
cargo, as distinguished from the inboard 
cargo. 

CAR'IACOU, the Virginian deer, 
found in all parts of North America 
up to 43° n. lat. It is smaller than the 
common stag, and its color varies with 
the season. In spring it is reddish- 
brown, in autumn slaty-blue, and in 
winter dull-brown. Written also Car- 
jacou. 

CARIBBE'AN SEA, that portion of 
the North Atlantic Ocean lying between 
the coasts of Central and South America, 
and the West India Islands. It com¬ 
municates with the Gulf of Mexico by 
the Yucatan Channel. 

CAR'IBBEES, or LESSER ANTILLES, 
usually divided into the Windward and 
Leeward Islands, a section of the West 
India Islands. 

CAR'IBOU, the name of two American 
species of reindeer, sometimes regarded 
as specifically identical with the Old 
World reindeer. They have never been 
brought under the sway of man, but are 
a great object of chase for the sake of 
their flesh. The woodland caribou most 
nearly resembles the common reindeer. 
It is found over considerable tracts of 
Canada, as also in Newfoundland and 
Labrador, and is migratory in its habits. 
The Barren Ground caribou is much 
smaller, but has larger horns. It in¬ 
habits the Barren Grounds northwest of 
Hudson Bay, and also extends into 
Greenland. It executes considerable 
migrations, going north to the Arctic 
Ocean in summer, and returning in 
autumn. 

CAR'IBS, the original inhabitants of 
the W. Indian Islands, and, when Euro¬ 
peans became acquainted with Amer¬ 
ica, also found in certain portions of 
Central America and the north of South 
America. At present only a few remain 
on Trinidad, Dominica, and St. Vincent. 

CAR'ICA. See Papaw. 

CARICATURE, a representation of 
the qualities and peculiarities of an ob¬ 
ject, but in such a way that beauties are 
concealed and peculiarities or defects 
exaggerated, so as to make the person or 
thing ridiculous, while a general likeness 
is retained. Though a degenerate, it is 
one of the oldest forms of art. Egyptian 
art has numerous specimens of carica¬ 
ture, and it has an important place in 
Greek and Roman art. It flourished in 
every European nation during the 
middle ages, and in the present day it is 
a chief feature in the comic and also 
in the leading daily journals. 


CA'RIES (ka'ri-ez), a disease of bone 
analogous to ulceration in soft tissues. 
The bone breaks down, or may be said 
to melt down into unhealthy matter, 
which works its way to the surface and 
bursts. Excision of the carious portion 
of the bone is often effected with good re¬ 
sults, but the disease often results in 
death. Caries of the teeth is decay of 
the dentine or body of the tooth. 

CARINTH'IA, a western duchy or 

f rovince of Austria, on the borders of 
taly; area, 4006 sq. miles. Pop. 
367,344. 

CARLETON, Will, an American poet, 
born in Michigan in 1845. His first 
volume of poems appeared in 1871. 
Farm Ballads appeared in 1873, Farm 
Legends in 1875, Young Folks Centen¬ 
nial Rhymes in 1876, Farm Festivals in 
1881, City Ballads in 1885, City Festi¬ 
vals in 1892, and Rhymes of Our Planet 
in 1895. Carlton’s best vein is domestic 
verses. 

CARLISLE (kar-lil'), a parliamentary 
and municipal borough of England, 
county town of Cumberland. Sacked 
by the Danes, it was rebuilt by William 
Rufus. It was held by the Scots during 
their tenure of Cumberland, and the 
Church of St. Mary’s was founded by 
David I., who died here. During the 
border wars Carlisle underwent many 
sieges. It surrendered to Charles Ed¬ 
ward in 1745. It is a bishop’s see. The 
cathedral, begun in the reign of William 
Rufus, was partly destroyed by Crom¬ 
well in 1648. Carlisle is the seat of vari¬ 
ous manufactures, of which cotton is 
the principal. Pop. 45,478. 

CARLISLE, a town, in Pennsylvania, 
114 miles w. Philadelphia. It is the seat 
of Dickinson Methodist College, founded 
in 1783. Pop. 11,526. 

CARLISLE, John Griffin, an Ameri¬ 
can statesman and lawyer, born in 
Kentucky in 1835, and speaker of the 
national house of representatives from 
1883 to 1889. In 1890 be became 
United States Senator and was Secretary 
of the Treasury in the second cabinet 
of Cleveland. 

CAR'LISTS, the name given to the 
followers of Don Carlos of Bourbon and 
his descendants. See Carlos de Bourbon. 

CARLOS', Don, Infant of Spain, son 
of Philip II., born 1545, died 1568. He 
was deformed in person, of a violent 
and vindictive disposition. He was 
presumably murdered, but of this 
there is no proof. The story of Don 
Carlos has furnished the subject of 
several tragedies, viz., by Otway (Eng¬ 
lish), Schiller (German), and Alfieri 
(Italian). 

CARLOS DE BOURBON, Don Maria 

Isidor, the second son of Charles IV. of 
Spain and brother of Ferdinand VII., 
born 1788, died 1855. He was heir pre¬ 
sumptive to the throne until the birth of 
Maria Isabella in 1830. On the death 
of his brother he claimed the throne as 
legitimate king of Spain, and was recog¬ 
nized as such by a considerable party, 
who excited a civil war in his favor, and 
thenceforward were designated by the 
title of Carlists. After a course of 
hostilities he found himself obliged in 
1839 to take shelter in France. In the 
meantime he and his descendants had 
been formally excluded from the sue- 





CARLOTTA 


CARMELITES 


Cession by a vote of the Cortes in 1836. 
In 1845 he resigned his claims in favor of 
his eldest son, and in 1847 was permitted 
to take up his abode in Trieste, where 
he died. His eldest son, Don Carlos 
(1818-61), married Maria Carolina Ferdi- 
nanda, a sister of Ferdinand II., king 
of Naples. His nephew, Don Carlos, 
duke of Madrid, born 1848, is the pres¬ 
ent representative of the Carlists. He 
married the sister of the late Count of 
Chambord. In 1873 he instigated a 
rising in the north of Spain, and con¬ 
tinued the struggle till after Alfonso 
XII. came to the throne, when he was 
defeated and withdrew. See Spain. 

CARLOTTA, Empress, the daughter 
oLKing Leopold I. of Belgium and wife 
of the Archduke Maximilian, emperor 
of Mexico. She was born in 1840, 
accompanied her husband to Mexico 
in 1864, but the disasters which over¬ 
took her husband affected her mind, and 
she has lived in retirement in Belgium. 

CARLOVIN'GIANS, the second dy¬ 
nasty of the French or Frankish kings, 
which supplanted the Merovingians, 
deriving the name from Charles Martel 
or his grandson Charlemagne (that is, 
Karl or Charles the Great). Charles 
Martel (715-741) and his son Pepin (741- 
768) were succeeded by Charlemagne 
and his brother Carloman (768-771). 
Charlemagne became sole king in 771, 
and was succeeded in the Empire of the 
West by his son Louis le Debonnaire 814. 
He divided his empire among his sons, 
and at his death (840) his son Charles 
the Bald became king of France. He 
died in 877, and was succeeded by a 
number of feeble princes. The dynasty 
came to an end with Louis V., who died 
in 987. 

CARLSBAD (karls'b&t), a town of 
Bohemia, famous for its hot mineral 
springs, and much frequented by visitors 
from all parts of the world, being useful 
in diabetes, gout, biliary diseases, etc. 
Permanent pop. about 15,000. 

CARLSRUHE (karls'ro), the capital 
of the Grand-duchy of Baden, 3 miles 
from the Rhine, laid out in 1715, one 
of the most regularly - built towns in 
Europe. The castle of the grand-duke 
stands as a center, and from this point a 
number of streets radiate at regular dis¬ 
tances, thus forming a kind of fan. 
There are many handsome edifices. 
The court library contains 100,000 
volumes; there are also a large public 
library, several valuable museums and 
art collections, a botanic garden, poly¬ 
technic school, etc. The industries are 
active and varied. Pop. 97,164. 

CARLYLE, Thomas, one of the great¬ 
est English writers of the 19th century, 
born 4th December, 1795, at Ecclefe- 
chan, Dumfriesshire; died at Chelsea, 
Feb. 5th, 1881. He was the eldest son 
of James Carlyle, a mason, afterward 
a farmer, and was intended for the 
church, with which object he was care¬ 
fully educated at the parish school and 
afterward at the burgh school of 
Annan. In his fifteenth year (in 1810) 
he was sent to the University of Edin¬ 
burgh, where he developed a strong 
taste for mathematics. Having re¬ 
nounced the idea of becoming a minister 
after finishing his curriculum (in 1814), 
be became a teacher for about four years, 


first at Annan, afterwards at Kirkcaldy. 
In 1818 he removed to Edinburgh, 
where he supported himself by literary 
work, devoted much time to the study 
of German, and went through a varied 
and extensive course of reading in 
history, poetry, romance, and other 
fields. His first literary productions 
were short biographies and other articles 
for the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia. His 
career as an author may be said to have 
begun with the issue in monthly por¬ 
tions of his Life of Schiller in 1823, this 
work being enlarged and published 



Thomas Carlyle. 


separately in 1825. In 1824 he pub¬ 
lished a translation of Legendre’s 
Geometry, with an essay on proportion 
by himself prefixed. The same year 
appeared his translation of Goethe’s 
Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship. He 
was next engaged in translating speci¬ 
mens of the German romance writers, 
ublished in 4 vols. in 1827. In 1826 
e married Miss Jane Bailie Welsh, 
daughter of a doctor at Haddington, and 
a lineal descendant of John Knox. After 
his marriage he resided for a time in 
Edinburgh, and then withdrew to 
Craigenputtock, a farm in Dumfriesshire 
belonging to his wife, about 15 miles 
from the town of Dumfries. Here he 
wrote a number of critical and bio¬ 
graphical articles for various periodicals; 
and here was written Sartor Resartus, 
the most original of his works. The 
publication of Sartor soon made Carlyle 
famous, and on his removal to London 
early in 1834 he became a prominent 
member of a brilliant literary circle 
embracing John Stuart Mill, Leigh 
Hunt, John Sterling, Julius Charles 
and Augustus William Hare, F. D. 
Maurice, etc. He fixed his abode at 
Cheyne Row, Chelsea, where his life 
henceforth was mainly spent. His next 
work of importance was on the French 
Revolution, published in 1837. About 
this time, and on one or two subsequent 
years, he delivered several series of 
lectures, the most important of these, 
On Heroes and Hero-worship, being 
published in 1840. Chartism, published 
in 1839, and Past and Present, in 1843, 
were small works bearing more or less 
on the affairs of the time. In 1845 
appeared his Oliver Cromwell’s Letters 
and Speeches, with Elucidations, a 


work of great research, and brilliantly 
successful in vindicating the character 
of the great Protector. In 1850 came 
out his Latter-day Pamphlets. This 
work was very repulsive to many from 
the exaggeration of its language and 
its advocacy of harsh and coercive meas¬ 
ures. He next wrote a life of his friend 
John Sterling, published in 1851, and 
regarded as a finished and artistic per¬ 
formance. The largest and most labori¬ 
ous work of his life, The History of 
Friedrich II. of Prussia, called Frederick 
the Great, next appeared, the first two 
volumes in 1858, the second two in 1862, 
and the last two in 1865, and after this 
time little came from his pen. In 1866, 
having been elected Lord Rector of 
Edinburgh University, he delivered 
an installation address to the students 
On the Choice of Books. He had ap- 

[ jointed James Anthony Froude his 
iterary executor, who, in conformity 
with his trust, published Reminiscences 
of Thomas Carlyle, 1881; Thomas 
Carlyle: the First Forty Years of his 
Life, 1882; Letters of Jane Welsh 
Carlyle, 1883; and Thomas Carlyle: 
Life in London, 1884. The character of 
Carlyle presented in these volumes gave 
an unexpected shock to the public, and 
a bitter controversy has raged regarding 
Froude’6 conduct in the matter. 

CARMARTHEN, or CAERMAR'- 
THEN, a maritime county, S. Wales, 
the largest of the Welsh counties; area, 
594,405 acres, of which about 440,000 
are under tillage or permanent pasture. 
Pop. 135,325.—Carmarthen, the county 
town, is situated 9 miles from the sea, 
on the Towy, which is navigable to its 
outlet in Carmarthen Bay. Pop. 9935. 

CAR'MELITES, mendicant friars of 
the order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. 
From probably the 4th century holy 



Carmelite. 


men took up their abode as hermits on 
Mount Carmel, in Syria, but it was not 
till about the year 1150 that pilgrims 
established an association for the pur- 


















CARMINATIVES 


CARP 


pose of leading a secluded life on this 
mountain, and so laid the foundation 
of the order. Being driven by the 
Saracens to Europe in 1247 they adopted 
all the forms of monastic life and a some¬ 
what milder rule. In time they became 
divided into several branches, one of 
them distinguished by walking bare¬ 
footed. They are still to be seen in 
Roman Catholic countries. The habit 
of the order is of a dark-brown color, and 
over it when out of doors they wear a 
white cloak, with a hood to cover the 
head. 

CAR'MINATIVES, medicines ob¬ 
tained chiefly from the vegetable king¬ 
dom, and used as remedies for flatulence 
and spasmodic pains. 

CAR'MINE, the fine red coloring 
matter or principle of cochineal, from 
which it is prepared in several ways. 
It is used to some extent in dyeing, in 
water-color painting, to color artificial 
flowers, confectionery, etc. 

CARNA'RIA. Same as Carnivora. 

CARNAR'VON or CAERNARVON, a 
maritime county of N. Wales, forming 
the n.w. extremity of the mainland; 
area, 369,477 acres. Although the most 
mountainous county in Wales there are 
many tracts of low and fertile land, but 
the arable area is small. Pop. 126,835. 
—Carnarvon, the county town, is a 
seaport and parliamentary borough on 
the s.e. side of the Menai Strait. The 
magnificent castle or palace of Edward 
I., and in which Edward II. was born, 
stands at the w. end of the town, and 
is still externally entire. Pop. 9760. 

CARNATION, the popular name of 
varieties of the clove-pink. The carna¬ 
tions of the florists are much prized for 
the beautiful colors of their sweet- 



scented double flowers. They are 
arranged into three classes according 
to color, viz.: bizarres, flakes, and 
picotees. 

CARNEGIE, Andrew, an American 
philanthropist and steel manufacturer, 
born in Dumferline, Scotland, in 1837. 
He removed to the U. States as a boy 
and early became associated with the 
iron industry at Pittsburg. In 1868 
he introduced the Bessemer process into 
this country and retired from active 
business life in 1901 with the organiza¬ 
tion of the United States Steel Corpora¬ 
tion. He has given upward of $40,000,- 
000 in donations to education. 

CARNEGIE HERO FUND, a fund of 
55,000,000 for the benefit of “the de¬ 


pendents of those losing their lives in 
heroic effort to save their fellow men, or 
for the heroes themselves if injured 
only,” created by Andrew Carnegie in 
1904. Provision was also made for 
medals to be given in commemoration 
of heroic acts. The endowment known 
as “The Hero Fund” was placed in the 
hands of a commission composed of 
twenty persons, residents of Pittsburg, 
Pa. The first awards were made by the 
commission in May, 1905. Nine persons 
were awarded medals for brave acts, six 
of them receiving bronze medals, and 
three silver medals. To three widows 
who lost their husbands while the latter 
were performing acts of bravery money 
was given. 

CARNEGIE INSTITUTION, a founda¬ 
tion of Andrew Carnegie for scientific 
research, with the co-operation of uni¬ 
versities and other institutions. The 
institute was incorporated on Jan. 4, 
1902, with a fund of $10,000,000. It 
is administered by 27 trustees, one of 
them being the president of the U. 
States (ex officio). The purpose of the 
foundation is to encourage research in 
all departments of science and to pay 
the expenses of workers while devoting 
themselves to the work. The office of 
the institute is in Washington, D. C. 

CARNIO'LA, a duchy or province of 
Austria, bounded by Carinthia, Styria, 
Croatia, and Italy; area, 3856 sq. miles. 
There are iron, lead, and quicksilver 
mines, and abundance of coal, marble, 
and valuable stone. Pop. 508,348. The 
capital is Laibach. 

CAR'NIVAL, the feast or season of 
rejoicing before Lent, observed in Catho¬ 
lic countries with much revelry and 
merriment. 

CARNIV'ORA, a term applicable to 
any creatures that feed on flesh or 
animal substances, but now applied 
specially to an order of mammals which 
prey upon other animals. The head is 
small, the jaws powerful, and the skin 
is well covered with hair. Two sets of 
teeth, deciduous or milk and permanent, 
are always developed in succession, and 
in both sets incisors, canines, and molars 
are ditinguishable. The stomach is 
simple and the alimentary canal short, 
thus making the body as light and 
slender as possible for the purpose of 
hunting and springing on its prey. 
The muscular activity of the Carnivora 
is very great, their respiration and cir¬ 
culation very active, and their demand 
for food is consequently constant. Car¬ 
nivora comprise the bears, badgers, rac¬ 
coons, lions, tigers, cats, dogs, seals and 
walruses. 

CARNOT (kar-no), Lazare Nicolas 
Marguerite, a French statesman, general, 
and strategist, was born in 1753, and 
died in 1823. When the revolution 
broke out he was captain in the corps 
of engineers. In 1791 he was appointed 
deputy to the constituent assembly. 
In the following March he was sent to 
the Army of the North, where he took 
command, and successfully repulsed the 
enemy. On his return he was made 
member of the Committee of Public 
Safety, and directed and organized the 
French armies with great ability and 
success. In 1797 Carnot, having un¬ 
successfully opposed Barras, had to 


escape to Germany, but returned, and 
was appointed minister of war by 
Napoleon (1800). In 1814 Napoleon 
gave him the chief command at Ant¬ 
werp, and in 1815 the post of minister 
of the interior. After the emperor’s 
second fall he retired from France. A 
grandson of his, Marie Francois Sadi, 
born in 1837, was elected president of 
the French republic in 1887, and assas¬ 
sinated in 1894. 

CAR'OL, a song, especially one ex¬ 
pressive of joy. It often signifies, 
specifically, a religious song or ballad 
in celebration of Christmas. 

CAROLI'NA, North. (See North 
Carolina.) 

CAROLI'NA, South. (See South 
Carolina.) 

CAROLINA-PINK, a name given to 
a N. American plant bearing scarlet 
flowers, and having a root used as a 
vermifuge. 

CAROLINE, British queen, was a 
daughter of the Duke of Brunswick- 
Wolfenbtittel, born May 17, 1768. In 
1795 she was married to the Prince of 
Wales, afterward George IV. The 
marriage was not to his liking, and after 
the birth of the Princess Charlotte he 
separated from her. She died 7th Aug. 
1821. 

CAROLINE ISLANDS, or NEW 
PHILIPPINES, a large archipelago, 
North Pacific Ocean, between lat. 3° 
and 12° n. and Ion. 132° and 163° 6' e., 
and between the Philippines and the 
Marshall Isles, first discovered by the 
Spaniards in 1543, if not by the Portu¬ 
guese in 1525. Many of the islands are 
mere coral reefs little elevated above 
the ocean. The islands were long in the 
possession of Spain, but in 1899, after 
the conclusion of the war between that 
power and the U. States, they were sold 
to Germany. 

CARO'TID ARTERIES, the two great 
arteries which convey the blood from 
the aorta to the head and the brain. 
The common carotids, one on either side 
of the neck, divide each into an external 
and an internal branch. The external 
carotid passes up to the level of the 
angle of the lower jaw, where it ends in 
branches to the neck, face, and outer 
parts of the head. The internal carotid 
passes deeply into the neck, and through 
an opening in the skull behind the ear 
enters the brain, supplying it and the 
eye with blood. Wounds of the carotid 
trunks cause almost immediate death. 

CARP, a genus of soft-finned abdomi¬ 
nal fish, distinguished by the small 
mouth, toothless jaws, and gills of three 
flat rays. They have but one dorsal fin, 



Carp. 


and the scales are generally of large size. 
They frequent fresh and quiet waters, 
feeding chiefly on vegetable matters, 
also on worms and molluscs. The 
common carp is olive-green above and 
yellowish below, and in many parts is 
bred in ponds for the use of the table. 
It sometimes weighs many pounds, is of 





CARPATHIAN MOUNTAINS 


CARRIER PIGEON 


; uick growth, and spawns thrice a year. 

it is said to live to the great age of 100 
or even 200 years. 

CARPATHIAN MOUNTAINS, a range 
of mountains in southern Europe, 
chiefly in Austria, forming a great semi¬ 
circular belt of nearly 800 miles in length. 
The Carpathian range is rich in minerals, 
including gold, silver, quicksilver, cop¬ 
per, and iron. Salt occurs in beds, 
which have sometimes a thickness of 
600 or 700 feet. On the plateaux corn 
and fruit are grown to the height of 1500 
feet. Higher up the mountain steeps 
are covered with forests of pine. There 
is much remarkable scenery. 

CARPENTER-BEE, the common 
name of the different species of insects 
numerous in Asia, Africa, and America, 
and one species inhabits the south of 


Carpenter-bee, half the natural size. 

1, A piece of wood bored by the bee, and grubs 
and food deposited in the cells. 2, Two of the 
cells drawn larger to show the partitions. 

Europe. They are generally of a dark 
violet-blue, and of considerable size. 
They,usually form their nests in pieces of 
half-rotten wood, cutting out various 
apartments for depositing their eggs. 

CAR'PENTRY is the art of combining 
pieces of timber to support a weight or 
sustain pressure. The work of the car¬ 
penter is intended to give stability to a 
structure, that of the joiner is applied to 
finishing and decoration. An explana¬ 
tion of some of the terms employed in 
carpentry may be useful. The term 
frame is applied to any assemblage of 
pieces of timber firmly connected to¬ 
gether. The points of meeting of the 
pieces of timber in a frame are called 
joints. Lengthening a beam is uniting 
pieces of timber into one length by 
joining their extremities. When neat¬ 
ness is not required this is done by fish¬ 
ing, that is, placing a piece of timber 
on each side of where the beams meet 
and securing it by bolts passed through 
the whole. When the width of the 
beam must be kept the same through¬ 
out scarfing is employed. This is cut¬ 
ting from each beam a part of the 
thickness of the timber, and on op¬ 
posite sides, so that the pieces may be 
jointed together and bolted or hooped. 
When greater strength is required than 
can be produced by a single beam build¬ 
ing and trussing beams are resorted to. 
Building beams is combining two or 
more beams in depth so as to have the 
effect of one. In trussing the beam is 
cut in two in the direction of its length, 
and supported with cross-beams, as in 
roofing. Mortise and tenon is a mode 
of jointing timber. An excavation 
called the mortise is made in one piece, 


and a projecting tongue to fit it called 
the tenon in the other. The timber 
framework of floors is called naked 
flooring, and is single if there be but a 
single series of joists, double if there are 
cross-binding joists, and framed if there 
are girders or beams in addition to the 
joists. The roof is the framework by 
which the covering of a building is sup¬ 
ported. It may consist of a series of 
sloping pieces of timber, with one end 
resting on one wall and the other end 
meeting in a point with a corresponding 
piece resting on the opposite wall: these 
are called rafters. There is usually a 
third piece which connects the lower 
extremities of the rafters and prevents 
them from spreading. This is called a 
tie, and the whole frame a couple. The 
principal instruments used in carpentry 
are saws, as the circular-, band-, and 
tenon-saws* planes, as the jack-plane, 
smoothing-plane, moulding-plane, etc.; 
chisels, gouges, brad-awls, gimlets, etc. 

CARPET, a thick fabric, generally 
composed wholly or principally of wool, 
for covering the floors of apartments, 
staircases, and passages in the interior 
of a house. The Persian, Turkish, and 
Indian carpets are all woven by hand,, 
and the design is formed by knotting 
into the warp tufts of woolen threads 
of the proper color one after the other. 
The Brussels carpet is a common and 
highly-esteemed variety. It is com¬ 
posed of linen thread and worsted, the 
latter forming the pattern. The linen 
basis does not appear on the surface, 
being concealed hy the worsted, which 
is drawn through the reticulations and 
looped over wires that are afterward 
withdrawn, giving the surface a ribbed 
appearance. Wilton carpets are similar 
to Brussels in process of manufacture, 
but in them the loops are cut open by 
using wires with a knife-edge, and the 
surface thus gets a pile. Tapestry car¬ 
pets also have a pile surface, the great 
specialty of which is that the threads 
are particolored by printing in the 
proper manner for each design before 
being woven up. The Kidderminster 
or Scotch carpet consists of two distinct 
webs woven at the same time and 
knitted together by the woof. The 
pattern is the same on both sides of the 
cloth, but the colors are reversed. An 
improvement upon this is the three-ply 
carpeting, made originally at Kilmar¬ 
nock. The original Axminster carpets 
were made on the principle of the Per¬ 
sian or Turkey carpets. Patent Axmin¬ 
ster carpets have a fine pile, which is 
produced by using chenille as the weft, 
the projecting threads of which form 
the pile, which is dyed before being used. 
Carpets of felted wool, with designs 
printed on them, are also used, and are 
very cheap. Cheap jute carpets are also 
made. 

CARPET-BAGGER, a needy political 
adventurer who goes about the country 
pandering to the prejudices of the 
ignorant with the view of getting into 
place or power, so called because re¬ 
garded as having no more property than 
might fill a carpet-bag. Originally 
applied to needy adventurers of the 
northern states of America who tried in 
this way to gain the votes of the negroes 
of the southern states. 


CARPET-SWEEPER, a device con¬ 
sisting of a closed box from which the 
ends of a brush protrude, used for 
sweeping carpets. The box is on rollers, 
is pushed by a long handle, and the dust 
is swept into the cavity of the box which 
can be opened and emptied at will. 

CARPUS, in anatomy, the bones be¬ 
tween the forearm and hand, the wrist 
in man, or corresponding part in other 
animals. 

CARRACCI (kar-rach'e), Ludovico, 
Agostino, and Annibale, the three 
founders of the Bologna, or, as it has 
been called, the eclectic school of paint¬ 
ing. —Ludovico was born in 1555 at 
Bologna. He set up a studio in Bologna, 
and established a school of painting 
characterized particularly by its atten¬ 
tion to composition and its principle of 
eclecticism, or endeavor to imitate and 
unite the chief excellencies of different 
great masters, the drawing of Raphael, 
the coloring of Titian, etc. To assist 
him Ludovico had his two younger 
cousins, Agostino and Annibale, edu¬ 
cated as artists; and after the comple¬ 
tion of their studies all three by their 
able work soon made a high reputation 
for the academy of the Carracci at 
Bologna. He died in 1619.—Agostino 
was born in 1558 at Bologna; he died 
at Parma in 1601. He engraved more 
pieces than he painted, though some of 
his pictures were admired by contem- 
oraries even more than those of his 
rother Annibale.—Annibale was bom 
in 1560 at Bologna. In 1600 he was 
invited by Cardinal Farnese to Rome, 
where the influence of Raphael and 
Michael Angelo’s work tempered the 
characteristics he had acquired from 
the Lombard and Venetian schools. 
His chief work is the series of frescoes 
for the Farnese Palace at Rome, which 
kept him eight years. He is generally 
considered the greatest of the Carracci. 
He died at Rome in 1609. 

CARRA'RA, a city of northern Italy, 
59 miles s.w. of Modena, a few miles 
from the coast. It is surrounded by 
hills which contain fine white statuary 
marble, in the preparation of which and 
commoner sorts most of the inhabitants 
are occupied. Pop. 16,000.—The Car¬ 
rara marble is the variety generally 
employed by statuaries. It was for¬ 
merly supposed to be a primitive lime¬ 
stone, but is now considered an altered 
limestone of the Oolitic period. Al¬ 
though the Carrara quarries have been 
worked for 2000 years, having furnished 
the material for the Pantheon at Rome, 
the supply is still practically inexhausti¬ 
ble. They employ 6000 or 7000 men. 

CARRIAGE, a general name for a 
vehicle, but more especially for one of 
the lighter and more ornamental kind. 

CAR'RIER, is a person who under¬ 
takes to transport the goods of other 
persons from place to place for him. 
Persons who undertake this as a sys¬ 
tematic business are called common 
carriers, and come under special legal 
regulations, such as that they shall be 
responsible for the goods intrusted to 
them so long as in their custody. 

CARRIER PIGEON is a large bird 
with long wings, large tuberculated mass 
of naked skin at the base of the beak, 
and with a circle of naked skin round 








CARRINGTON 


CARTHAGE 


the eyes. The practice of sending letters 
by pigeons belongs originally to eastern 
countries. An actual post-system in 
which pigeons were the messengers was 
established at Bagdad by the Sultan 
Nureddin Mahmud, who died in 1174, 
and lasted till 1258. These birds can be 
utilized in this way only in virtue of 
what is called their “homing” faculty or 
instinct, which enables them to find 
their way back home from surprising 
distances. But if they are taken to the 
place from which the message is to be 
sent and kept there too long, say over a 
fortnight, they will forget their home 
and not return to it. By the use of 
microphotography a long message may 
be conveyed in this way, and such were 
received by the besieged residents in 
Paris during the Franco-Prussian war of 
1870-71, the birds being conveyed out 
of the city in balloons. Seventy-two 
miles in two and a half hours, a hundred 
and eighty in four and a half, have been 
accomplished by carrier pigeons. 

CARRINGTON, Henry Beebee, an 
American historian and soldier, born in 
Connecticut in 1824. In the civil war 
he was a brigadier-general of volunteers, 
and was subsequently an educator. 
He has published Battles of the Revo¬ 
lution, Russia as a Nation and other 
military historical works of note. 

CARRION-CROW, in Britain the 
common crow, so called because it often 
feeds on carrion. In America the name 
is given to a small species of vulture 
called the Black Vulture. 

CARROLL, Charles, of Carrollton, an 
American gentleman and patriot, born 
at Annapolis, Md., in 1737, died 1832. 
He was one of the signers of the Declara¬ 



tion of Independence. He helped to 
draft the Maryland constitution and in 
1789 was elected U. States senator. He 
was the last of the signers of the Declara¬ 
tion to die. 

CARROLL, John, an American 
Roman Catholic bishop, the first in the 
U. States. He was born in Maryland 
in 1735, and was a cousin of Charles 
Carroll of Carrollton. He was the first 
archbishop of Baltimore and the founder 
of Georgetown College. He died in 1815. 

CARRONADE, an iron gun introduced 
in 1779 by the director of the Carron 
Foundry, from which it took its name. 
They were of large caliber, but short and 
much lighter than common cannon. 


They were of great service in close naval 
engagements, but they had a very short 
range, and have been superseded by 
more modern inventions. 

CARROT, a biennial umbelliferous 
plant, a native of Britain and other parts 
of Europe. The leaves are tripinnate, 
of a handsome feathery appearance. 
The plant rises to the height of 2 feet, 
and produces white flowers. The root, 
in its wild state, is small, tapering, of a 
white color, and strong-flavored; but 
that of the cultivated variety is large, 
succulent, and of a red, yellow, or pale 
straw-color, and shows remarkably the 
improvement which may be effected by 
cultivation. It is cultivated for the 
table and as a food for cattle. Carrots 
contain a large proportion of saccharine 
matter, and attempts have been made 
to extract sugar from them. 

CARROUSEL (kar'6-zel), a name 
given in the middle ages to a tilting 
match or other occasion when knightly 
exercises, such as riding at the ring, 
throwing the lance, were publicly en¬ 
gaged in. They were superseded by 
tournaments, but were again revived 
when the latter had fallen out of use, 
and were frequent at the court of Louis 
XIV. In the U. States the name is ap¬ 
plied to a merry-go-round or movable 
platform filled with wooden horses on 
which children ride. 

CARRYING-TRADE, that department 
of trade or commerce which consists in 
the carriage of commodities from one 
place or country to another; generally 
applied to the carrying of merchan¬ 
dise from one country to another by 
sea, especially when the vessels convey¬ 
ing the goods belong to a different 
country from either of the other two. 

CARSON, Christopher (“Kit”), an 
I American scout and trapper, born in 
Kentucky in 1809, died in 1868. He 
lived for a time in Missouri, crossed the 
continent to California in 1829, and 
served with distinction in the west 
during the civil war. Carson knew the 
American Indian perhaps better than 
any other scout and his adventures read 
like romances rather than sober facts. 
Several biographies of him have been 
published. 

CARSTAIRS, or CARSTARES, Will¬ 
iam, a Scottish divine of political 
eminence, born in 1649 near Glasgow, 
died 1715. He studied at the University 
of Edinburgh, and afterward at Utrecht. 
He was introduced to the Prince of 
Orange, on whom he made a favorable 
impression. When William was settled 
on the throne Carstairs was constantly 
consulted by him on Scotch affairs. 
He was the chief agent between the 
Church of Scotland and the court, and 
was very instrumental in the establish¬ 
ment of Presbyterianism, to which 
William was averse. On the death of 
William he was no longer employed on 
public business, but Anne retained him 
as her chaplain royal, and made him 
principal of the University of Edin¬ 
burgh. When the union of the two 
kingdoms was agitated he took a de¬ 
cided part in its favor. He was re¬ 
peatedly moderator of the General 
Assembly of the church. His country¬ 
men have mostly looked upon him as an 
enlightened patriot. 


CART, a carriage with two wheels, 
with or without springs, fitted to be 
drawn by one horse, and used for carry¬ 
ing goods, or as a vehicle for conveying 
persons. 

CARTAGENA (kar-ta-Aa'm), or CAR- 
THAGENA (kar-thii-je'na), a fortified 
town and seaport of Spain, in. the prov¬ 
ince of and 31 miles s.s.e. Murcia; with 
a harbor which is one of the largest and 
safest in the Mediterranean, sheltered 
by lofty hills. It is a naval and military 
station, with an arsenal, dockyards, etc. 
Lead smelting is largely carried on; 
and there are in the neighborhood rich 
mines of excellent iron. Cartagena was 
founded by the Carthaginians under 
Hasdrubal about 243 b.c., and was 
called New Carthage. It was taken by 
Scipio Africanus b.c. 210, and was long 
an important Roman town. It was 
ruined by the Goths, and revived in the 
time of Philip II. Pop. 99,871. 

CARTE-BLANCHE (kart-blansh), a 
blank paper, duly signed, intrusted to a 
person to fill up as he pleases, and thus 
giving unlimited power to decide. 

CARTE-DE-VISITE (kart-dS-vi-zet'), 
literally a visiting card, a name applied 
to a size of photographs somewhat 
larger than a visiting card, and usually 
inserted in a photographic album. 

CAR'TEL, an agreement for the de¬ 
livery of prisoners or deserters; also, a 
written challenge to a duel.—Cartel- 
ship, a ship commissioned in time of war 
to exchange prisoners. 

CARTER, James Coolidge, an Ameri¬ 
can lawyer, born in Massachusetts in 
1850. He served on the New York con¬ 
stitutional commission in 1888 and in 
1892 represented the U. States before 
the Bering Sea tribunal. 

CAR'THAGE, the most famous city 
of Africa in antiquity, capital of a rich 
and powerful commercial republic, situ¬ 
ated in the territory now belonging to 
Tunis. Carthage was the latest of the 



Phoenician colonies in this district, and 
is supposed to have been founded by 
settlers from Tyre and from the neigh¬ 
boring Utica about the middle of the 
9th century before Christ. The story 
of Dido and the foundation of Carthage 
is mere legend or invention. The history 
of Carthage falls naturally into three 
epochs. The first, from the foundation 
to 410 b.c., comprises the rise and cul¬ 
mination of Carthaginian power ; the 
second from 410 to 265 b.c., is the 
period of the wars with the Sicilian 
Greeks; the third, from 265 to 146 b.c., 










CARTHAGE 


CARTRIDGE 


the period of the wars with Rome, end¬ 
ing with the fall of Carthage. 

The rise of Carthage may be at¬ 
tributed to the superiority of her site 
for commercial purposes, and the enter¬ 
prise of her inhabitants, which soon 
acquired for her an ascendency over the 
earlier Tyrian colonies in the district, 
Utica, Tunis, Hippo, Septis and Had- 
rumetum. 

In extending her commerce Carthage 
was naturally led to the conquest of the 
various islands which from their posi¬ 
tion might serve as entrepots for traffic 
with the northern shores of the Mediter¬ 
ranean. Sardinia was the first con¬ 
quest of the Carthaginians, and its 
capital, Caralis, now Cagliari, was 
founded by them. Soon after they 
occupied Corsica, the Balearic, and 
many smaller islands in the Mediter¬ 
ranean. When the Persians under 
Xerxes invaded Greece the Carthagin¬ 
ians, who had already several settle¬ 
ments in the west of Sicily, cooperated 
by organizing a great expedition of 
300,000 men against the Greek cities 
in Sicily. But the defeat of the Car¬ 
thaginians at Himera by the Greeks 
under Gelon of Syracuse effectually 
checked their further progress (480 b.c.). 
The war with the Greeks in Sicily was 
not renewed till 410. Hannibal, the son 
of Gisco, invaded Sicily, reduced first 
Selinus and Himera, and then Agri- 
gentum. Syracuse itself was only saved 
a little later by a pestilence which en¬ 
feebled the army of Himilco (396). 
The struggle between the Greeks and 
the Carthaginians continued at inter¬ 
vals with varying success, its most 
remarkable events being the military 
successes of the Corinthian Timoleon 
(345-340) at Syracuse, and the invasion 
of the Carthaginian territory in Africa 
by Agathocles b.c. 310. After the 
death of Agathocles the Greeks called 
in Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, to their aid, 
but notwithstanding numerous defeats 
(b.c. 277-5), the Carthaginians seemed, 
after the departure of Pyrrhus, to have 
the conquest of all Sicily at length within 
their power. The intervention of the 
Romans was now invoked, and with 
their invasion, b.c. 264, the third period 
of Carthaginian history begins. The 
first Punic war (L. Punicus, Phoenician), 
in which Rome and Carthage contended 
for the dominion of Sicily, was pro¬ 
longed for twenty-three years, b.c. 264 
to 241, and ended, through the exhaus¬ 
tion of the resources of Carthage, in her 
expulsion from the island. The loss 
of Sicily led to the acquisition of Spain 
for Carthage, which was almost solely 
the work of Hamilcar and Hasdrubal. 
The second Punic war arising out of 
incidents connected with the Carthagin¬ 
ian conquests in Spain, and conducted 
on the side of the Carthaginians by the 
the genius of Hannibal, and distin¬ 
guished by his great march on Rome 
and the victories of Lake Trasimene, 
Trebia, and Cannae, lasted seventeen 
years, b.c. 218 to 201, and after just 
missing the overthrow of Rome, ended 
in the complete humiliation of Carthage. 
The policy of Rome in encouraging the 
African enemies of Carthage occasioned 
the third Punic war, in which Rome 
was the aggressor. This war, begun 


b.c. 150, ended b.c. 146, in the total 
destruction of Carthage. 

CARTHAGE, a city and county-seat 
of Jasper Co., Mo., 150 miles southeast 
of Kansas City, on Spring River, and on 
the Missouri Pacific, the Saint Louis and 
San Francisco, and other railroads. It 
has lead and zinc mines, stone and lime 
works, foundries, flour-mills, etc. Pop 
11 , 220 . 

CARTHU'SIANS, a religious order 
instituted by St. Bruno, who about 
1084, built several hermitages 4 leagues 
from Grenoble in s.e. France, and, with 
six companions, united the ascetic with 



Carthusian monk. 


the monastic life. They practiced the 
greatest abstinence, wore coarse gar¬ 
ments, and ate only vegetables and the 
coarsest bread. From their original seat 
(La Chartreuse) they were called Car¬ 
thusians. Their habit is a hair-cloth 
shirt, a white tunic, a black cloak, and 
a cowl. 

CARTIER, Sir George Etienne, Cana¬ 
dian statesman, born at St. Antoine, 
Quebec, in 1814; died in England in 
1873. He was admitted to the bar in 
1835, took part in the rebellion of 1837, 
and had for a time to leave Canada. 
In 1848 he entered the Canadian Parlia¬ 
ment, and in 1855 became provincial 
secretary. Next year he became attor¬ 
ney-general for Lower Canada, in which 
post he was active in behalf of legal 
reforms. In 1857 he was a member of 
the Macdonald ministry, and in 1858 
he himself became premier, remaining 
in this position till 1862. He was active 
in bringing about the establishment of 
the Dominion of Canada in 1867, and 
held a post in the first Dominion cabinet. 
The following year he received a 
baronetcy. 

CARTIER (kar-tya), Jacques, a French 
navigator, born at St. Malo 1479, time 
of death not known. He commanded 
an expedition to N. America in 1534, 
entered the Straits of Belle Isle, and 
took possession of the mainland of 
Canada in name of Francis I. Next 
year he sailed up the St. Lawrence as 


far as the present Montreal. He sub¬ 
sequently went to found a settlement in 
Canada, and built a fort near the site 
of Quebec. He was living in France in 
1552. 

CARTILAGE, or GRISTLE, a firm 

and very elastic substance occurring in 
vertebrate animals. When cut, the 
surface is uniform, and contains no 
visible cells, cavities, nor pores, but 
resembles the section of a piece of glue. 
It enters into the composition of parts 
whose functions require the combination 
of firmness with pliancy and flexibility, 
the preservation of a certain external 
form with the power of yielding to 
external force or pressure. The ends of 
bones entering into the formation of a 
joint are always coated with cartilage. 
Temporary cartilages are those from 
which bones are formed by ossification. 
The permanent cartilages are of various 
kinds. They are found in the external 
ear and aid in forming the nose, the 
larynx, etc. 

CARTOON', in painting, a drawing on 
stout paper or other material, intended 
to be used as a model for a large picture 
in fresco, a process in which it is neces¬ 
sary to complete the picture portion by 
portion and in which a fault cannot 
afterward be easily corrected. The 
cartoon is made exactly the size of the 
picture intended, and the design is 
transferred to the surface to be orna¬ 
mented by tracing or other processes. 
Cartoons executed in color, like paint¬ 
ings, are used for designs in tapestries, 
mosaics, etc. The most famous are 
those painted by Raphael for the Vati¬ 
can tapestries, seven of which are still 
preserved in the South Kensington 
Museum, London. In modern times 
the term is also applied to a pictorial 
sketch relating to some notable charac¬ 
ter or events of the day. 

CARTOUCHE (kar'tosh), (1) in archi¬ 
tecture, a sculptured ornament in the 
form of a scroll unrolled, often appear¬ 
ing on the cornices of columns, used as a 
field for inscriptions, etc.—(2) In 


Cartouche. 

heraldry, a sort of oval shield, much 
used by the popes and secular princes 
in Italy, and others, both clergy and 
laity, for painting or engraving their 
arms on.—(3) The name given to that 
oval ring or border which includes, in 
the Egyptian hieroglyphics, the names 
of persons of high distinction. The 
annexed cut shows a cartouche of one 
of the Ptolemies, kings of Egypt, with 
the inscription “Ptolemy eternal be¬ 
loved of Phtah.” 

CARTRIDGE, a case of paper, parch¬ 
ment, or flannel suited to the bore of 
fire-arms, and holding the exact charge, 
including, in the case of small arms, both 
powder and bullet (or shot). In loading 
with the old style of cartridge for muz¬ 
zle-loading rifles, the paper over the 
powder was bitten or twisted off and the 
powder poured in, the bullet being then 
inserted and rammed home. The car- 
















CARTWRIGHT 


CASHMERE 


tridges used for breech-loading rifles 
contain the powder in a case of solid 
brass, and have the percussion-cap by 
which they are ignited fixed in the base. 
Such cases can be refilled and used a 
number of times in succession. Cart¬ 
ridges for shot-guns are similar to those 
for rifles, but are usually of less solid 
construction, being commonly of strong 
paper with a base of metal. Those 
for large guns are usually made of flannel 
and contain only the powder. Blank- 
cartridge is a cartridge without ball or 
shot. Cartridges for blasting are filled 
with dynamite or other explosive. 

CARTWRIGHT, Edmund, the in¬ 
ventor of the power-loom, was born in 
1742 in Nottinghamshire, Eng. He was 
educated at Oxford, and took orders in 
the church. In 1785, he brought his 
first power-loom into action. Although 
much opposed both by manufacturers 
and workmen, it made its way, and in a 
developed and improved form is now 
in universal use. He died in 1823. 

CARTWRIGHT, Peter, an American 
clergyman, born in Virginia in 1785, 
died 1872. He was noted for the re¬ 
vivals he preached in Illinois and for the 
large number of converts he made. 

CARVING, as a branch of art, is the 
process of cutting a hard body by means 
of a sharp instrument into some particu¬ 
lar shape, and is a term generally em¬ 
ployed in speaking of figures cut out in 
ivory or wood, in contradistinction to 
sculpture, or figures produced in stone 
or metal. The art of carving is of the 
highest antiquity. Even among the 
most uncivilized tribes, rudely-carved 
representations in wood are common. 
In the early and middle ages wood¬ 
carving became general for the decora¬ 
tion of Christian churches and altars. 
One of the latest developments of the 
art of carving is the modern invention 
of carving by machinery. A machine 
patented in 1845 is capable of copying 
any carved design that can be produced, 
so far as that is possible, by revolving 
tools; the finish is afterward given by 
hand-labor. 

CARY, Alice and Phoebe, two Ameri¬ 
can poets, sisters. Alice was born in 
Ohio, in 1S20, and died in 1871, Phoebe 
was born in Ohio in 1824, and died in 
1871. Their first book of poems ap¬ 
peared in 1850 under the title Poems of 
Alice and Phoebe Cary. From 1850 to 
1869 the sisters issued numerous vol¬ 
umes of verses which won them inter¬ 
national fame. They died within three 
months of each other. 

CARY, Alice Louise, an American 
operatic singer, born in Maine in 1842. 
Her rich contralto voice early attracted 
attention and after studying in Italy, 
made her debut in Copenhagen in 1868. 
In 1870 she appeared in New York and 
for many years was the favorite Ameri¬ 
can singer. She married Charles M. 
Raymond in 1882. 

CARYATIDES (-dez), or CARYAT¬ 
IDS, in architecture, figures of women 
dressed in long robes, serving to sup¬ 
port entablatures. 

CARYOPHYLLA'CEAs, an order of 
plants, of which the pink, may be con¬ 
sidered as the type. The plants have 
opposite undivided leaves, without 
stipules, tumid articulations of the stems, 


and seeds disposed upon a free central 
placenta, surrounded by several car- 
pellary leaves. The great proportion 
of the species are inconspicuous weeds, 
like chick-weed, sandwort, etc., but 



Caryatides. 


many are found as favorite plants in our 
gardens, as the carnation, sweet-william, 
etc. 

CASCADE RANGE, a range of moun¬ 
tains in North America, near the Pacific 
coast, to which they are parallel, ex¬ 
tending from the Sierra Nevada in Cali¬ 
fornia northward to Alaska. It con¬ 
tains several active volcanoes. Highest 
peak, Mount St. Elias, 18,017 feet. The 
highest peaks in the U. States portion of 
it are in Washington territory, where 
Tacoma reaches 14,444 feet. 

CASE, in grammar, a term indicating 
certain relationships in which nouns 
and pronouns may stand as regards 
other words, and which are often 
marked by special forms or inflections. 
A word that is the subject of a verb is 
generally said to be in the nominative 
case, one that is an object in the objec¬ 
tive or accusative case. In English 
these two cases are alike except in pro¬ 
nouns, the only inflected noun-case in 
English being the possessive. English 
pronouns have three cases—nominative, 
possessive, and objective, as he, his, him. 
In Sanskrit there are eight cases. In 
French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese 
there are no case-forms. In German 
there are four cases, nominative, geni¬ 
tive, dative, accusative. 

CASE, in law, a cause or action, or a 
statement on which a decision is to be 
given. 

CASE-HARDENING is a process by 
which iron is superficially converted 
into steel, in such articles as require the 
toughness of the former conjointly with 
the hardness of the latter substance. 
The articles intended for case-hardening 
are first manufactured in iron, and are 
then placed in an iron box, with char¬ 
coal in powder, and heated to redness. 
Immersion into water then converts the 
surface into a coating of steel. 


CASEIN (ka'se-in), that ingredient in 
milk which is neither coagulated spon¬ 
taneously, like fibrin, nor by heat, like 
albumen, but by the action of acids 
alone, and constituting the chief part 
of the nitrogenized matter contained in 
it. Cheese made from skimmed milk 
and well pressed is fully half casein. 
Casein is one of the most important 
elements of animal food as found in 
milk and leguminous plants. It con¬ 
sists of carbon 53'7 per cent, hydro¬ 
gen 7T5, nitrogen 15 65, oxygen 22 65, 
and sulphur 085. 

CASE'MATES (from the Spanish 
casa, a house, and matare, to kill), in 
fortification, vaults which are proof 
against bombs, and which may serve 
as a place for keeping ordnance, am¬ 
munition, etc., and in case of necessity 
as habitations for the garrison. 

CASEMENT, a frame inclosing part of 
the glazing of a window and opening on 
hinges. 

CASER'TA, or CASERTA NUOVA, 

the capital of the province of Caserta, 
south Italy, in a plain, 7 miles e.s.e. of 
Capua and 18 from Naples. The prin¬ 
cipal edifice is the royal palace, a large 
and richly-decorated structure, com¬ 
menced in 1752 by Charles III. of Spain. 
Pop. 20,000.—The province has an area 
of 2307 sq. miles and a pop. of 805,305. 

CASE-SHOT, in artillery, is formed by 
putting a quantity of small iron balls 
into a cylindrical tin box called a can¬ 
ister, that just fits the bore of the gun. 
This kind of shot is very injurious to an 
enemy within a short distance. The 
shrapnel-shell is a modern variety of 
case-shot. 

CASH CREDIT. A cash credit is an 
account which the trader may overdraw 
to a certain amount as he may require, 
paying cash in and taking it out accord¬ 
ing to his needs within that limit. 
Heritable property, two sureties, or 
some other form of security is usually 
demanded by the bank. 

CASH'MERE, an extensive princi¬ 
pality in the n.w. of Hindustan, subject 
to a ruler (the Maharajah) belonging to 
the Sikh race. The principality em¬ 
braces not only Cashmere proper, but 
also Jamoo or Jummoo, Baltistan or 
Little Tibet, Ladakh, Gilghit, etc. The 
area is estimated at 80,000 sq. miles. 
It extends from about 32° to 37° n. lat., 
and from about 73° to 80° e. Ion., and is 
largely a region of mountains, contain¬ 
ing magnificent glaciers. The elevated 
situation of the valley, and the moun¬ 
tains of snow which surround it, render 
the climate rather cold; but the region 
is well watered by streams and very 
fertile. Among its minerals are iron and 
plumbago. Sulphur springs are com¬ 
mon. Earthquakes frequently occur, 
and in 1885 one caused the loss of thou¬ 
sands of lives. Bears, leopards, wolves, 
the ibex, and chamois are among the 
animals. The flora has a strong affinity 
to that of Europe; the deodar cedar 
forms extensive and valuable forests. 
The chief crops are wheat, barley, rice, 
and Indian corn, and two harvests are 
reaped in the year. The chief manufac¬ 
ture is that of the celebrated Cashmere 
shawls. The genuine Cashmere shawls 
owe their superiority to the material of 
which they are made, which is, properly 












CASHMERE GOAT 


CASSINI 


speaking, not wool, but a fine kind of 
down with which the animals of this 
region are clad during the winter season, 
and which in length and fineness far 
surpasses the merino wool. This down 
is obtained in great quantities from the 
Cashmere goat, the yak of Tibet, and the 
wild sheep. The average time taken to 
manufacture a good Cashmere shawl 
is from sixteen to twenty weeks. The 
inhabitants of Cashmere are a fine race 
physically, tall, strong, and well-built, 
with regular features. There are thir¬ 
teen separate dialects in use. The 
Maharajah is independent, but his rela¬ 
tions with other states are subject to the 
authority of the government of India. 
The capital of the whole principality is 
Srinagar (or Cashmere), which is the 
Maharajah’s usual residence and the 
largest town. Population 2,906,173, 
about 1,800,000 being Mohammedans 
and 700,000 Hindus. 

CASHMERE GOAT, a variety of the 
common goat remarkable for its fine 
downy fleece, said to be found in per¬ 
fection only in Tibet in the neighbor¬ 
hood of Lhassa, but also found in other 
parts of this region, including Ladakh, 
now a province of Cashmere. The colder 
the region where the goat pastures, the 
heavier is its fleece. A full-grown goat 
yields not more than 8 ounces, the fine 
curled wool being close to the skin. A 
large shawl of the finest quality requires 
5 lbs. of the wool; one of the inferior 
quality from 3 to 4 lbs. 

CASHMERE SHAWL. See Cashmere 
and Cashmere Goat. 

CASINO, a word used, in the U. States 
to designate some place of amusement 
or recreation. It is derived from the 
Italian in which tongue it means a little 
house, and formerly Italian noblemen 
built casinos adjacent to their castles. 

CASPIAN SEA, a large lake or inland 
sea between Europe and Asia, 730 miles 
in length from n. to s., and from 130 
to 270 in breadth; area, 170,000 sq. 
miles, the largest isolated sheet of water 
on the globe. Its surface is 85 feet be¬ 
low that of the Sea of Azof; greatest 
depth about 3250 feet. Russian terri¬ 
tory surrounds it on three sides, Persia 
on the fourth. 

CASS, George Washington, an Ameri¬ 
can engineer and railroad man, born in 
Ohio in 1810, died in 1888. He assisted 
in the development of the Adams Ex¬ 
press Company, of the Pittsburg, Fort 
Wayne & Chicago, and of the Northern 
Pacific railroads. 

CASS, Lewis, an American politician, 
born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 
1782. In 1813, having entered the 
army, he rose to the rank of general; in 
1814-30 was governor of Michigan, was 
minister of war in 1831, was a candidate 
for the presidency several times, was 
long a senator, and in 1857-60 was sec¬ 
retary of state. He wrote the History 
Traditions, Languages, etc., of Indians 
in the U. States. He died in June, 1866. 

CASSAN'DER, a king of Macedonia, 
born about 354 b.c. He displaced his 
brother Polysperchon in the regency, 
removed in succession the mother, the 
wife,'and the son of Alexander the Great 
to make way for himself to the throne. 
He married Thessalonica, Alexander’s 
half-sister, and founded the city of that 


name in her honor. In company with 
Seleucus, Ptolmy, and Lysimachus he 
defeated and slew Antigonus, king of 
Asia, whose dominions were divided 
among the conquerors. He died in 
297 b.c. 

CASSAN'DRA, in Greek legend, a 
daughter of Priam and Hecuba. She 
is fabled to have been endowed by 
Apollo with the gift of prophecy, coupled 
with this disadvantage, that her proph¬ 
ecies should never he believed. She 
frequently foretold the fall of Troy, and 
warned her countrymen in vain against 
the stratagem of the horse. 

CASSA'TION, a term used in the 
courts on the continent of Europe, 
signifying the annulling of any act or 
decision, if the forms prescribed by law 
have been neglected, or if anything is 
contained in it contrary to law.—Court 
of Cassation, one of the most important 
institutions of modern France, estab¬ 
lished by the first national assembly in 
1790. In 1814 the number of its mem¬ 
bers was fixed at forty-nine, at which it 
still remains. The members are ap¬ 
pointed for life. The sphere of this court 
is to decide on the competency of the 
other courts, and on the petitions to 
have their decisions reviewed or an¬ 
nulled. Its decisions are uot only re¬ 
corded in the journals of the courts the 
decisions of which are reversed, but 
published likewise in an official bulletin. 
It has enjoyed from its commencement 
the respect and confidence of France. 



Lewis Cass. 


CASSA'VA, a South American shrub, 
about 8 feet in height, with broad, 
shining, and somewhat hand-shaped 
leaves, and beautiful white and rose- 
colored flowers. A nutritious starch is 
obtained from the white soft root of the 
plant, and is called by the same name. 
It is prepared in the West Indies, 
tropical America, and in Africa in the 
following manner: — The roots are 
washed, stripped of their rind, and 
grated down to a pulp, which is put into 
coarse, strong canvas bags, and sub¬ 
mitted to powerful pressure to express 
the juice, which is highly poisonous in 
its natural state. The flour that remains 
after pressing is formed into cakes, and 
baked on a hot iron plate. In this state 
it forms a valuable article of food, upon 
which many of the inhabitants of 


southern America live almost entirely. 
From cassava the tapioca of commerce 
is prepared. Another species, the sweet 
cassava, has roots the juice of which is 
not poisonous, and which are an agree¬ 
able and nutritive food. 



Cassava plant. 


CAS'SEL, or KASSEL, formerly the 
residence of the Elector of Hesse-Cassel, 
is now the chief town in the province of 
Hessen-Nassau, Prussia, on the Fulda, 
91 miles n.n.e. of Frankfort-on-the-Main. 
There are many fine walks and public 
gardens in the vicinity; among the latter 
are the gardens of Wilhelmshohe, in 
which is situated the ex-elector’s sum¬ 
mer palace, the residence of the late 
Emperor Napoleon III., after his being 
taken prisoner at Sedan, from Sept. 5, 
1870, to March 19, 1871. Pop. 106,001. 

CASSIMIR-PERIER, Jean Paul Pierre, 
a French statesman, born in 1857 at 
Paris, and president of the French 
Republic in 1894 and 1895. He won 
distinction in the Franco-Prussian war, 
was elected to the chamber of deputies 
in 1874, vice-president of the chamber 
in 1890 and president of the chamber in 
1893. In December of that year Cas- 
simir-Perier was called to be prime 
minister under Carnot and in 1894, on 
the assassination of Carnot he was 
elected to the presidency of the republic. 
Although believed to be a royalist, he 
has always acted as a moderate repub¬ 
lican. 

CASSIN, John, an American ornithol¬ 
ogist, born in 1813 at Chester, Pa., died 
1869. He wrote several authoratitive 
works on North American birds. 

CASSI'NI, a name famous in as¬ 
tronomy and physics for three genera¬ 
tions:—(1) Giovanni Domenico, born 
in 1625 near Nice. He discovered four 
new satellites of Saturn and the zodiacal 
light, proved that the axis of the moon 
is not perpendicular to the plane of the 
ecliptic, and showed the causes o f her 
libration. He died in 1712.—(2) Jacques, 
his son, born at Paris in 1677. After 
several essays on subjects in natural 
philosophy, etc., he completed his great 
work on Saturn’s satellites and ring. 
He died in 1756.—(3) Cassini de Thury, 
C6sar Francois, son of the preceding, 
born in 1714, member of the Academy 
from his twenty-second year, under¬ 
took a geometrical survey of the whole of 
France, which was completed by his son. 
He died in 1784.—(4) Cassini, Jean 
Dominique, Count de Thury, son of the 
preceding, born at Paris 1748. In 1787 
he completed the topographical work 






CASSINO 


CASTLE 


which was begun by his father, and 
which in its complete state consists of 
180 sheets. He died in 1845. 

CASSI'NO, a game at cards somewhat 
resembling whist. 

CAS'SIUS, full name Caius Cassius 
Longinus, a distinguished Roman, one 
of the assassins of Julius Caesar. In the 
civil war that broke out between Pom- 
pey and Caesar he espoused the cause of 
the former, and, as commander of his 
naval forces, rendered him important 
services. After the battle of Pharsalia 
he was apparently reconciled with 
Caesar, but later was among the more 
active of the conspirators who assas¬ 
sinated him b.c. 44. He then, together, 
with Brutus, raised an army, but they 
were met by Octavianus and Antony at 
Philippi. The wing which Cassius 
commanded being defeated, he imagined 
that all was lost, and killed himself, 
b.c. 42. 

CAS'SOCK, a tight-fitting coat worn 
under the gown or surplice by the clergy. 
The cassock is generally black; but in the 
Church of Rome only the ordinary 
riests wear black cassocks, those of 
ishops being purple, of cardinals scar¬ 
let, and that of the pope white. 

CAS'SOWARY, a family of birds akin 
to the ostrich, emeu, etc., among living, 
the moa and others among extinct, 
birds. The shortness of their wings 



Helmeted cassowary. 


totally unfits them for flying, and, like 
others of their order, the pectoral or 
wing muscles are comparatively slight 
and weak, while those of their posterior 
limbs are very robust and powerful. 

CAST, in the fine arts, is an impres¬ 
sion taken by means of wax or plaster 
of Paris from a statue, bust, bas-relief, 
or any other model, animate or inani¬ 
mate. When plaster casts are to be 
exposed to the weather their durability 
is greatly increased by saturating them 
with linseed-oil, with which wax or rosin 
may be combined. 

CASTANETS, an instrument com¬ 
posed of two small concave shells of 
ivory or hardwood, shaped like spoons, 
placed together, fastened to the thumb, 


Castanets. 

and beat with the middle finger. This 
instrument is used by the Spaniards and 
Moors as an accompaniment to their 
dances and guitars. 


CASTE, a term applied to a distinct 
class or section of a people marked off 
from others by certain restrictions, and 
whose burdens or privileges are heredi¬ 
tary. The word is derived from the 
Portuguese casta, a breed or race, and 
was originally applied to the classes in 
India whose occupations, customs, privi¬ 
leges, and duties are hereditary. It is 
probable that wherever caste exists it 
was originally grounded on a difference 
of descent and mode of living, and that 
the separate castes were originally 
separate races. It now prevails prin¬ 
cipally in India, but it is known to exist 
or have existed in many other regions. 
“The effect of the caste system is,” as 
the Cyclopedia of India says, “that no 
man may lawfully eat with any in¬ 
dividual of any other caste, or partake 
of food cooked by him, or marry into 
another caste family; but he may be his 
friend, his master, his servant, his 
partner.” Those that are outside of 
any caste are known as pariahs. 

CASTELAR', Emilio, a Spanish politi¬ 
cian and author, born in 1833. In 1856 
he was made professor of history in the 
University of Madrid, but becoming 
involved in the republican disturbances 
of 1866, he had to take refuge in Switz¬ 
erland. Having gone back to Spain in 
1868 he was returned to the Cortes in 
the following year. In 1873 he was 
elected president of the republican 
Cortes, but resigned in Jan. 1874, in 
consequence of the vote of confidence 
being defeated. After the pronuncia- 
miento in favor of Alphonso XII., Dec. 
13, 1874, Castelar retired from Spain, 
but in a year or two returned, and 
again sat in the Cortes. He died in 
1899. He published many novels, 
poems, and popular works. 

CASTELLON-DE-LA-PLANA (k&s-tel- 
yon'), a town, Spain, capital of the 
province of Castellon, 40 miles n.n.e. of 
Valencia, in a large and fertile plain, 
with manufactures of sail-cloth, woolen 
and hempen fabrics, ropes, paper, soap, 
etc., and some trade in hemp, grain, and 
fruit. Pop. of town, 31,272; of province, 
304,477; area of latter, 2445 sq. miles. 

CASTILE (kas-tel'), an ancient king¬ 
dom of Spain, the nucleus of the Spanish 
monarchy, extends over a large part of 
the peninsula from the Bay of Biscay 
southward. It is divided into New 
Castile and Old Castile. The former 
occupies nearly the center of the penin¬ 
sula; area, 28,010 sq. miles. It is trav¬ 
ersed from e. to w. by three lofty 
mountain chains, nearly parallel to each 
other—the Sierra Guadarrama, the 
mountains of Toledo and Sierra Molina, 
and the Sierra Morena. Between these 
chains, which form the great water¬ 
sheds of the province, lie two extensive 
plains or plateaux, almost without wood, 
and arid and barren in appearance. 
Dryness, indeed, is the curse of the whole 
country, and there is a great deficiency 
of method alike in agriculture and in¬ 
dustries. The inhabitants are of a 
grave, manly character, with much of 
the old Spanish pride and probity, but 
devoid of enterprise, and content to live 
on from day to day as their fathers did 
before them. This ancient province now 
forms the five provinces of Madrid, 
Ciudad-Real, Cuenca, Guadalajara, and 


Toledo. Pop. 1,853,314.—Old Castile 
stretches from the Bay of Biscay to New 
Castile; area, 25,405 sq. miles. It is 
traversed by three mountain chains— 
the Sierra de Guadarrama, the Sierra de 
Deza, and the Cantabrian Mountains. 
It is less dry than New Castile, and grain, 
particularly wheat, is raised in great 
abundance. The pastures both of the 
mountains and the plains are excellent, 
and much merino wool is produced. 
Old Castile now forms the provinces of 
Burgos, Logrono, Santander, Soria, 
Segovia, Avila, Palencia, and Valla¬ 
dolid. Pop. 1,761,440. 

CASTING, the running of melted 
metal into a mold prepared for the pur¬ 
pose, so as to produce an article of a 
certain shape. Iron-casting (or iron¬ 
founding) is the most important branch. 
In ordinary operations the pattern is 
laid on a board known as the turn-over 
board, and the flask placed over it, the 
sand being carefully rammed into the 
flask till it is full. Another board, 
known as the bottom-board, is then laid 
upon it. The flask is then turned over, 
the first or turn-over board taken off, 
the one side of the pattern uncovered, a 
fine facing of sand spread upon the sur¬ 
face to prevent adhesion, after which a 
second flask, called the cope, sometimes 
made with crossbars to strengthen it and 
help to hold the sand, is placed upon it 
and sand carefully rammed in. The 
cope or second flask is them lifted off, 
the sand which it contains carrying the 
impression of the upper side of the 
pattern; the pattern in the lower part 
of the flask, or drag, is then carefully 
drawn out, and any injuries which the 
mold receives during the operation is 
repaired. Holes or passages are then 
cut into the sand for pouring in the 
metal, all loose sand carefully removed, 
the cope replaced and secured to the 
drag by clamps. The mold is now 
ready for the molten metal. In pouring, 
the metal is generally run through two 
or three different passages at the same 
time to prevent it losing fluidity by 
cooling. It is only in lighter castings 
that sand, of the proper degree of dry¬ 
ness, porosity, and adhesiveness, is used. 
In heavy castings the mold is usually 
made of loam, which is more adhesive, 
and in complicated articles the making 
of the mold is often a difficult process. 

CASTING-VOTE, the vote of a pre¬ 
siding officer in an assembly or council 
which decides a question when the 
votes of the assembly or house are 
equally divided between the affirmative 
and negative. 

CAST-IRON, the name given to the 
iron obtained from the blast-furnace by 
running the fused metal into molds 
prepared for the purpose. The molds 
are in the form of long narrow channels, 
from which the iron, when it has cooled 
and solidified, is taken in bars called 
pigs, between 3 and 4 feet long and 3 or 
4 inches broad. See Iron. 

CASTLE, an edifice serving at once 
as a residence and as a place of defense, 
especially such an edifice belonging to 
feudal times. Castles differed some¬ 
what at different times and in different 
places, but they had all several features 
of similarity. The first defense of a 
castle was usually the moat or ditch. 






CASTLE GARDEN 


CATACOMBS 


that sometimes comprised several acres; 
and behind it was the outer wall, gen¬ 
erally of great height and thickness, 
strengthened with towers at regular 
distances, and pierced with loopholes 
through which missiles could be dis¬ 
charged at the assailants. The main 
entrance through the outer wall was 
protected by the barbican, with its 
narrow archway, and strong gates and 
portcullis, and inside there were usually 
an outer and an inner court, and the 
strong more or less detached building 
known as the keep, which formed the 
residence of the owner and his family. 
This was the most strongly constructed 
of all the buildings, to which the de¬ 
fenders retreated only in the last ex¬ 
tremity. The cut shows the castle of 
the Sires de Coucy, France, built in the 
13th century. In the foreground is the 
outer bailey or esplanade, fortified, and 
containing a chapel, stables, and other 
buildings. The outer entrance to this 
was formed by the barbican, a, is 
the fosse, 20 yards broad; b, the 
gateway, approached by two swing- 
bridges, defended by two guard-rooms, 
and having [a double portcullis within, 
giving entrance to vaulted guard- 
rooms with sleeping apartments, etc., 



Castle—Chateau de Coucy. 


above, c; d, inner bailey or courtyard; 
e, covered buildings for the men defend- 
ing,the walls or curtains; f, apartments 
for the family, entered by the grand 
staircase, g; h, great hall, with store¬ 
rooms and vaults below; i, donjon or 
keep (the chapel is seen behind it), the 
strongest part of the castle, with walls 
of immense thickness. At k was a 
postern leading from the donjon and 
communicating with an outer postern, 
drawbridge, etc.; 1, m, n, o, towers or 
bastions flanking the walls. 

CASTLE GARDEN, a building in 
Battery Park, New York City, and long 
used as a landing place for immigrants. 
It is now used as a public swimming place 
and has a collection of 6alt-water and 
fresh-water fishes. 

CAS'TOR, Casto'reum, a reddish- 
brown substance, of a strong penetrating 
smell, secreted by two glandular sacs 
connected with the organs of reproduc¬ 
tion of the beaver, and used by per¬ 
fumers. 


CASTOR AND POLLUX, in Greek 

mythology, twin divinities, sons of 
Zeus (Jupiter) and Leda, also called 
Dioscuri (sons of Zeus). Castor was 
mortal, but Pollux was immortal. The 
former was particularly skilled in break¬ 
ing horses, the latter in boxing and 
wrestling. They were the patron 
deities of mariners. In the heavens 
they appear as one of the twelve con¬ 
stellations of the zodiac, with the name 
of Gemini (the Twins). 

CASTOR AND POLLUX are two min¬ 
erals which are found together in granite 
in the island of Elba. Castor is a silicate 
of aluminium and lithium, pollux is a 
silicate of aluminium and the rare 
element caesium. 

CASTOR-OIL, the oil obtained from 
the seeds of a plant, a native of India, 
but now distributed over all the warmer 
regions of the globe. The oil is obtained 
from the seeds by bruising and pressing. 



Castor-oil plant. 


The oil that first comes away, called 
cold-drawn castor-oil, is reckoned the 
best; an inferior quality being obtained 
by heating or steaming the pressed 
seeds, and again subjecting them to 
pressure. The oil is afterward heated 
to the boiling point, which coagulates 
and separates the albumen and im¬ 
purities. Castor-oil is used medicinally 
as a mild but efficient purgative. It is 
chiefly imported from India. The plant 
is often cultivated as an ornamental 
plant. 

CASTRATION, the act of depriving 
a male animal of the testicles. It is 
practiced on domestic animals (as oxen 
and horses) with the object of rendering 
them more submissive and docile, etc. 
Men who are castrated are known as 
eunuchs. 

CAST-STEEL, steel made by fusing 
the materials and running the product 
into molds. 

CAS'UISTRY, that part of the old 
theology and morals which relates to the 
principles by which difficult cases of 
conscience (especially where there is a 
collision of different duties) are to be 
settled. Hence a casuist is a moralist 
who endeavors to solve such doubtful 
question. 

CASUS BELLI, the material grounds 
which justify a declaration of war. 

CAT, a well-known domesticated 
quadruped, order Carnivora, the same 
name being given also to allied forms 
of the same order. It is believed that 
the cat was originally domesticated in 
EgypL a nd the gloved cat of Egypt and 
Nubia has by some been considered the 
original stock of the domestic cat, 


though more probably it was the Egypt¬ 
ian cat. It was seldom, if at all, kept 
by the Greeks and Romans, and till 
long after the Christian era was rare in 
many parts of Europe. Some have 
thought that the domestic breed owed 
its origin to the wild cat; but there are 
considerable differences between them, 
the latter being larger, and having a 
shorter and thicker tail, which also does 
not taper. The domestic cat belongs 
to a genus—that which contains the 
lion and tiger—better • armed for the 
destruction of animal life than any other 
quadrupeds. The short and powerful 
jaws, trenchant teeth, cunning dispo¬ 
sition, combined with nocturnal habits 
(for which their eyesight is naturally 
adapted) and much patience in pursuit, 
give these animals great advantages 
over their prey. The cat in a degree 
partakes of all the attributes of her race. 
Its food in a state of domestication is 
necessarily very various, but always 
of flesh or fish if it can be obtained. 
Instances of its catching the latter are 
known, though usually the cat is ex¬ 
tremely averse to wetting itself. It is a 
very cleanly animal, avoiding to step 
in any sort of filth, and preserving its 
fur in a very neat condition. Its fur is 
very easily injured by water on account 
of the want of oil in it, and it can be 
rendered highly electric by friction. 
The cat goes with young for sixty-three 
days, and brings forth usually from 
three to six at a litter, which remain 
blind for nine days. It is usually re- 
arded as less intelligent than the dog, 
ut this is by no means certain. It has a 
singular power of finding its way home 
when taken to a distance and covered up 
by the way. 

CAT'ACLYSM, in geol. a physical 
catastrophe of great extent, supposed to 
have occurred at different periods, and 
to have been the efficient cause of 
various phenomena observed in the 
surface configuration of localities. 

CAT'ACOMBS, (a hollow or recess), 
caves or subterranean places for the 
burial of the dead, the bodies being 
placed in graves or recesses hollowed 
out in the sides of the cave. Caves of 



Catacomb of St. Agnes, Rome. 


this kind were common among the 
Phoenicians, Greeks, Persians, and many 
oriental nations. In Sicily and Asia 
Minor numerous excavations have been 
discovered containing sepulchers, and 
the catacombs near Naples are remark¬ 
ably extensive. Those of Rome, how- 















CAT ACOUSTICS 


CATARACT 


ever, are the most important. The term 
catacumbae is said to have been origi¬ 
nally applied to the district near Rome 
which contains the chapel of St. Sebas¬ 
tian, in the vaults of which, according 
to tradition, the body of St. Peter was 
first deposited; but (besides its general 
application) it is now applied in a 
special way to all the extensive sub¬ 
terranean burial-places in the neigh¬ 
borhood of Rome, which extend under¬ 
neath the town itself as well as the 
neighboring country, and are said to 
contain not less than 6,000,000 tombs. 
They consist of long narrow galleries 
Usually about 8 feet high and 5 feet 
wide, which branch off in all directions, 
forming a perfect maze of corridors. 
Different stories of galleries lie one below 
the other. Vertical shafts run up to the 
outer air, thus introducing light and air, 
though in small quantity. The graves 
lie longwise in the galleries. They are 
closed laterally by a slab, on which there 
is occasionally a brief inscription or a 
symbol, such as a dove, an anchor, or a 
palm-branch, and sometimes both. 
The earliest that can be dated with any 
certainty belongs to the year 111 a.d. 
It is now regarded as certain that in 
times of persecution the early Christians 
frequently took refuge in the cata¬ 
combs, in order to celebrate there in 
secret the ceremonies of their religion; 
but it is not less certain that the cata¬ 
combs served also as ordinary places of 
burial to the early Christians, and were 
for the most part excavated by the 
Christians themselves. 

CAT'ACOUSTICS, the science of re¬ 
flected sounds, or that part of acoustics 
which considers the properties of echoes. 

CATAFAL'CO, Catafalque, a tem¬ 
porary and ornamental structure, rep¬ 
resenting a tomb placed over the coffin 
of a distinguished person or over a 
grave. 

CATALEP'SY, a spasmodic disease, 
generally connected with hysteria, in 
which there is a sudden suspension of 
the senses and volition, with statue-like 
fixedness of the body and limbs in the 
attitude immediately preceding the 
attack, while the action of the heart 
and lungs continues, and the pulse and 
temperature remain natural. It is gen¬ 
erally the consequences of some other 
disease, or of a constitution enfeebled 
by the gradual operation of unobserved 
causes. 

CATALOGUING, the art of making 
classified lists of books, or other tilings. 
Book catalogues, especially those of large 
libraries have been superseded by 
card indexes, although catalogues are 
still used by libraries for the purpose 
of distribution to other libraries. Cata¬ 
logues,are made in a systematic manner 
by name of author and subject each 
“crossed” with the other. 

CATALO'NIA, an old province of 
Spain, bounded n. by France, e. and 
s.e. by the Mediterranean, s. by Val¬ 
encia, and w. by Arragon. The country 
in general is mountainous, but inter¬ 
sected with fertile valleys, while the 
mountains themselves are covered with 
valuable woods and fruit-trees, the 
slopes being cut in terraces and plenti¬ 
fully supplied with water by an artificial 
system of irrigation. Wheat, wine, oil, 


flax, hemp, vegetables, and almost every 
kind of fruit are abundant. There are 
mines of lead, iron, alum, etc. On the 
coast is a coral-fishery. Catalonia, 
though less fertile than most of Spain, 
stands pre-eminent for the industry of 
its inhabitants, who speak the Catalan 
dialect (see Catalan). Pop. 1,942,245; 
area, 12,480 sq. miles. It comprises the 
modern provinces of Tarragona, Gerona, 
Lerida, and Barcelona. 

CATAL'PA, a genus of plants. The 
species are trees with simple leaves and 
large, gay, trumpet-shaped flowers. 
A North American species, is well 
adapted for large shrubberies, and has 
been introduced into England and other 
parts of Europe. 

CATAL'YSIS, or CONTACT ACTION, 

the chemical change which occurs when 
one body decomposes another without 
being itself changed; thus oxide of 
cobalt decomposes a solution of bleach- 
ing-powder into chloride of calcium and 
oxygen, itself remaining without change. 


nificence unknown in other parts of the 
island, and the town has a title to rank 
among the elegant cities of Europe. 
The ruins of the amphitheater, which 
was more extensive than the Colosseum 
at Rome, are still to be seen, as also the 
remains of the theater, baths, aque¬ 
ducts, sepulchral chambers, hippo¬ 
drome, and several temples. The har¬ 
bor was choked up by the eruption of 
1669, but latterly has been greatly 
improved. The trade is of some im¬ 
portance, the chief exports being sul¬ 
phur, oranges, and lemons, grain, wine, 
oil, etc. Pop. 113,391. 

CATANZA'RO, a cathedral city, South 
Italy, capital of province of the same 
name, on a height, 5 miles from the Gulf 
of Squillace, with manufactures of silk 
and velvet and some trade in wheat, 
wine, oil, etc. Pop. 20,931. Area of 
prov. 2307 sq. miles; pop. 433,975. 

CAT'APULT, a machine of the an¬ 
cients for projecting missiles, chiefly 
arrows. They may be described as a 



The square of the elephant, Catania. 


CATAMARAN', a sort of raft used in 
the East Indies, Brazil, and elsewhere. 
Those of the island of Ceylon, like those 
of Madras and other parts of that coast, 
are formed of three logs lashed together. 
Their length is from 20 to 25 feet, and 
breadth 2} to 3£ feet. The center log 
is much the largest, and is pointed at 
the fore-end. These floats are navigated 
with great skill by one or two men in a 
kneeling posture. They think nothing 
of passing through the surf which lashes 
the beach at Madras when boats of the 
best construction would be swamped. 

CATAMAR'CA, a province of the 
Argentine Republic, S. America; area, 
about 31,500 sq. miles; mountainous in 
all directions except the s. Pop. 102,000. 
The capital is Catamarca, or more fully 
San Fernando de Catamarca. Pop. 
about 6000. 

CAT'AMOUNT, or CATAMOUNTAIN, 

the wild cat. In America the name is 
also given to the tiger or the puma. 

CATA'NIA, a city on the east coast of 
Sicily, in the province of Catania, at the 
foot of Mount Etna. It has been re¬ 
peatedly visited by tremendous earth¬ 
quakes, one of the worst of which was in 
1693, when 18,000 people were destroyed 
and has been partially laid in ruins by 
lava from eruptions of Mount Etna. 
Most of the edifices have an air of mag¬ 


kind of gigantic cross-bows. Balistse 
were engines somewhat similarly con¬ 
structed, but were chiefly confined to 
the shooting of stones. 

CAT'ARACT, a disease of the eye, 
consisting in an opacity of the crystal¬ 
line lens, or its capsule, or both. It is 
quite different from amaurosis, which is 
a disease of the retina. In cataract the 
lens becomes opaque, and is no longer 
capable of transmitting the light. Its 
earliest approach is marked by a loss of 
the natural color of the pupil, and when 
developed it causes the pupil to have a 
milk-white or pearly color. It is most 
common in old or elderly people, and 
is quite painless. Cataract is treated 
by different surgical operations, all of 
them consisting in removing the dis¬ 
eased lens from its situation opposite 
the transparent cornea. In couching, 
the lens is depressed, removed down¬ 
ward, and kept from rising by the vitre¬ 
ous humor; but this method is now al¬ 
most entirely given up in favor of 
removal of the lens by extraction. Ex¬ 
traction consists in making an incision 
in the cornea, and in the capsule of the 
lens, by which the lens may be brought 
forward, and through the cut in the 
cornea, so as to be altogether removed. 
The third operation is by absorption. 
This consists in wounding the capsule, 

























CATARACT, OR WATERFALL 


CATHARINE DE’ MEDICI 


breaking down the crystalline, and 
bringing the fragments into the anterior 
chamber of the eye, where they are 
exposed to the action of the aqueous 
humor, and are at length absorbed and 
disappear. Extraction is now the 
regular method, and after it is effected 
a special kind of spectacles are required. 

CAT'ARACT, or WATERFALL, the 
leap of a stream over a ledge or precipice 
occurring in its course. Many.cataracts 
are remarkable for their sublimity, the 
grandest being the Falls of Niagara, on 
the Niagara River between Lakes Erie 
and Ontario, in N. America, the river 
having here a fall of about 160 feet. 
Among other notable falls are those of 
the river Montmorency, a tributary of 
the St. Lawrence, which are 242 feet in 
height; that of the river Potaro, in 
British Guiana, about 822 feet high and 
369 broad; that of the Yosemite River, 
California, which makes a perpendicular 
leap of 2100 feet; the Victoria Falls, on 
the river Zambesi, in south Africa, 
about 370 feet high and 1860 yards 
broad. The cataract of the Riukanfoss, 
on the river Maan, in Norway, is about 
900 feet high. The cascade of Gavarnie, 
in the Pyrenees, is reputed the loftiest 
in Europe, being about 13,000 feet, but 
its volume is so small that it is converted 
into spray before reaching the bottom. 
The fall of the Staubbach at Lauter- 
brunnen, in Switzerland, is between 
800 and 900 feet, but has also a very 
small volume of water; the falls of the 
Rhine at Schaffhausen, renowned over 
Europe, are 300 feet broad and nearly 
100 feet in height. In Italy the falls of 
Terni, on the Velino, and those of the 
Anio, at Tivoli, are artificial but very 
beautiful. Among British waterfalls, 
the falls of the Clyde, three in number, 
viz., Bonniton Linn, 30 feet, Corra Linn, 
84 feet, and Stonebyres Linn, 80 feet, 
aref remarkable for their beauty and 
grandeur. 

CATARRH (ka-tarO, an increased 
secretion of mucus from the membranes 
of the nose, fauces, and bronchi, ac¬ 
companied with fever and attended with 
sneezing, cough, thirst, lassitude, and 
want of appetite. There are two species 
of catarrh, one which is very common, 
and is called a cold in the head; and 
another, the influenza, or epidemic 
catarrh. It is seldom fatal except in 
scrofulousyiabits by laying the founda¬ 
tion of consumption. 

CAT-BIRD, a well-known species of 
American thrush, which during the 
summer is found throughout the Middle 
and New England States, frequenting 
thickets and shrubberies. Its note is 
strikingly similar to the plaint of a 
kitten in distress. The plumage is a 
deep slate-color above and lighter below, 
and it is about 9 inches in length. In 
habit it is lively, familiar, and un¬ 
suspicious; the song is largely imitative 
of those of other birds. During the 
winter it inhabits the extreme south of 
the U. States, and is found also in 
Mexico and Central America. The cat¬ 
bird frequently attacks the common 
black snake, which, in the absence of the 
bird, rifles its nest. 

CAT-BOAT, a sailboat with one large 
fore-and-aft sail, and generally not 


longer than 25 or 30 feet. Cat-boats are 
fast sailers and easily managed. 

CATECHISM (kat'e-kizm), an ele¬ 
mentary book containing a summary 
of principles in any science or art, but 
particularly in religion, reduced to the 
form of questions and answers. 

CAT'ECHU (-sh6), a name common 
to several astringent extracts prepared 
from the wood, bark, and fruits of 
various plants. Catechu is one of the 
hest astringents in the materia medica. 
It consists chiefly of tannin, and is used 
in tanning, in calico-printing, etc. It 
is chiefly obtained from Burmah. 

CATERPILLAR. See Butterfly. 

CAT-FISH, a remarkably voracious 
fish, belonging to the family of gobies, 
known also as the wolf-fish; also the 
name common to several N. American 
fish. The common cat-fish is known 
also as the horned pout and bull-head. 
It is excellent eating. 

CAT'GUT, a cord made from the in¬ 
testines of sheep, and sometimes from 
those of the horse, ass, and mule, but 
not from those of cats. The manufac¬ 
ture is chiefly carried on in Italy and 
France by a tedious process. Catgut 
for stringed instruments, as violins and 
harps, is made principally in Milan and 
Naples, the latter having a high reputa¬ 
tion for treble strings. 

CATHARINE I., Empress of Russia 
and wife of Peter the Great, was a 
woman of humble origin, who, having 
become mistress to Prince Menschikoff, 
was relinquished by him to the czar. 
In 1708 and 1709 she bore the emperor 
the Princesses Anna and Elizabeth, the 
first of whom became the Duchess of 
Holstein by marriage, and mother of 
Peter III. The second became Empress 
of Russia. In 1711 the emperor publicly 
acknowledged Catharine as his wife, and 
she was subsequently proclaimed em¬ 
press, and crowned in Moscow in 1724. 
When Peter with his army seemed 
irreparably lost on the Pruth in 1711 
Catharine secured the relief of her hus¬ 
band by bribing the Turkish general. 
At Peter’s death in 1725 Catharine was 
proclaimed empress and autocrat of all 
the Russias, and the oath of allegiance 
to her was taken anew. Catharine died 
suddenly in 1727, her death having 
been hastened by dissipation. 

CATHARINE II., Empress of Russia, 
was born in 1729, her father being 
Christian Augustus, prince of Anhalt- 
Zerbst. In 1745 she was married to 
Peter, nephew and successor of the 
Russian Empress Elizabeth, on whose 
death in 1762 her husband succeeded as 
Peter III. In danger of being sup¬ 
planted by his mistress, the Countess 
Woronzoff, Catharine, with the assist¬ 
ance of her lover, Gregory Orloff, and 
others, won over the guards and was 
proclaimed monarch (July, 1762). Peter 
attempted no resistance, abdicated al¬ 
most immediately, and was strangled 
in prison a few days later, apparently 
without Catharine's knowledge. On 
the death of Augustus III. of Poland she 
caused her old lover, Poniatowski, to be 
placed on the throne with a view to the 
extension of her influence in Poland, by 
which she profited in the partition of 
that country in the successive dismem¬ 
berments of 1772, 1793, and 1795. By 


the war with the Turks, which occupied 
a considerable part of her reign, she 
conquered the Crimea and opened the 
Black Sea to the Russian navy. Her 
dream, however, of driving the Turks 
from Europe and restoring the Byzan¬ 
tine Empire was not to be fulfilled. Her 
relations with Poland and with other 
European powers induced her to make 
peace with Turkey in 1792, and accept 
the Dniester as the boundary line be- 



Catharine II of Russia. 


tween the two countries. She appears 
to have been successful in improving 
the administration of justice, amelio¬ 
rated the condition of the serfs, con¬ 
structed canals, founded the Russian 
Academy, and in a variety of ways con¬ 
tributed to the enlightenment and pros¬ 
perity of the country. Her enthusiasm 
for reform, however, was summarily 
checked by the events of the French 
revolution; and the dissipation and ex¬ 
travagance of her court were such that 
there w r as even a danger of its ex¬ 
hausting the empire. She died in 1796. 

CATHARINE, St., in the Roman 
hagiology there are six saints of this 
name, of whom only two are of im¬ 
portance:—(1) St. Catharine, a virgin 
of Alexandria who suffered martyrdom 
in the 4th century. She is represented 
with a wheel; and the legend of her 
marriage with Christ has been painted 
by several of the first masters. (2) St. 
Catharine of Siena, born in 1347, who 
was preternaturally pious from her 
birth, and at six years of age was given 
to self-castigation and other penances. 
Urban VI. and Gregory XI. sought her 
advice, and in 1460—80 years after her 
death—she was canonized. Her poems 
and letters have been published. 

CATHARINE DE’ MEDICI (da-med'i- 
che), wife of Henry II., king of France, 
born at Florence in 1519, the only 
daughter of Lorenzo de’ Medici, duke 
of Urbino, and the niece of Pope Clement 
VII. She was married to the Duke of 
Orleans, afterward Henry II., in 1533, 
but had little or no influence at the 
French court either during the reign of 
her husband, who was under the influ¬ 
ence of his mistress Diana de Poitiers, 
or during the reign of her eldest son, 
Francis II., who, in consequence of his 
marriage with Mary Stuart, was de¬ 
voted to the party of the Guises. The 
death of Francis placed the reins of 
government during the minority of her 
son Charles IX., in her hands. Waver- 





CATHARINE HOWARD 


CATHOLIC CHURCH 


ing between the Guises on one side, who 
had put themselves at the head of the 
Catholics, and Cond6 and Coligny on the 
other, who had become very powerful 
by the aid of the Protestants, she played 
off one faction against the other in the 
hope of increasing her own power; and 
the thirty years of civil war which fol¬ 
lowed were mainly due to her. Her 
influence with Charles IX. was through¬ 
out of the worst kind, and the massacre 
of St. Bartholomew’s Day was largely 
her work. After the death of Charles 
IX., in 1574, her third son succeeded as 
Henry III., and her mischievous in¬ 
fluence continued. She died in 1589, 
shortly before the assassination of Henry 
III. Of her two daughters, Elisabeth 
married Philip II. of Spain, and Mar¬ 
garet of Valois married Henry of Na¬ 
varre, afterward Henry IV. 

CATHARINE HOWARD, Queen of 
England, fifth wife of Henry VIII., 
daughter of Lord Edmund Howard, son 
of the Duke of Norfolk; born 1522. Her 
beauty and vivacity induced the king 
to marry her in 1540, but her conquest 
appears to have been of a dubious kind 
both before and after marriage, and she 
was charged in 1541 with adultery. 
Her paramours Derham and Culpepper 
were beheaded, and two months later 
(Feb., 1542), she shared the same fate. 

CATHARINE OF ARAGON, Queen of 
England, the youngest daughter of 
Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of 
Castile, was born in 1485. In 1501 she 
was married to Arthur, prince of Wales, 
son of Henry VII. Her husband dying 
about five months after, the king, un¬ 
willing to return her dowry, caused her 
to be contracted to his remaining son, 
Henry, and a dispensation was procured 
from the pope for that purpose. On 
his accession to the throne as Henry 
VIII. in 1509 she was crowned with him, 
and despite the inequality of their ages 
retained her ascendency with the king 
for nearly twenty years. Her children, 
however, all died in infancy, excepting 
Mary, and on the advent of Anne Boleyn 
Henry affected to doubt the legality of 
his union with Catharine. He applied 
therefore to Rome for a divorce, but the 
attitude of the papal court ultimately 
provoked him to throw off his submission 
to it, and declare himself head of the 
English church. In 1532 he married 
Anne Boleyn; upon which Catharine, no 
longer considered queen of England, 
retired to Ampthill in Bedfordshire. 
She died in January, 1536. 

CATHARINE OF BRAGANZA, wife 
of Charles II., king of England, and 
daughter of John IV., king of Portugal, 
was born in 1638. In 1693 she returned 
to Portugal, where, in 1704, she was 
made, regent, and in the conduct of 
affairs during the war with Spain 
showed marked ability. She died in 
1705. 

CATHARINE PARR, sixth and last 
wife of Henry VIII. of England, was 
born in 1512, and had had two husbands 
before she became Henry’s queen in 
1543. After the death of the king she 
espoused the Lord-admiral Lord Thomas 
Seymour, uncle to Edward VI.; but the 
union was an unhappy one. She died 
in 1548. 


CATHAR'TICS, a general name for 

purgative medicines. 

CATHAY', an old name of China. 

CATHE'DRAL, the principal church 
of a diocese, so called from its possessing 
the episcopal chair or cathedra. This 
is really what distinguishes a cathedral 
from other churches, though most 
cathedrals are also larger and more 
elaborate structures than ordinary 
churches, and have various dignitaries 
and functionaries connected with them. 
The cathedral establishments in Eng¬ 
land regularly consist of a dean and 
chapter, presided over by the bishop, 
the chapter being composed of a certain 
number of canons. The dean and chap¬ 
ter meet in the chapter-house of the 


often of great size (St. Peter’s, Rome, 
is 613 feet long and 450 across the tran¬ 
septs). Among the most notable cathe¬ 
drals are St. Peter’s, the largest of all, 
founded 1450; the cathedral at Milan, 
founded in 1386, built of white marble; 
the cathedral at Florence, begun about 
1294, one of the finest specimens of the 
Italian-Gothic style; Cologne Cathedral, 
commenced in 1248 (and only finished 
recently); Notre Dame at Paris begun 
1163; and those of Amiens, Chartres, 
and Rheims. The most noteworthy 
English cathedrals are St. Paul’s, 
London (1675-1711), in the Renaissance 
style, and those of Canterbury, Ely, 
Exeter, Lichfield, Lincoln, Norwich, 
Salisbury, Wells, Westminster, and 



Plan of Amiens Cathedral. 

A, Apsidal aisle. BB, Outer aisles of 
choir. 

FG, Transepts. H, Central tower. 

IJ, Western turrets. 

M. Principal or western doorway. 

NN, Western side doors. 

PQ, North and south aisles of choir. 

RRR, Chapels. 

TTJ, North and south aisles of naive. 

cathedral; in them the property of the 
cathedral is vested, and they nominally 
elect the bishop on a conge d'elire from 
the crown. There are often a certain 
number of honorary canons, also '‘minor 
canons” who assist in the performance 
of the choral services, choristers, etc. 
As regards architecture cathedrals 
naturally vary much. Those in Eng¬ 
land are almost all in the Gothic style, 
cruciform or cross-shaped in arrange¬ 
ment, and having connected with them 
a chapter-house, side chapels (varying 
in number and position), cloisters, 
crypt, etc. This style and arrangement 
are also common on the continent of 
Europe and in most modern cathedrals' 
but the Romanesque, Renaissance, and 
Byzantine styles of architecture are also 
employed. Many cathedrals furnish 
the most magnificent examples of the 
architecture of the middle ages; and as 
they were intended to accommodate 
great numbers of people, and to exhibit 
imposing religious services, they, are 



Plan of Wells Cathedral. 

A, Apse or apsis. B, Altar, altar-platform, 
and altar-steps. DE, Eastern or lesser tran¬ 
sept. FG, Western or greater transept. H, 
Central tower. IJ, Western towers. K, North 
porch. L, Library or register. M, Principal 
or western doorway. NN, Western side doors. 
O, Cloister yard or garth. PQ, North and 
south aisles of choir. RS, East and west aisles 
of transept, TU. North and south aisles of 
nave. RR, Chapels. V, Rood screen or organ 
loft. W, Altar of Lady chapel. 

York. The cathedrals of Glasgow and 
Kirkwall are the only entire cathedrals 
in Scotland, exclusive of modern edifices. 

CATHERINE. See Catharine. 

CATHERWOOD, Mary Hartwell, an 
American novelist born in Ohio in 1847, 
died 1902. Her stories are chiefly con¬ 
cerned with the early days of the Middle 
West. 

CATHETOM'ETER, an instrument for 
measuring small differences of level be¬ 
tween two points; in its simplest form, 
a vertical graduated rod, upon which 
slides a horizontal telescope. With the 
telescope the observer sights the two 
objects under examination, and the dis¬ 
tance on the graduated rod moved over 
by the telescope is the measure of the 
distance of height between the two 
objects. 

CATH'OLIC APOSTOLIC CHURCH. 

See Irvingites. 

CATHOLIC CHURCH, the universal 
church, the whole body of true believers 
in Christ; but the term is often used as 
































CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION 


CATTLE 


S uivalent to the Roman or Western 
lurch. See Roman Catholic Church. 
CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION, i.e., the 
abolition of those civil and ecclesiastical 
restraints to which the Roman Catholics 
of Great Britain, and particularly of 
Ireland, were once subjected. By the 
statutes of William III. Roman Catho¬ 
lics were forbidden to hold property in 
land, and their spiritual instructors 
were open to the penalties of felony; 
and although latterly these restrictions 
had not been enforced, they iemained 
unrepealed in England until 1778. The 
proposal to repeal similar enactments 
on the Scotch statute-books was de¬ 
layed by the strenuous opposition of the 
Protestant associations, in connection 
with which the Lord Gordon riots 
occurred. In 1791, however, a bill was 
passed allowing Roman Catholics who 
took the oath of allegiance to hold 
landed property, enter the legal pro¬ 
fession, and enjoy freedom of education. 
In Ireland the Roman Catholics had 
been even more unjustly treated. Their 
public worship was proscribed, all 
offices and the learned professions were 
closed against them, they were deprived 
of the guardianship of their children, 
and if they had landed estates they were 
forbidden to marry Protestants. Burke 
and a strong body of followers took up 
their cause, and in 1792 and 1793 the 
worst of the disabilities were removed 
by the Irish parliament. Restraints on 
worship, education, and disposition of 
property were removed; they were ad¬ 
mitted to the franchise, and to some of 
the higher civil and military offices, and 
to the honors and endowments of the 
Dublin University. 

CATHOLIC KNIGHTS OF AMERICA, 
a Roman Catholic fraternal order 
founded in 1877. It is the pioneer of the 
Roman Catholic assessment insurance 
organizations, and the only one which 
admits women to membership on the 
same footing as men. There are now 
600 branches in the order, with a total 
membership of about 25,000; it also has 
a uniform rank, with a membership of 
2000. It has paid about } 15,500,000 
to the beneficiaries of its deceased 
members. 

CATHOLIC MAJESTY, a title which 
Pope Alexander VI. gave to the kings of 
Spain, in memory of the complete ex¬ 
pulsion of the Moors from Spain in 1491 
by Ferdinand of Aragon. But even 
before that time, and especially after 
the council at Toledo in 589, several 
Spanish kings are said to have borne 
this title. 

CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMER¬ 
ICA, founded at Washington, D. C., in 
1887, and was opened in 1889. The fac¬ 
ulties at present organized are those of 
theology, philosophy, law, and tech¬ 
nology. Its library contains approxi¬ 
mately 32,000 volumes, exclusive of 
pamphlets. 

CATHOLIC YOUNG MEN’S NATION¬ 
AL UNION, a society of young men 
among Roman Catholics, organized at 
Newark, N. J., in 1875. It has over 
50,000 members, distributed in more 
than 300 societies. 

CAT'ILINE (Lucius Sergius Catillna), 
a Roman conspirator, of patrician rank, 
born about 108 b.c. In his youth he 


attached himself to the party of Sulla, 
but his physical strength, passionate 
nature, and unscrupulous daring soon 
gained him an independent reputation. 
Despite the charges of having killed his 
brother-in-law and murdered his wife 
and son, he was elected praetor in b.c. 
68, and governor of Africa in 67. In 
b.c. 66 he returned to Rome to contest 
the consulship, but was disqualified by 
an impeachment for maladministration 
in his province. Urged on by his neces¬ 
sities as well as his ambition, he-entered 
into a conspiracy with other disaffected 
nobles. The plot, however, was re¬ 
vealed to Cicero, and measures were at 
once taken to defeat it. Thwarted by 
Cicero at every turn, and driven from 
the senate by the orator’s bold denun¬ 
ciations, Catiline fled, and put himself at 
the head of a large but ill-armed follow¬ 
ing. The news of the suppression of the 
conspiracy and execution of the ring¬ 
leaders at Rome diminished his forces, 
and he led the rest toward Gaul. 
Metellus Celer threw himself between 
the rebels and their goal, while Antonius 
ressed upon their rear, and, driven to 
ay, Catiline turned upon the pursuing 
army and perished fighting (62 b.c.). 

CATLIN, George, a writer on the 
American Indians, born in Pennsylvania 
1796, died 1872. After practising as a 
lawyer for two years he set up at New 
York as a. portrait-painter, and in 1832 
commenced special studies of Indian 
types, residing many years among them 
both in N. and S. America. In 1840 he 
went to Europe, and subsequently in¬ 
troduced three parties of American 
Indians to European courts. His finely 
illustrated works are: Manners, Cus¬ 
toms, and Condition of the N. American 
Indians (1841); North American Port¬ 
folio (1844); Eight Years’ Travel in 
Europe (1848); Last Rambles Among 
the Indians, etc. (1868). 

CATMINT, or CATNIP, a plant of the 
natural order Labiatae, not uncommon 
in England, scarce in Scotland and Ire¬ 
land, and widely diffused throughout 
Europe, N. America, etc. It grows 
erect to a height of 2 or 3 feet, has 
whorls of rose-tinged, whitish flowers, 
and stalked, downy, heart-shaped leaves. 
It has much the same fascination for 
cats as valerian root. 

CATO, Marcus Porcius, the Censor, 
a celebrated Roman, born 234 b.c. at 
Tusculum. He served his first cam¬ 
paign, at the age of seventeen, under 
Fabius Maximus, was present at the 
siege of Capua in 214 b.c. ; and five years 
after fought under the same commander 
at the siege of Tarentum. He rose 
rapidly, accompanied Scipio to Sicily 
as quaestor in b.c. 204, became an aedile 
in 199, and in 198 was chosen praetor, 
and appointed to the province of Sar¬ 
dinia. Three years later he gained the 
consulship, and in 194 for his brilliant 
campaign in Spain obtained the honor 
of a triumph. His election to the cen¬ 
sorship in 184 set an official seal to his 
efforts, the unsparing severity of which 
has made his name proverbial. From 
that year until his death, in 149, he held 
no public office, though zealously con- 
tinuing his unofficial labors for the state. 
His hostility to Carthage, the destruc¬ 
tion of which he advocated in every 


speech made by him in the forum, was 
the most striking feature of his closing 
years. His incessant “Delenda est 
Carthago” (Carthage must be destroyed) 
did much to further the third Punic war. 

CATO, Marcus Porcius (called Cato 
of Utica, the place of his death, to dis¬ 
tinguish him from the Censor, his great¬ 
grandfather), a distinguished Roman, 
born 95 b.c. He formed an intimacy 
with the Stoic Antipater of Tyre, and 
ever remained true to the principles of 
the Stoic philosophy. He distinguished 
himself as a volunteer in the war against 
Spartacus, served as military tribune 
in Macedonia in b.c. 67, was made 
qusestor in b.c. 65. His rigorous re¬ 
forms won him general respect, and in 
b.c. 63 he was chosen tribune of the 
people. On the breach between Pom- 
pev and Caesar he threw in his lot with 
Pompey, and guarded the stores at 
Dyrrhachium, while Pompey pushed 
on to Pharsalia. After receiving news 
of Pompey’s defeat he sailed to Cyrene 
and effected a junction with Metellus 
Scipio at Utica, in b.c. 47. He took 
command of that city, but its defense 
appearing hopeless after the defeat of 
Scipio at Thapsus, he determined on 
suicide, and after spending some time 
in the perusal of the Phaedo of Plato, 
stabbed himself with his sword. His 
wounds were bound up by his attend¬ 
ants, but he tore off the bandages and 
died, b.c. 46. 

CAT'S-EYE, a mineral, a variety of 
quartz, very hard and semi-transparent, 
and from certain points exhibiting a 
yellow opalescent radiation or chatoyant 
appearance, somewhat resembling a 
cat’s eye. 

CATSKILL MOUNTAINS, a fine range 

of mountains in New York state. They 
lie on the w. side of and nearly parallel 
to the Hudson, from which their base is, 
at the nearest point, 8 miles distant. 
The two most elevated peaks are Round 
Top and High Peak; the former 3804 
feet, the latter 3718 feet high. 

CATTLE, a term applied in the U. 
States to horned animals, horses, and 
sheep, and to almost all domestie 
mammals. Specifically, however, the 



Shorthorn. 


term applies to bovine animals used for 
purposes of food. The principal breeds 
of beef cattle in Great Britain and the 
U. States are the Shorthorn, Hereford, 
Galloway, Devon, and Aberdeen-Angus. 
These breeds all originated in Great 
Britain, and for the most part took their 
names from the county or district 
whence the came. Alvord says: “The 
cattle which have been most famous as 
a breed in England and America, which 
have received the longest and closest 





CATTLE PLAGUE 


CAUSTIC 


attention of breeders and improvers, 
which have commanded prices, singly 
and in herds, far above all others, and 
which have made the greatest impres¬ 
sion upon the live stock of both coun¬ 
tries during the 19th century, are the 
Shorthorns or Durhams.” The name 



Hereford. 


Shorthorns was probably given to dis¬ 
tinguish them from the rival race of 
Blackwell’s Longhorns, which they soon 
surpassed. They are red and white 
cattle, the colors being variously blended 
and often roan, rectangular in outline 
and having horns of moderate length. 
They are notable for early maturity, 
beauty of form, quick fattening qualities 
and minimum amount of waste in 
slaughtering. Although unsurpassed 
as beef cattle, many of the cows are 
good milkers, the best of any of the 
strictly beef breeds. The Herefords, 
originated in the county of Hereford, 
may be described as red with white on 
face, chest, belly, feet, and over the tops 
of the shoulders. They are close rivals 
or the equals of Shorthorns as beef 
cattle. The breeds of dairy cattle most 
common in the U. States and England 
at the present time are Ayrshire, Hol¬ 
stein, Guernsey, Jersey, Red Poll, and 
Shorthorns. The Jersey and Guernsey 
breeds were both originated in the 
Channel Islands. 

Guernseys are rather larger than the 
Jerseys, stronger boned, and are claimed 
to be hardier. They are light in color, 
with darker shades approaching brown, 



Jersey. 

and have a yellow skin. The milk of 
both breeds is unusually rich in fat, the 
fat-globules being large and separating 
readily in creaming. The Guernseys 
are liberal milkers. The average cow 
is expected to produce 5000 pounds 
of milk and 300 pounds of butter a 
year without high feeding. There 
are records of several herds which have 
averaged over 6000 pounds of milk and 
350 pounds of butter a year. Individual 
cows have produced 10,000, and nearly 
13,000 pounds, of milk, and 500 to 700 
pounds of butter a year. The Jerseys 
are the smallest of the better dairy 

P. E.—16 


breeds, though in the U. States they 
have been considerably increased in size. 
Good herds produce from 3500 to 4500 
pounds of milk a year, and several herd 
records show averages of 6000 and 7000 
pounds per cow. Single cows produce 
1000, 1200 pounds of butter, and even 
more. There are numerous records of 
25 to 30 pounds of butter a week, and 
individual records run all the way from 
600 to 800, and even 1000 pounds of 
butter in a year. The Holsteins, or 
Holstein-Friesians, of north Holland 
and Friesland, are black and white, 
irregularly marked, but not mixed, 
large in frame, strong, and usually in 
good flesh. It is not unusual for a cow 
to give more than her own weight in 
milk every month for ten or twelve 



Holstein. 


consecutive months, and there are 
numerous instances of yields of 100 
pounds or more a day, and 20,000 to 
30,000 pounds a year, although 40 to 60 
pounds a day, or 7500 to 8000 pounds a 
year, is considered an average. 

CATTLE PLAGUE, or MURRAIN, a 
fever which attacks cattle and sheep 
and which is almost always fatal. It 
does not occur in the U. States, Texas 
fever, with which it is sometimes con¬ 
fused, being a totally different disease. 
The disease lasts from 5 to 7 days. 
Murrain is very ancient and has been 
described by Roman writers. 

CATUL'LUS, Caius (or Quintus) Val¬ 
erius, a famous Roman lyric poet, born 
probably b.c. 94, at Verona, died prob¬ 
ably about b.c. 54. Almost all the 
known details of his life are derived by 
inference from his works, and relate to 
such matters as his passion for Lesbia, 
his journey to Bithynia, and voyage 
home in his yacht, his pleasant villa on 
Lake Benacus, etc. He was the first of 
the Romans who successfully caught 
the Greek lyric spirit, and gave to the 
Roman literature its most genuine songs. 

CAUCA (kou'ka), a S. American river 
in Colombia, an important tributary of 
the Magdalena; length 600-700 miles. 
It gives its name to a department or 
state of Colombia; area, 52,000 sq. miles; 
pop. 450,000. 

CAUCASIAN RACE, a term intro¬ 
duced into ethnology by Blumenbach, 
in whose classification of mankind it 
was applied to one of the five great races 
into which all the different nations of the 
world were divided. Blumenbach 
believed this to be the original race 
from which the others were derived, 
and he gave it the epithet of Caucasian 
because he believed that its most typical 
form—which was also that of man in 
his highest physical perfection—was to 
be met with among the mountaineers of 
the Caucasus. In later classifications 


this “race” is usually divided into Aryan 
or Indo-European, and Semitic. Most 
of the tribes inhabiting the Caucasus 
belong to the Turanian class. 

CAU'CASUS, a chain of mountains 
which gives name to a lieutenancy under 
Russian government lying to the south¬ 
east of Russia Proper, between the 
Black Sea and the Caspian. The total 
area of the lieutenancy (including the 
district of Armenia, acquired in 1878) 
is 179,527 sq. miles, and the pop. about 
5,900,000. The Causasus chain of moun¬ 
tains traverses the lieutenancy from 
northwest to southeast through a length 
of 700 miles. It does not form a single 
chain, but is divided, at least for part of 
its length into two, three, or even four 
chains, which sometimes run parallel to 
one another, and sometimes meet and 
form mountain ganglions. The heights 
of the chief summits are Elbruz, 18,572 
feet; Koshtan-tau, 17,123; Dych-tau, 
16,928; Kasbek, 16,546. 

CAU'CUS, a term, for a private meet¬ 
ing of citizens to agree upon candidates 
to be proposed for election to offices or 
to concert measures for supporting a 
party. 

CAUL, a popular name for a mem¬ 
brane investing the viscera, such as the 
peritoneum or part of it, or the pericard¬ 
ium; also a portion of the amnion or 
membrane enveloping the fetus, some¬ 
times encompassing the head of a child 
when born. This caul was supposed to 
predict great prosperity to the person 
born with it, and to be an infallible 
preservative against drowning, as well 
as to convey the gift of eloquence. 

CAU'LIFLOWER, a garden variety of 
cabbage, in which cultivation has caused 
the inflorescence to assume when young 
the form of a compact fleshy head, 
which is highly esteemed as a table 
vegetable. 

CAULKING (kak'ing), of a ship, 
driving a quantity of oakum into the 
seams of the planks in the ship’s decks 
or sides in order to prevent the entrance 
of water. After the oakum is driven 
very hard into these seams it is covered 
with hot melted pitch to keep the water 
from rotting it. 

CAUSALITY, a term of metaphysics 
which designates in general the idea 
of cause. See Cause. 

CAUSE, that which produces an 
effect; that from which anything pro¬ 
ceeds and without which it would not 
exist. In the system of Aristotle the 
word rendered by cause and its equiva¬ 
lents in modern language has a more 
extensive signification. He divides 
causes into four kinds: efficient, formal, 
material, and final. The efficient or 
first cause is the force or agency by 
which a result is produced; the formal, 
the means or instrument by which it is 
produced; the material, the substance 
from which it is produced; the final, 
the purpose or end for which it is pro¬ 
duced. In a general sense the term is 
used for the reason or motive that urges, 
moves, or impels the mind to act or 
decide. 

CAUSTIC, a name given to substances 
which have the property of burning, 
corroding, or disintegrating animal 
matter; or of combining with the prin¬ 
ciples of organized substances and 













CAUSTIC 


CAVOUR 


destroying their texture.—Lunar Caus¬ 
tic, a name given to nitrate of silver when 
cast into sticks for the use of surgeons, 
etc.—Caustic potash, the hydrate of 
potassium.—Caustic soda, protoxide of 
sodium. 

CAUSTIC, in optics, the name given 
to the curve to which the rays of light, 
reflected or refracted by another curve, 
are tangents. 

CAU'TERY, in surgery, the searing or 
burning of living flesh by a hot iron 
(actual cautery) or a caustic substance 
(potential cautery). 

CAUTION, a legal term signifying 
much the same as guarantee or security, 
now mostly used in Scots law. 

CAVAIGNAC (ka-van-yak), Louis 
Eugene, French general, born 1802, 
died 1857. Cavaignac in 1824 joined 
the 2d Regiment of Engineers, and 
being at Arras on the outbreak of the 
revolution of 1830 he was the first 
officer in his regiment to declare for the 
new order of things. In 1832 he was 
sent to Africa, where he remained for 
several years, and greatly distinguished 
himself. When the revolution of 1848 
broke out Cavaignac was appointed 
governor-general of Algeria; but on 
being elected a member of the Con¬ 
stituent Assembly he returned to Paris 
and was appointed minister of war. 
At the outbreak of the June insurrection 
Cavaignac was appointed dictator with 
unlimited powers. For three days Paris 
presented a dreadful scene of tumult 
and bloodshed. About 15,000 persons 
perished, and property was destroyed 
to the value of upward of SI,000,000. 
By the energy of Cavaignac, aided by 
the loyalty of the army and the National 
Guard, the insurrection was suppressed, 
and France saved from a threatened 
dissolution of all the bonds of society. 
Toward the close of the year he became 
a candidate for the presidency of the 
republic, but was defeated, and Louis 
Napoleon was preferred to the office. 
On 20th December he resigned his dic¬ 
tatorship. After the coup d’etat of 2d 
December, 1851, he was arrested and 
conveyed to the fortress of Ham, but 
was liberated after about a month’s 
detention. In 1852 and in 1857 he was 
elected member for Paris of the legis¬ 
lative body, but on both occasions was 
incapacitated from taking his seat by 
refusing to take the oath of allegiance 
to the emperor. 

CAVALIER (ka-va-ler'), a horseman, 
especially an armed horseman; applied 
in history to the partisans of Charles I., 
as opposed to Roundheads, the ad¬ 
herents to the parliament. 

CAV'ALRY, a body of troops which 
serve on horseback, one of the three 
great classes of troops, and a formidable 
power in the hands of a leader who 
knows how to employ it with effect. 
Its adaptation to speedy movements is a 
great advantage, which enables a com¬ 
mander to avail himself immediately 
of a decisive moment, when the enemy 
exposes a weak point, or when disorder 
appears in his ranks. It is a very im¬ 
portant instrument in completing the 
defeat of an enemy, in disconcerting him 
by a sudden attack, or overthrowing 
him by a powerful shock. It is very 
serviceable in protecting the wings and 


center of an army, for escorts, for 
blockading, for intercepting the supplies, 
of the enemy, for procuring intelli¬ 
gence, for covering a retreat, for forag¬ 
ing, etc. 

CAVALRY AND LIGHT ARTILLERY 
SCHOOL, a school for officers of the 
cavalry and light artillery arms of the 
United States Army. The curriculum 
of the school includes all that pertains 
to the art and science of war, so far as 
regards the cavalry and artillery. Im¬ 
provements in equipment and tactics, 
or the application of new principles 
affecting either branch of the service, 
are here tested, reported upon, and 
formulated to the army at large. The 
school is located at Fort Riley, Kan., 
and is governed by special regulations 
of the War Department. 

CAV'AN, an inland Irish county in 
Ulster; area, 477,399 acres, of which 
three-fourths are arable. Pop. 97,368. 

CAVE, or CAVERN, an opening of 
some size in the solid crust of the earth 
beneath the surface. Caves are prin¬ 
cipally met with in limestone rocks, 
sometimes in sandstone and in volcanic 
rocks. Some of them have a very grand 
or picturesque appearance, such as 
Fingal’s Cave in Staffa; others, such as 
the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, which 
incloses an extent of about 40 miles of 
subterranean windings, are celebrated 
for their great size and subterranean 
waters. Caves in which the bones of 
extinct animals are found owe their 
origin, for the most part, to the ac¬ 
tion of rain-water on limestone rocks. 
The deposit contained in them us¬ 
ually consists of clay, sand, and gravel 
combined. In this are embedded the 
animal remains, and stones either angu¬ 
lar or rounded. Some of the remains 
found in European caverns belong to 
animals now found only in the tropical 
or subtropical regions, and others are 
the remains of animals now living in 
more northerly areas; others, again, are 
the relics of extinct animals. Among 
the latter class of animals are the cave 
bear and lion, the mammoth and masto¬ 
don, species of rhinoceros, etc. Of 
others that have only migrated may be 
mentioned the reindeer, which is no 
longer found in Southern Europe; and 
the hyena, found in the Gibraltar 
caves, which now lives in south Africa. 
The ibex, the chamois, and a species of 
ground squirrel, are shown to have once 
lived in the Dordogne, but are now 
found only on the heights of the Alps 
and Pyrenees. Thus it is evident that 
the geographical conditions of the 
country must have been very different 
from what they are now. Man’s rela¬ 
tion to these extinct animals, and his 
existence at the time these changes took 
place, are demonstrated by such dis¬ 
coveries as those of human bones and 
worked flints beneath layers of hyena 
droppings. 

CA'VEAT, in law, a process in a court 
to stop proceedings, as to prevent the 
enrolment of a decree in chancery in 
order to gain time to present a petition 
of appeal to the lord-chancellor. In 
the U. States this name is given to a 
notice lodged in the patent-office by a 
person who wishes to patent an inven¬ 
tion, but desires to be protected till he 


has perfected it. It stands good for a 
year. 

CAVE-MEN, prehistoric races who 
lived in caves. That they were at a low 
state of civilization, though possessed 
of some artistic faculty, is evidenced 
by the fact that they were ignorant of 
the metals, of pottery, and of agricul¬ 
ture, and had no domestic animals. 
Their chief food seems to have been the 
reindeer, and their manner of life was 
probably somewhat similar to that of the 
Eskimos. 

CAVENDISH, or CANDISH, Thomas, 

an English circumnavigator in the reign 
of Elizabeth; born about 1555, died 
1592. Having collected three small 
vessels for the purpose of making a pred- 



Thomas Cavendish. 


atory voyage to the Spanish colonies, 
he sailed from Plymouth in 1586, took 
and destroyed many vessels, ravaged 
the coasts of Chili, Peru, and New Spain, 
and returned by the Cape of Good Hope, 
having circumnavigated the globe in 
two years and forty-nine days, the 
shortest period in which it had then been 
effected. In 1591 he set sail on a similar 
expedition, during which he died. 

CAVIARE (kav'i-ar), the roes of cer¬ 
tain large fish prepared and salted. 
The best is made from the roes of the 
sterlet and sturgeon, caught in the lakes 
or rivers of Russia. 

CAVTDAi, the guinea-pig tribe. See 
Cavy. 

CAVITE (ka-ve'ta), a town in the 
island of Luzon, one of the Philippines; 
situated on the Bay of Manilla, about 11 
miles s. w. of Manilla. It gives name to 
a province with a pop. of 57,000. Pop. 
of town about 7000. 

CAVOUR (ka-vor'), Count Camillo 
Benso di, a distinguished Italian states¬ 
man, was born at Turin in 1809 or 1810, 
died 1861. He became a member of the 
Sardinian Chamber of Deputies in 1849, 
and the following year minister of com¬ 
merce and agricullture. In 1852 he be¬ 
came premier, and not long afterward 
took an active part in cementing an 
alliance with Great Britain and France, 
and making common cause w’ith these 
powers against Russia, during the 
Crimean War. The attitude, however, 
thus taken by Sardinia could not fail to 
prove offensive to Austria. A collision, 
therefore, was inevitable, resulting in 
the campaign of 1859. The intimate 
connection formed at that time with 
France, who lent her powerful assistance 
in the prosecution of the war, was 








CAVY 


CECILIA 


mainly due to the agency of Cavour, 
who was accused by some on this 
occasion of having purchased the assist¬ 
ance of Napoleon III. by unduly coun¬ 
tenancing his ambitious projects. In 
1860 Garibaldi’s expedition to Sicily 



Count Cavour. 


took place; but toward this and the 
subsequent movements of the Italian 
liberator Count Cavour was forced to 
maintain an apparent coldness. He 
lived to see the meeting of the first 
Italian parliament, which decreed Victor 
Emmanuel king of Italy. 

CA'VY, the popular name for a genus 
of rodent animals, family Cavidse, char¬ 
acterized by molars without roots, fore¬ 
feet with five toes, hinder with three, 
and the absence of a tail and clavicles. 
They are natives of tropical America, 
the most familiar example of this genus 
being the guinea-pig. 

CAWNPORE', a town, India, United 
Provinces, on the right bank of the 
Ganges, which is here about a mile wide, 
130 miles n.w. from Allahabad, 628 
miles n.w. of Calcutta, and 266 miles 
s.e. of Delhi. Pop. 197,170. 

In 1857 the native regiments stationed 
here mutinied and marched off, placing 


agreed to; but after the European 
troops had embarked in boats on the 
Ganges, they were treacherously fired 
on by the rebels; many were killed, and 
the remainder conveyed back to the 
city, where the men were massacred 
and the women and children placed in 
confinement. The approach of General 
Havelock to Cawnpore roused the brutal 
instincts of the Nana, and he ordered 
his hapless prisoners to be slaughtered, 
and their bodies to be thrown into a well. 
The following day he was obliged, by 
the victorious progress of Havelock, to 
retreat to Bithoor. 

CAXAMARCA, or CAJAMARCA (ka- 

Aa-mar'ka), a department and town, 
Peru; area of the department about 
14,200 sq. miles; pop. 442,412. The 
town is situated about 70 miles from 
the Pacific Ocean, 280 n. Lima. Pop. 
18,400. 

CAXTON, William, the introducer of 
the art of printing into Britain, was born 
in the Weald of Kent about 1422, died 
at Westminster 1491. He had trans¬ 
lated the popular mediaeval romance 
Le Recueil des Histoires de Troye 
(Collection of the Histories of Troy), 
and in order to multiply copies he 
learned the newly-discovered art of 
printing. It was printed either at 
Cologne or Bruges about 1474, and is the 
earliest specimen of typography in the 
English language. The Game and Playe 
of the Chesse, Bruges, 1475, is the second 
English book printed. In 1476 he 
returned to England, and in 1477 
printed at Westminster The Dictes and 
Sayings of the Philosophers, the first 
book printed in England. In fourteen 
years he printed nearly 80 separate 
books, nearly all of folio size, some of 
which passed through two editions, and a 
few through three. He was buried in the 
church of St. Margaret’s, Westminster. 

CAYENNE PEPPER, or CAPSICUM, 
the name given to the powder formed 



Cawnpore. 


themselves under the command of the 
Rajah of Bithoor, the notorious Nana 
Sahib. General Wheeler, the com¬ 
mander of the European forces, de¬ 
fended his position for some days, was at 
length induced to surrender to the rebels 
on condition of his party being allowed 
to quit the place uninjured. This was 


of the dried and ground fruits, and more 
especially the seeds, of various species 
of Capsicum. It is used as a condiment 
to improve the flavor of food, aid diges¬ 
tion, and prevent flatulence. In medi¬ 
cine it is used as a stimulent, and ,is a 
valuable gargle for a relaxed throat. 
See Capsicum. 


CAYMAN. See Caiman. 

CAYVAN, Georgia, an American 
actress born at Bath, Me., in 1858. She 
made her debut as Hebe in Pinafore at 
Boston in 1879. In 1880 her first 
success as an actress was made in Hazel 
Kirke, and until her retirement in 1897 
she played in various society plays and 
melodramas. 

CEARA (sa-a-ra/), a state on the 
northern coast of Brazil; area, 50,247 
sq. miles. Pop. of state, 805,687^ of 
town Ceara, 40,902. 

CEBU (tha-bo'), one of the Philippine 
Islands, lying between Luzon and Min¬ 
danao, 135 miles long, with an extreme 
width of 30 miles. Sugar cultivation 
and the manufacture of abaca are the 
chief industries. Pop. 320,000. The 
town of Cebu, on the eastern coast of the 
island, the oldest Spanish settlement on 
the Philippines, is a place of considerable 
trade, and has a cathedral and several 
churches 

CECIL (ses'il), Robert, Earl of Salis¬ 
bury, English statesman, second son of 
William Cecil, Lord Burleigh, born 



William Cecil, Lord Burleigh. 


about 1563. On the death of Sir Francis 
Walsingham he succeeded him as prin¬ 
cipal secretary, and continued to be a 
confidential minister of Queen Eliza¬ 
beth to the end of her reign. In 1608 
Lord Salisbury was made lord high- 
treasurer, an office which he held till his 
death in 1612.—William, Lord Burleigh, 
eminent English statesman, was the son 
of Richard Cecil, master of the robes 
to Henry VIII., and was born at Bourne, 
in Lincolnshire, in 1520, died 1598. 
He held no public office during the 
reign of Mary, and by extraordinary 
caution managed to escape persecution. 
On the accession of Elizabeth he was 
appointed privy-councillor and secre¬ 
tary of state, and during all the rest of 
his life he was at the helm of affairs. 
On the suppression of the northern 
rebellion in 1571 Elizabeth raised him 
to the peerage by the title of Baron 
Burleigh. Much of the glory of the 
reign of Elizabeth is due to the counsels 
and measures of Cecil. His character 
in private life was very attractive. 

CECIL'IA, Saint, the patron saint of 
music, who has been falsely regarded as 
the inventress of the organ, and who is 
said to have suffered martyrdom a.d. 
230, although other dates are given. 
In the Roman Catholic Church her 
festival (Nov. 22) is made the occasion 
of splendid music. Her story forms one 
of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and 






















CEDAR 


CELLULOID 


Dryden in his Alexander’s Feast, and 
Pope in his Ode on St. Cecilia’s Day, 
have sung her praises. Raphael, Domeni- 
chino, Dolce, and Mignard, have rep¬ 
resented her in celebrated paintings. 

CE'DAR, a tree which forms fine 
woods on the mountains of Syria and 
Asia Minor. It is an evergreen, grows 
to a great size, and is remarkable for 
its durability. Of the famous cedars of 



Cedar of Lebanon. 

Lebanon comparatively few now remain, 
and the tree does not grow in any other 
part of Palestine. The most celebrated 
group is situated not far from the village 
of Tripoli, at an elevation of about 6000 
feet above the sea. The circumference 
of the twelve largest trees here varies 
from about 18 to 47 feet. Cedar timber 
was formerly much prized, but in mod¬ 
ern times is not regarded as of much 
value, perhaps from the trees not being 
of sufficient age. The name is given 
also to the deodar which is indeed re¬ 
garded by many botanists as a mere 
variety of the cedar of Lebanon, and 
which produces excellent timber. It 
is a native of India, and is a large and 
handsome tree, growing in the Hima¬ 
layas to the height of 150 feet, with a 
circumference of 30. It has wide- 
spreading branches, which droop a little 
at the extremities. The leaves are 
tufted or solitary, larger than those of 
the cedar of Lebanon and very numer¬ 
ous, of a dark-bluish green, and covered 
with a glaucous bloom. The cones are 
rather larger than those of the Lebanon 
cedar, and very resinous. The wood is 
well adapted for building purposes, 
being compact and very enduring. 

CEDAR RAPIDS, a flourishing town 
in Iowa, on Red Cedar River, with large 
railway machine-shops and numerous 
industrial establishments. Pop. 30,000. 

CEILING, the inner covering of a 
room, apartment, hall, or other en¬ 
closure. Ceilings may be decorated in 
various ways, by paintings, sculpture 
in bas relief, stucco, or by those curved 
lines called in the Pompeiian style. 
Ceilings, especially of domes, or dome¬ 
like structures may be made in glass. 
Famous ceilings are those of numerous 
churches in Europe, as St. Mark’s in 
Venice, and the Byzantine churches of 
Constantinople. 

CELEBES (sel'e-bez), one of the larger 
islands of the Indian Archipelago, be¬ 
tween Borneo on the w. and the Moluc¬ 


cas on the e. Gold is found in all the 
valleys of the north peninsula, which 
abounds in sulphur. Copper occurs at 
various points, and in Macassar tin also. 
Diamonds and other precious stones are 
found. The maritime districts are in¬ 
habited by Malays; the Peninsula of 
Macassar is occupied by Bugis and 
Macassars. Mandhars dwell in the w. 
of the island, and the mountainous 
regions in the interior, especially in the 
n., are inhabited by Alfoories. The 
inhabitants may be classed into two 
groups: the Mohammedan semi-civilized 
tribes, and the pagans, who are more or 
less savages. The capital is Macassar, in 
the s.w. of the island. Pop. estimated 
at 1,000,000. 

CEL'ERY, an umbelliferous plant. 
There are two varieties in cultivation, 
viz. red and white stalked, and of these 
many sub-varieties. Celery is commonly 
blanched by heaping up the soil about 
the plants. 

CEL'IBACY, the state of being celibate 
or unmarried; specially applied to the 
voluntary life of abstinence from mar¬ 
riage followed by many religious de¬ 
votees and by some orders of clergy, as 
those of the Roman Catholic Church. 
The ancient Egyptian priests preserved 
a rigid chastity; the priestesses of 
ancient Greece and Rome were pledged 
to perpetual virginity; and celibacy is 
the rule with the Buddhist priests of the 
East. Among Christians the earliest 
aspirants to the spiritual perfection 
supposed to be attainable through celib¬ 
acy were not ecclesiastics as such, but 
hermits and anchorites who aimed at 
superior sanctity. During the first three 
centuries the marriage of the clergy was 
freely permitted, but by the Council of 
Elvira (305) continence was enjoined 
on all who served at the altar. For 
centuries this subject led to many 
struggles in the church, but was finally 
settled by Gregory VII. positively for¬ 
bidding the marriage of the clergy. 
The Council of Trent (1593) confirmed 
this rule. In the Greek Church celibacy 
is not compulsory on the ordinary 
clergy. Protestants hold that there is no 
moral superiority in celibacy over mar¬ 
riage, and that the church has no right 
to impose such an obligation on any 
class of her ministers. 

CELL, a term of various applications. 
(1) Ecclesiastically it was sometimes 
applied to a lesser or subordinate re¬ 
ligious house, dependent upon a greater. 
The apartments or private dormitories 



Cells of round or oval form. 
a. Border of the cell or cell-wall; b, cell sub¬ 
stance; cc, nuclei; c(d, nucleoli. 

of monks and nuns are also called cells. 
The term cell is applied also to the part 
of the interior of a temple where the 
image of a god stood. (2) In electricity 
the term is applied to a single jar, bath, 
or . division of a compound vessel, con¬ 
taining a couple of plates, generally 


copper and zinc, united to their op¬ 
posites or to each other, usually by a 
wire. (3) In biol. a cell is a micro¬ 
scopically small semi-fluid portion of 
matter, consisting of a soft mass of 
living, contractile, jelly-like matter, and 
a central structure, consisting of a small, 
roundish body, called the nucleus, 
generally more solid than the rest of 
the cell, and which may have within it 
a still more minute body, the nucleolus. 
The cell substance or protoplasm (see 
Protoplasm) which surrounds the nu¬ 
cleus is an albuminous substance possess¬ 
ing fundamental vital properties, and 
believed to be the starting point of all 
animal and vegetable organisms. The 
cell-wall when present consists of an 
alteration of the external portion of the 
cell body, and is not a separate structure. 
All cells have but a very limited dura¬ 
tion, so the tissues are being constantly 
renewed. 

CELLA, part of a temple. See Cell. 

CELLINI (chel-le'ne), Benvenu'to, a 
sculptor, engraver, and goldsmith, was 
born at Florence in 1500, and died there 
in 1571 or 1572. Of a bold, honest, and 
open character, but vain and quarrel¬ 
some, he was often entangled in disputes 
which frequently cost his antagonists 
their lives. At the siege of Rome (if 
we believe his own account, given in his 
autobiography) he killed the Constable 
of Bourbon and the Prince of Orange. 
He was afterward imprisoned on the 
charge (probably false) of having stolen 
the jewels of the Papal crown, and with 
difficulty escaped execution. He then 
visited the court of Francis I. of France. 
He afterward returned to Florence, 
and under the patronage of Cosmo de’ 
Medici made a Perseus with the head 
of Medusa in bronze, which is still an 
ornament of one of the public squares; 
also a statue of Christ, in the chapel 
of the Pitti Palace, besides many ex¬ 
cellent dies for coins and medals. 

CELLULAR THEORY, in physiology, 
that theory which derives all vegetable 
and animal tissues from the union and 
metamorphosis of primitive cells. 

CELLULAR TISSUE, in physiology, 
a name for what is also called the areolar 
tissue. In botany, the term is applied 



to the soft substance of plants, com¬ 
posed of elementary vesicles or cells 
without woody or vascular tissues. 

CELL'ULOID, an artificial substance 
extensively used as a substitute for 



































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CELLULOSE 


CENTER OF OSCILLATION 


ivory, bone, hard rubber, coral, etc., 
having a close resemblance to these 
substances in hardness, elasticity, and 
texture. It is composed of cellulose or 
vegetable fibrine reduced by acids to 
pyroxyline (or gUn-cotton), camphor 
is then added, and the compound 
moulded by heat and pressure to the 
desired shape. It is used chiefly for such 
articles as buttons, handles for knives, 
forks, and umbrellas, billiard-balls, 
backs to brushes, piano keys, napkin- 
rings, opera-glass frames, etc. It can 
be variously colored. 

CELL'ULOSE, the substance of which 
the permanent cell-membranes of plants 
are always composed. It is closely 
allied to sugar, dextrin, or gum and 
starch, and is changed into the latter by 
heat, sulphuric acid, or caustic potash. 

CELTS, the earliest Aryan settlers in 
Europe according to the.common theory. 
They appear to have been driven west¬ 
ward by succeeding waves of Teutons, 
Slavonians, and others, but there are no 
means of fixing the periods at which any 
of these movements took place. Herod¬ 
otus mentions them as mixing with 
the Iberians who dwelt round the river 
Ebro in Spain. At the beginning of the 
historic period they were the predomi¬ 
nant race in Britain, Ireland, France, 
Belgium, Switzerland, N. Italy, Spain, 
and elsewhere. The Romans called 
them generally Galli, that is Gauls or 
Gael. They appear to have reached the 
zenith of their power in the 2d and 3d 
centuries b.c. Some tribes of them 
overrunning Greece, settled in a part of 
Asia Minor, to which the name of 
Galatia was given. They finally went 
down before the resistless power of 
Rome, and either became absorbed 
with the conquering races or were 
cooped up’in the extreme n.w. of Europe. 
At at early date the Celts divided into 
two great branches, speaking dialects 
widely differing from each other, but 
doubtless belonging to the same stock. 
One of these branches is the Gadhelic 
or Gaelic, represented by the Highland¬ 
ers of Scotland, the Celtic Irish, and the 
Manx; the other is the Cymric, repre¬ 
sented by the Welsh, the inhabitants of 
Cornwall, and those of Brittany. The 
Cornish dialect is now extinct. The sun 
seems to have been the principal object 
of worship among the Celts, and groves 
of oak and the remarkable circles of 
stone commonly called “Druidical Cir¬ 
cles,” their temples of worship. All 
the old Celts seem to have possessed a 
kind of literary order called Bards. 
The ancient Irish wrote in a rude 
alphabet called the Ogham, later 
they employed the Roman alpha¬ 
bet, or the Anglo-Saxon form of it. The 
chief literature existing consists of the 
hymns, martyrologies, annals, and laws 
of Ireland, written from the 9th to the 
16th centuries. The Scottish Gaelic 
literature extant includes a collection 
of MSS. in the Advocates’ Library, 
Edinburgh, some of which date from 
the 12th century; the Book of the Dean 
of Lismore, 16th century; a number of 
6ongs from the 17th century to the 
present day; and the co-called poems of 
Ossian. The Welsh literary remains 
date from the 9th century, and consist 
of glossaries, grammars, annals, gene¬ 


alogies, histories, poems, prose tales, etc. 

CEMENTS', the general name for 
glutinous or other substances capable of 
uniting bodies in close cohesion. In 
building the name is given to a stronger 
kind of mortar than that which is 
ordinarily used, consisting of those 
hydraulic limes which contain silica 
and therefore set quickly. Cements are 
variously composed, according to the 
nature of the surfaces to which they are 
applied and their exposure to heat or 
moisture. Hydraulic or water cements 
harden under water and consolidate 
almost immediately on being mixed. 
Of this kind are the Roman and Port¬ 
land cements. 

CEM'ETERY. See Burying-places. 

CENCI (chen'che), Beatrice, called 
the beautiful parricide, the daughter of 
Francesco Cenci, a noble and wealthy 
Roman (1527-98), who, according to the 
common story, after his second marriage, 
behaved toward the children of his first 
marriage in the most shocking manner, 
procured the assassination of two of his 
sons, on their return from Spain, and 
debauched his youngest daughter Bea¬ 
trice. She failed in an appeal for pro¬ 
tection to the pope, and planned and 
executed the murder of her father. She 
was beheaded 1599 and the Cenci estates 
confiscated. 

CENIS (se-ne'), Mount, a mountain 
belonging to the Graian Alps, between 
Savoy and Piedmont, 11,755 feet high. 
It is famous for the winding road con¬ 
structed by Napoleon I. which leads 
over it from France to Italy, and for 
an immense railway tunnel, which, after 
nearly fourteen years’ labor, was fin¬ 
ished in 1871. The tunnel does not 
actually pass through the mountain, 
but through the Col de Frej'us, about 15 
miles to the s.w., where it was found 
possible to construct it at a lower level. 
The Mount Cenis Pass is 6765 feet 
above the level of the sea, whereas the 
elevation of the entrance to the tunnel 
on the side of Savoy is only 3801 feet, 
and that on the side of Piedmont 4246 
feet. The total length of the tunnel is 
12,849 meters (42,145 feet, or nearly 8 
miles). The total cost amounted to 
$13,000,000, which was borne partly by 
the French and Italian governments 
and partly by the Northern Railway 
Company of Italy. The tunnel super¬ 
seded a grip railway which was con¬ 
structed over the mountain by Mr. Fell, 
an English engineer, 1864-68. 

CEN'SER, a vase or pan in which 
incense is burned; a vessel for burning 
and wafting incense. Among the 
ancient Jews the censer was used to 
offer perfumes in sacrifices. Censers, 
called also thuribles, are still used in the 
Roman Catholic Church at mass, ves¬ 
pers, and other offices, as well as in 
some Anglican and other churches. 
They are of various forms. In Shake¬ 
speare’s time the term was applied to a 
bottle perforated and ornamented at 
the top, used for sprinkling perfume, 
or to a pan for burning any odoriferous 
substance. 

CENSUS, an enumeration of the peo¬ 
ple of a country, together with an 
ascertainment of all the various social 
and industrial facts concerning them. 
The first census of the United States was 


taken in 1790 for the purpose of appor¬ 
tioning representatives. Each succeed¬ 
ing decade a new census is taken and 
the facts thus gathered are carefully 
correlated and published by the govern¬ 
ment. The director of the census is 
appointed by the president. Census 
taking originated with King Servius 
of Rome in 577 b.c. 

CENT, Centime (s&n-tem), etc., the 
name of a small coin in various countries, 
so-called as being equal to a hundredth 
part of some other coin. In the U. 
States and in Canada the cent is the 
hundredth part of a dollar. In France 
the centime is the hundredth part of a 
franc. Similar coins are the centavo 
of Chili; and the centesimo of Italy, 
Peru, etc. Cents or centimes, and their 
equivalents, are written simply as 
decimals of the unit of value. 

CEN'TAURS, in Greek myth, fabulous 
beings represented as half man, half 
horse. 



CENTENARY, the commemoration 

of any event, as the birth of a great 
man, which occurred 100 years before. 

CENTENNIAL EXHIBITION, an in¬ 
ternational exposition held at Phila¬ 
delphia in 1876 to commemorate the 
Declaration of Independence. There 
were upward of 50,000 exhibits from 
all parts of the world, 13,104 exhibitors, 
and a total of 9,910,966 admissions. 
The largest number of persons attend¬ 
ing in any one day was 274,919 on 
Pennsylvania Day (Sept. 28). It was 
the first of the great international ex¬ 
positions held in the U. States and 
marked a new era in the industrial 
development of the nation. 

CENTER-BOARD, a sort of movable 
keel used especially in American yachts, 
and capable of being raised and lowered 
in a well extending longitudinally 
amidships. It tends to prevent leeway 
and gives the vessel greater stability 
when under a press of canvas. 

CENTER OF GRAVITY, that point of 
a body through which the line of the 
resultant of the weights of all the par¬ 
ticles composing the body always passes, 
whatever be the position of the body. 

CENTER OF GYRATION, the point 
at which, if the whole mass of.a revolv¬ 
ing body were collected, the rotatory 
effect would remain unaltered. 

CENTER OF OSCILLATION, that 
point of a body suspended by an axis, 
at which, if all the matter were concen- 








CENTER OF PRESSURE 


CERUSITE 


trated, the oscillations would be per¬ 
formed in the same time. 

CENTER OF PRESSURE, that point 
of a body at which the whole amount 
of pressure may be applied with the 
same effect as it would produce if dis¬ 
tributed; specifically, in hydro-statics, 
that point in the side of a vessel con¬ 
taining a liquid, to which, if a force were 
applied equal to the total pressure and 
in the opposite direction, it would 
exactly balance the effort of the total 
pressure. 

CENTIGRADE. See Thermometer. 

CENTIME. See Cent. 

CENTIPEDE, a term applied to vari¬ 
ous insect-like creatures having many 
feet, and a body consisting of numerous 
similar rings or segments. Those of 
tropical countries inflict severe and often 
dangerous bites. They sometimes grow 
to a foot in length. 

CENTRAL AMERICA, a geographical 
division, including the stretch of ter¬ 
ritory from the Isthmus of Panama to 
the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, but by 
political arrangements the limits most 
generally assigned to it include the five 
republican states of Guatemala, Hon¬ 
duras, San Salvador, Nicaragua, and 
Costa Rica, with British Honduras, 
and the Mosquito Coast. It thus has 
Mexico on the n.w., Colombia on the 
s.e., and the Pacific Ocean and Carib¬ 
bean Sea on either side. Its entire 
length may be about 800 miles, with a 
breadth varying from between 20 and 30 
to 350 miles. It is generally moun¬ 
tainous, contains a number of active 
volcanoes, and on the whole is a rich 
and fertile, but almost totally un¬ 
developed region. The area is about 
181,500 sq. miles; the pop. 5,000,000. 

CENTRAL FALLS, a city in Provi¬ 
dence Co., R. I., 4 miles north of 
Providence on the Blackstone River, 
and on the New York, New Haven and 
Hartford Railroad. Pop. 21,717. 

CENTRAL INDIA AGENCY, a collec¬ 
tion of states in Hindustan, consisting 
of four divisions or agencies, viz.: 
Gwalior, Bundelkhand, Baghelkhand, 
and Nimar, and Malwa, under the 
ultimate charge of the governor-gen¬ 
eral’s agent at Indore- chief states, 
Gwalior, Indore, Bhopal, and Rewah. 
These states cover an area of 78,772 
sq. miles, and have a pop. of 8,628,781. 

CENTRALIZATION, a term in a 
specific sense applied to a system of 
government where the tendency is to 
administer by the central government 
matters which had been previously, or 
might very well be, under the manage¬ 
ment of local authorities. 

CENTRAL PROVINCES, an extensive 
British territory in India. They became 
a separate administration in 1861, and 
are under the authority of a chief com¬ 
missioner. Their total area is 115,936 
sq. miles, of which 86,501 sq. miles are 
British territory, and 29,435 the terri¬ 
tory of native protected states, fifteen 
in number. In 1891 the population, 
including the native states, was 12,944,- 
805 persons; in 1901 it was 11,873,029. 
For administrative purposes the prov¬ 
ince is divided into four commissioner- 
ships, Jabalpur, (Jubbulpore), Nagpur, 
Narbada (Nerbudda), and Chhattis- 
garh. 


CENTRIFUGAL and CENTRIPETAL, 

in bot., terms applied to two kinds of 
inflorescence, the former being that in 
which the terminal or central flower is 
the first to expand, as in a true cyme 
(examples, elder and valerian), the latter 
being that kind in which the lower or 
outer flower is the first to expand, as in 
spikes, racemes, umbels, and corymbs. 
The laburnum, hemlock, and daisy are 
examples. 

CENTRIFUGAL AND CENTRIPETAL 
FORCE. See Central Forces. 

CENTU'RION, in the ancient Roman 
army, the commander Of a century, or 
body of 100 men, but afterward an 
indefinite number, the sixtieth part of a 
legion. The rank of a centurion cor¬ 
responded pretty much to that of a 
captain in modern armies. 

CENTURY-PLANT, a popular name 
of the American aloe. 

CERAM', an island in the Moluccas, 
lying w. of New Guinea; area about 
7000 sq. miles; pop. estimated at 200,- 
000 . 

CERAM'IC ART, that department of 
plastic art which comprises all objects 
made of baked clay, as vases, cups, urns, 
bassi-nlievi, statuettes, etc., and in¬ 
cluding all the varieties of earthenware 
and porcelain which can be regarded as 
works of art. 

CERASTES, a genus of African 
vipers, remarkable for their fatal venom, 
and for two little horns formed by the 



Cerastes vulgaris. 


scales above the eyes. Hence they have 
received the name of horned vipers. 
The tail is very distinct from the body. 

CER'BERUS, in classical mythology, 
the dog-monster of Hades, variously 
described as having a hundred, fifty, 



Cerberus—Antique bronze. 


and three heads, with a serpent’s tail, 
and a mane consisting of the heads of 
various snakes. He was subdued by 
Hercules. 


CE'REALS, a term derived from 
Ceres, the goddess of com, though some¬ 
times extended to leguminous plants, 
as beans, lentils, etc., is more usually 
and properly confined to wheat, barley, 
rye, oats, and other grasses, cultivated 
for the sake of their seed as food. 

CEREBRATION, exertion or action 
of the brain, conscious or unconscious. 

CEREBRO-SPINAL, pertaining to the 
brain and spinal cord together, looked 
on as forming one nerve mass. 

CEREBRUM and CEREBELLUM. 
See Brain. 

CEREMONY, an act done with a cer¬ 
tain amount of solemnity, whether of a 
joyous, sad, indifferent nature. Cere¬ 
monial institutions are traced back 
to remote antiquity and have an un¬ 
doubted primitive origin. That origin 
is doubtless of a religious nature and all 
living ceremonies have some associa¬ 
tion, whether obvious or not, with 
ancient religious fear, veneration, or 
piety. 

CERES (se'rez), a Roman goddess, 
corresponding to the Greek Demeter; 
6he was the daughter of Kronos and 
Rhea, and the mother of Proserpine and 
Bacchus. She was the goddess of the 
earth in its capacity of bringing forth 
fruits, especially watching over the 

f rowth of grain and other plants. Ths 
Lomans celebrated in her honor the 
festival of the Cerealia. Ceres was 
always represented in full attire, her 
attributes being ears of corn and 
poppies, and her sacrifices consisted of 
igs and cows.—Also a planet discovered 
y M. Piazzi at Palermo, in Sicily, in 
1801. It was the first discovered of the 
asteroids. Its size is less than that of the 
moon. 

CERTIFICATE, a written attestation 
of the truth of a fact. Certificates are 
used to attest graduation from high 
schools (diplomas), and the law often 
requires certificates for the practice of 
trade or professions. The United States 
army issues certificates of merit which 
entitle the holder to extra pay of $2 
per month 

CERTIORA'RI, in law, a writ issuing 
out of a superior court to call up the 
records of an inferior court or remove 
a cause there depending, that it may 
be tried in the superior court. This writ 
is obtained upon the complaint of a 
party that he has not received justice, 
or that he cannot have an impartial 
trial in the inferior court. 

CERU'LEUM, a blue pigment, con¬ 
sisting of stannate of protoxide of 
cobalt mixed with stannic acid and 
sulphate of lime. 

CERU'MINOUS GLANDS, the glands 

of the ear which secrete the cerumen or 
wax which lubricates the passage to the 
tympanum and prevents the entrance 
of foreign matter. 

CERUSE (se'rus), white-lead, car¬ 
bonate of lead produced by exposing 
the metal in thin plates to the vapor of 
acetic.acid or vinegar. It is much used 
in painting, and a cosmetic is made 
from it. 

CE'RUSITE, a native carbonate of 
lead, next to galena the must abundant 
ore of lead. When heated it decrepitates 
and is converted into oxide of lead. 












Georgetown] 


i-i 3 Grand 
Cayman 

(.British) 


“ l f of Camv e 

—^-^^■^CarnicD ^ 


Sebancuy 
— oChicbul 


Jtmait 


C' Mxsteriosa Bank 


Bacajar' 


/r 0/ 8l 

Tiburol 


_8L Anns B»j 


xincoro Bank 


>1 AT] 

EagLrigjE 


>rt Antonio 

Portland Pt. 

? 3forant Cay« 


Savanna la Mar V 
Black River 


Chinchanlu 


'Ambergris Cay 


''Lighthouse Reef 
'Long Cay 


Pedro Bank 


.& La Libertad 


o San Cristobal 


■ kscomb} 


Flores 


Rosalind i 
\ ( 
\Bank [ 


oS.Bajrtoltne 


Dolores 


Boat an I. 


If A /!s P u " tos Honduras 

utUa 


Caxones or Hobbies 


QaW eron 


Bajo Nuevo 


Serramlla &ank 


[Qorda Bank 


\ ra 


A,n>r Sta,,Cruz o 


Coban Fanzos' 


Q/s'cha #* 1 

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lluefields 


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CERVANTES SAAVEDRA 


CEYLON 


CERVANTES SAAVEDRA (ther-van'- 
tes sa-a-va'dra), Miguel de, author of 
Don Quixote, born at Alcala de Henares 
in 1547, and removed thence to Madrid 
at the age of seven. He commenced 
writing verses at an early age, and his 
pastoral Filena attracted the notice of 
Cardinal Acquaviva, whom he accom¬ 
panied to Italy as page. In 1570 he 
served under Colonna in the war against 
the Turks and African corsairs, and in 
the battle of Lepanto (1571) he lost the 
use of his left hand. After this he joined 
the troops at Naples, in the service of 
the Spanish king, winning the highest 
reputation as a soldier. In 1575, while 
returning to his country, he was taken 
by the corsair Arnaut Mami, and sold 
in Algiers as a slave—a condition in 
which he remained for seven years, dis¬ 
playing great fortitude. In 1580 his 
friends and relations at length ran¬ 
somed him, and, rejoining his old 
regiment, he fought in the naval battle 
and subsequent storming of Terceira. 
In 1583, however, he retired from 
service and recommenced his literary 
work, publishing in 1584 his pastoral 
Galatea. In the same year he married, 
and lived for a long time by writing for 
the stage, to which he contributed 
between twenty and thirty plays, of 
which two only have survived. From 
1588 to 1599 he lived retired at Seville, 
where he held a small office. He did 
not appear again as an author till 1605, 
when he produced the first part of Don 
Quixote, a work having, as its immediate 
aim, the satirical treatment of the 
novels of chivalry then popular, but 
embodying at the same time human 
types of cosmopolitan interest, and 
having a profounder bearing upon life 
than its express object covered. In 

1613 his twelve Exemplary Novels 
(his best work after Don Quixote), in 

1614 his Journey to Parnassus, and in 

1615 eight new dramas, with inter¬ 
mezzos, were published. In 1614 an 
unknown writer published, under the 
name of Alonzo Fernandez de Avel- 
laneda, a continuation of Don Quixote, 
full of abuse of Cervantes, who there¬ 
upon published the real continuation 
which was the last work of his issued 
during his lifetime. His novel Persiles 
and Sigismunda was published after 
his death, which took place at Madrid 
on the same day as that of Shakespeare, 
April 23, 1616. 

CESTUS, a leathern thong or bandage, 
often covered with knots and loaded 



Various forms of cestus. 


with lead and iron, anciently worn by 
Roman pugilists to increase the force of 
the blow. 

CETA'CEA, an order of marine 
animals, surpassing in size all others 
in existence. They are true mammals, 
since they suckle their young, have 


warm blood, and respire by means of 
lungs, for which purpose they come to 
the surface of the water to take in fresh 
supplies of air. The body is fish-like 
in form, but ends in a bilobate tail, 
which is placed horizontally, not, as in 
the fishes, vertically. The. posterior 
limbs are wanting, and the anterior are 
converted into broad paddles or flippers, 
consisting of a continuous sheath of the 
thick integument, within which are 
present representatives of all the bones 
usually found in the fore-limb of 
mammals. The fish-like aspect is fur¬ 
ther increased by the presence of a 
dorsal fin, but this is a simple fold of 
integument, and does not contain bony 
spines. The right whale and its allies 
have no teeth in the adult state, their 
place being taken by the triangular 
plates of baleen or whalebone which 
are developed on transverse ridges of 
the palate, but the foetal whales possess 
minute teeth, which are very soon lost. 
The nostrils open directly upward on 
the top of the head, and are closed by 
valvular folds of integument which are 
under the control of the animal. When 
it comes to the surface to breathe it 
expels the air violently (popularly 
known as “blowing” or “spouting”), 
and the vapor it contains becomes con¬ 
densed into a cloud, which resembles a 
column of water and spray. The blood¬ 
vessels in these animals break up into 
extensive plexuses or net-works, in 
which a large amount of oxygenated 
blood is delayed, and they are thus 
enabled to remain a considerable time 
under water. Injury to these dilated 
vessels leads to profuse hemorrhage, 
and hence the whale is killed by the 
comparatively trifling wound of the 
harpoon. The Cetacea (which are 
grouped broadly as Mysticeti or tooth¬ 
less whales; and Odontoceti, Denticeti, 
or toothed whales) are commonly 
divided into five families: (1) whalebone 
whales, divided into two sections: 
smooth whales, with smooth skin and 
no dorsal fin, and furrowed whales, with 
furrowed skin and a dorsal fin; (2) 
sperm-whales or cachalots, the palates 
of which have no baleen-plates, and 
which are furnished with teeth, de¬ 
veloped in the lower jaw only; (3) a 
family possessing teeth in both jaws, 
and including the dolphins, porpoises, 
and narwhal; (4) a family allied to the 
sperm-whales, but having only a pair or 
two pairs of teeth in the lower jaw, a 
ointed snout or beak, a single blow- 
ole, etc. 1 ; (5) an extinct family, dis¬ 
tinguished from all the tooth-bearing 
whales by the possession of molar teeth 
implanted by two distinct fangs, etc. 
The last family is exclusively confined 
to the Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene 
eriods. The manatees and dugongs, 
ave sometimes been classified among 
the Cetacea, but they must be regarded 
as forming a separate order. 

CETEWAYO (kech-wa'o), a Kaffir 
chief or king, son of Panda, king of the 
Zulus. A dispute regarding lands on the 
frontier was settled by arbitration in 
favor of the Zulus; but on the refusal of 
Cetewayo to comply with the conditions 
imposed war was declared against him 
by the British, and the king made 
prisoner soon after the battle of Ulundi 


(July, 1879). In 1882 he was condition¬ 
ally restored to part of his dominions. 
In the following year he was driven from 
power by the chief Usibepu, and re¬ 
mained under the protection of the 
British until his death in 1884. 

CETTE (set), a fortified seaport of 
France, dep. Herault. After Marseilles, 
Cette is the principal trading port in the 
south of France, and it is much resorted 
to as a watering-place. Pop. 35,517. 

CEVENNES (se-venz'), a chain of 
mountains in the southeast of France, 
The length of the chain, exclusive of the 
Cote d’Or, is about 330 miles, the 
average height not more than 3000 feet. 
It is divided into two sections, the 
northern and southern Cevennes; the 
dividing point is Mount Lozdre, in the 
department of the same name, 5582 feet 
high. The highest peak is Mezenc, 5753 
feet. The Cevennes form the watershed 
between the Bay of Biscay and the Medi¬ 
terranean, separating the basins of the 
Garonne and Loire from those of the 
Rhone and Saone. They are rich in 
minerals, containing mines of copper, 
iron, lead, and coal, and quarries of 
granite, porphyry, marble and plaster. 

CEYLON (si-lon'), an island belonging 
to Great Britain in the Indian Ocean, 
50 to 60 miles southeast of the southern 
extremity of Hindustan, from which it 
is separated by the Gulf of Manaar and 
Palk’s Strait, and by a chain of sand¬ 
banks, called Adam’s Bridge, impas¬ 
sable by any but very small vessels. 
Length, about 270 miles north to south; 
average breadth, 100 miles; area, 25,364 
sq. miles. The north and northwest 
coasts are flat and monotonous, those 
on the south and east bold, rocky, and 
picturesque, with exuberant vegetation. 
The mountainous regions are confined 
to the center of the south and broader 
part of the island. Their average height 
is about 2000 feet, but several summits 
are upward of 7000 and one over 8000 
feet nigh the culminating point being 
Pidurutallagalla, 8296 feet. Adam’s 
Peak, reaching 7420 feet, is the most 
remarkable from its conical form, the 
distance from which it is visible from 
the sea, and from the legend that thence 
Buddha ascended to heaven, leaving in 
evidence a gigantic footprint. 

In respect of climate, where the jungle 
has been cleared away, and the land 
drained and cultivated, the country 
is perfectly healthy; but where low 
wooded tracts and flat marshy lands 
abound it is malarial and insalubrious 
The east part of the island being exposed 
to the northeast monsoon has a hot and 
dry climate; while the west division, 
being open to the southwest monsoon 
has a temperate and humid climate. 

In the luxuriance of its vegetable 
productions Ceylon rivals the islands of 
the Indian Archipelago, and in some 
respects bears a strong resemblance to 
them. Its most valuable products are 
tea, coffee, rice, cinnamon (which is 
found almost exclusively in the south¬ 
west), and the cocoa-nut palm Coffee 
used to be very extensively cultivated, 
but disease has within recent years 
reduced the produce to a fraction of its 
former amount, and tea cultivation ha 
taken its place, and is rapidly increasing 
The island abounds with timber o 








CHAFFINCH 


CHALMERS 


various descriptions, including ebony, 
satin, rose, sapan, iron, jack, and other 
beautiful woods adapted for cabinet 
work. Attention has been directed 
latterly to the cultivation of cinchona, 
cacao, and silk. The chief mineral 
products are iron, plumbago or graphite, 
and a variety of gems, including sap¬ 
phires, rubies, etc. The pearl-fisheries 
of Ceylon are famous. 

The commerce of Ceylon is now im¬ 
portant. The exports comprise tea, 
coffee, plumbago, areca-nuts, cocoa-nut 
oil fibre and kernals (copra), cinnamon, 
cinchona, cacao, etc. The principal 
articles of import are manufactured 
goods, iron and steel manufactures, 
machinery, dried fish, rice, wheat, sugar, 
tea, cowries, etc. Ceylon is one of the 
British crown colonies, the government 
being conducted by a governor and two 
councils, executive and legislative, of 
both of which the governor is president. 
The present population of Ceylon is 
composed of Singhalese or Cingalese, 
who are the Ceylonese proper, Tamils 
(from India), Moormen or Moors, 
Malays, Veddahs, a small proportion 
of Europeans and their descendants, 
and negroes. The Singhalese are in 
stature rather below the middle size; 
their limbs slender, but well shaped, 
eyes dark, finely-cut features, hair long, 
smooth, and black, turned up and fixed 
with a tortoise-shell comb on the top of 
the head; color varying from brown to 
black, or rather from the lightest to the 
darkest tints of bronze. The general 
population of the island was decreasing 
for several centuries. It is now, how¬ 
ever, on the increase, and latterly this 
increase has been rapid. In 1901 the 
population was 3,576,990, of whom 
95S3 were Europeans, and 4913 Boer 
prisoners of war. The Singhalese 
numbered 2,334,817, the Tamils 952,- 
237. The population in 1891 was 
3,008,466. 

Buddhism prevails in the interior, and 
generally among the Singhalese of the 
sea-coasts. The Singhalese have a 
colloquial language peculiar to them¬ 
selves, but their classic and sacred 
writings are either in Pali or Sanskrit. 
The Hindu religion (Brahmanism) pre¬ 
vails among the Tamils or population 
of Indian extraction, which forms a 
large proportion of the inhabitants of 
the north and northeast districts. The 
Tamils speak their own Tamil tongue. 

The Singahalese possess a native 
chronicle, the Mahawanso, which records 
history of the island from 543 n.c. 
onward, under a long series of kings 
reigning most frequently at the ancient 
capital Anuradhapura, the earliest of 
these being leader of an invading host 
from India. Buddhism was introduced 
307 b.c. The island was not known to 
Europeans till the time of Alexander 
the Great, and their knowledge of it 
was long vague and meager. Little, 
however, was known in Europe regard¬ 
ing the island until 1505, when the 
Portuguese established a regular inter¬ 
course with it, and latterly made them¬ 
selves masters of it. When they arrived 
the Malabars were in possession of the 
north, the Moors or Arabs held all the 
seaports, the rest was under petty kings 
and chiefs. The Portuguese, who were 


cruel and oppressive rulers, were sub¬ 
sequently expelled by the Dutch in 
1658, after a twenty years’ struggle. 
The Dutch in turn were driven from the 
island by the British in 1796, though a 
part of the island remained independent 
under native princes. The King of 
Kandy, nominally the sovereign of the 
island, was deposed in 1815 on account 
of his cruelties, and the island was then 
finally annexed by Britain, though a 
rebellion had to be put down in 1817. 
The principal towns are Colombo (the 
capital and chief port), Kandy, Galle, 
Jaffna, and Trincomalee. 

CHAFFINCH, a lively and handsome 
bird of the finch family. The male is 6 
or 7 inches in length, and is very agree¬ 
ably colored, having a chestnut back, 
reddish-pink breast and throat, and a 
yellowish-white bar on the "wings. The 
food consists of seeds and of insects and 
their larvae. The nest, which is generally 
placed in the fork of a tree, is an elegant 
structure usually covered with moss and 
lichens. 

CHAFIN, Eugene' Wilder, born at 
East Troy, Wis., Nov. 1, 1852; educated 
in public school; graduated from law 
department of University of Wisconsin, 
1875; practiced law in Waukesha, Wis., 
1876-1900; grand chief templar of Good 
Templars of Wisconsin and Illinois; 
Prohibition candidate for various offices; 
nominated for president of the United 
States by Prohibitionist national con¬ 
vention at Columbus, O., in 1908. 

CHAILLE-LONG, Charles, an Ameri¬ 
can traveler, born in Maryland in 1840. 
He served on the Union side during the 
civil war and in 1875 was chief of staff 
to Gordon in the latter’s expedition up 
the Nile. Returning to America he 
studied international law, and in 1887 
was made consul general in Korea. He 
has published several works on the 
Orient. 

CHAIN, in surveying, is a measure 
consisting of 100 links, each 7"92 inches 
in length, and having a total length of 4 
rods, or 66 feet. It is sometimes called 
Gunter’s chain, from its inventor. 

CHAIN-ARMOR, coats and other 
pieces of mail, formed of hammered 
iron links, constituting a flexible gar¬ 
ment which fitted to the person. 

CHAIN-PUMP, a pump consisting in 
principle of an endless chain equipped 



moving round two wheels, one above 
ana one below. The chain in its ascent 


passes through a tube closely fitting the 
valves or buckets, the water being dis¬ 
charged either from the top of the tube 
or from an orifice in it. 

CHAINS, strong links or plates of iron, 
the lower ends of which are bolted to a 
ship’s side, used to contain the blocks 
called dead-eyes, by which the shrouds 
of the masts are fastened. 

CHAIN-SHOT, two cannon-balls con¬ 
nected by a chain, which, when dis¬ 
charged, revolve upon their shorter 
axis, and mow down masts, rigging, etc. 

CHALCED'ONY (kal-sed'o-ni), a min¬ 
eral, a variety of quartz, called also 
white agate, resembling milk diluted 
with water, semi-transparent or trans¬ 
lucent, and more or less clouded with 
circles and spots. It is found usually in 
cavities of rocks uncrystallized, in veins, 
botryoidal masses, etc., and is used in 
jewelry. There are several varieties, 
such as the common chalcedony, chryso- 
prase, sard, and sardonyx. 

CHALDA2A, in ancient geography, 
the southerly part of Babylonia, or in a 
wider sense corresponding to Babylonia 
itself. The name Chaldaeans was espe¬ 
cially applied latterly to a portion of the 
Babylonian Magi, who were devoted 
to the pursuit of astronomy and magical 
science. See Babylonia. 

CHAL'ICE, a term generally applied 
to a communion cup for the wine in the 
Eucharist, often of artistic and highly 
ornamental character. 

CHALK (chak), a well-known earthy 
limestone, of an opaque white color, soft 
and admitting no polish. It is an im¬ 
pure carbonate of lime, and is used 
as an absorbent and ant-acid, and for 
making marks for various purposes, as 
on the black-board in schools, and by 
artisans and others.—Black chalk is a 
soft variety of argillaceous slate. (See 
Black Chalk.)—Brown chalk, a familiar 
name for umber.—Red chalk, another 
name for ruddle.—French chalk, steatite 
or soap-stone, a soft magnesian mineral. 
Drawing chalks were originally re¬ 
stricted in colors to white, black, and 
red, but now chalks of every color are 
used, and are known by the name of 
crayons.—In geology chalk is the rock 
which forms the higher part of a series 
or group of strata, comprising rocks of 
different kinds, termed the cretaceous 
system. 

CHAL'LENGE, to jurors, is an ob¬ 
jection either to the whole panel or 
array, that is, the whole body of jurors 
returned, or to the polls, that is, to the 
jurors individually; and it is either 
peremptory, that is, without assigning 
any reason, or for cause assigned. See 
Jury. 

CHALMERS, Thomas, D.D., an emi¬ 
nent Scottish divine, born in 1780, at 
Anstruther Easter, Fife. In 1803 he 
was presented to the parish of Kilmany, 
in Fife, where he made a high reputation 
as a preacher. In 1808 he published an 
Inquiry into the Extent and Stability 
of National Resources. In 1813 his 
article on Christianity appeared in the 
Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, and shortly 
afterward his review of Cuvier’s Theory 
of the Earth, in the Christian Instructor. 
His fame as a preacher had by this time 
extended itself throughout Scotland, 
and in 1815 he was inducted to the Tron 









CHAMBER 


CHAMOIS 


Church of Glasgow. His astronomical 
discourses delivered there in the follow¬ 
ing winter produced a sensation not 
only in the city but throughout the 
country. In 1832 he published his 
Political Economy, and shortly after¬ 
ward his Bridgewater Treatise On the 
Adaptation of External Nature to the 
Moral and Intellectual Constitution of 
Man. During this period he was 
occupied with the subject of church 



Thomas Chalmers, D.D. 


extension on the voluntary principle, 
but it was in the great non-intrusion 
movement in the Scottish church that 
his name became most prominent. 
Throughout the whole contest to the 
Disruption in 1843,1 he acted as the 
leader of the party that then separated 
from the Establishment, and may be 
regarded as the founder of the Free 
Church of Scotland, of the first assem¬ 
bly of which he was moderator. His 
death took place suddenly, and appar¬ 
ently during sleep, in the night preceding 
May 31, 1847. He was a D.D. of Glas¬ 
gow University and a D.C.L. of Oxford. 

CHAMBER, a word used in many 
countries to designate a branch of 
government whose members assemble in 
a common apartment, as the chamber of 
deputies in France, or applied to bodies 
of various kinds meeting for various 
purposes. The imperial chamber (in 
German Reichskammergericht) of the 
old German Empire was a court estab¬ 
lished at Wetzlar, near the Rhine, by 
Maximilian I. in 1495, to adjust the dis¬ 
putes between the different independent 
members of the German Empire, and 
also 6uch as arose between them and the 
emperor.—Chambers of commerce are 
associations of the mercantile men of 
towns for the purpose of protecting and 
furthering the interests of the com¬ 
mercial community. 

CHAMBERLAIN, Joseph, English 
statesman, born in London in 1836, and 
educated at London University school. 
In 1876 he entered parliament as a rep¬ 
resentative of Birmingham, and at the 
general election of 1880 he was chosen 
for the same city along with Mr. Bright 
and Mr. Muntz. Under Mr. Gladstone’s 
premiership he became president of the 
Board of Trade, and a cabinet-minister, 
and was able to pass the Bankruptcy Act 
now in force, though he failed with his 
merchant shipping bill. In the Glad¬ 
stone government of 1886 he was pres¬ 
ident of the Local Government Board. 
As colonial secretary in the Unionist 
government in 1895-1903 he has been 


S rominent in other affairs besides the 
loer War of 1899-1902. 

CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, an or¬ 
ganization of traders or merchants for 
the purpose of facilitating transactions 
of business, making a central market, 
etc. The term has been superseded in 
many American cities by the term Board 
of Trade. Chambers of Commerce use 
their influence for legislation favorable 
to trade, collect and publish trade 
statistics, and take part in public 
enterprises for the commercial good of 
the community. The New York Cham¬ 
ber of Commerce was organized in 1768, 
and many Chambers of Commerce in 
Europe antedate it by many years. 

CHAMBERS, Robert, historical and 
miscellaneous writer, the younger of 
two brothers originally composing the 
publishing firm of W. & R. Chambers, 
was born at Peebles in 1802. Besides 
editing or compiling many instructive 
works of a high class, including the 
Cyclopaedia of English Literature; the 
Domestic Annals of Scotland; Ancient 
Sea-Margins; and the Book of Days. He 
also edited a valuable edition of Burns. 
He died at St. Andrews in 1871. His 
name was long associated with the 
authorship of the famous “Vestiges of 
Creation,’’ and it was not known to be 
really his till years after his death.— 
William Chambers wrote Things as They 
Are in America, Hist ory of Peebles-shire; 
France, its History and Revolutions; 
Memoir of Robert Chambers, with Auto¬ 
biographical Reminiscences, etc. He 
was twice lord-provost of Edinburgh. 
He died in 1883, j’ust as a baronetcy was 
to be conferred on him. 

CHAMBERS, Robert William, an 
American writer and artist, bom in 
New York in 1865. He has pubished 
several volumes of fiction and exhibited 
in the Paris salon of 1889. 

CHAMBERSBURG, a town in Penn¬ 
sylvania, in a fertile and populous dis¬ 
trict. Pop. 10,000. 

CHAMBERTIN (shan-ber-tan), a su¬ 
perior kind of red Burgundy wine, 
named after the place where it is pro¬ 
duced. 

CHAMBORD (shan-bor), Henri Charles 
Ferdinand Marie Dieudonne, Comte- 
de, Duke of Bordeaux, the last repre¬ 
sentative of the elder branch of the 
French Bourbon dynasty, called by his 
artisans Henry V. of France. He was 
orn in 1820, seven months after the 
assassination of his father, Prince 
Charles Ferdinand d’Artois, duke de 
Berry. Charles X., after the revolu¬ 
tionary outbreak of 1830, abdicated in 
his favor; but the young count was 
compelled to leave the country with the 
royal title unrecognized by the nation. 
In 1846 he married the Princess Maria- 
Theresa, eldest daughter of the Duke 
of Modena; and in 1851 inherited the 
domain of Frohsdorf, near Vienna, 
where for the most part he subsequently 
resided. He died in 1883, leaving no 
heir. 

CHAME'LEON (ka-me'li-on), a genus 
of reptiles belonging to the Saurian or 
lizard order, a native of parts of Asia, 
Africa, and the south of Europe. The 
best-known species, has a naked body 
6 or 7 inches long, with a prehensile tail 
of about 5 inches, and feet suitable for 


grasping branches. The skin is cold 
to the touch, and contains small grains 
or eminences of a bluish-gray color in 
the shade, but in the light of the sun all 
arts of the body become of a grayish- 
rown or tawny color. It possesses the 
curious faculty, however, of changing 
its color, either in accordance with its 
environment, or with its temper when 
disturbed, the change being due to the 
presence of clear or pigment-bearing 



Chameleon. 


contractile cells placed at various depths 
in the skin, their contractions and dila¬ 
tions being under the influence of the 
nervous system. Their power of fasting 
and habit of inflating themselves gave 
rise to the fable that they lived on air, but 
they are in reality insectivorous, taking 
their prey by rapid movements of a 
long viscid tongue. In general habit 
they are dull and torpid. 

CHAMELEON MINERAL, a name 
given to manganate of potassium, be¬ 
cause a solution of it changes from 
green, through a succession of colors, 
to a rich purple. 

CHAMOIS (sham'wa), a species of 
goat-like antelope inhabiting high inac¬ 
cessible mountains in Europe and West¬ 
ern Asia. Its horns, which are about 
6 or 7 inches long, are round, almost 



Chamois. 


smooth, perpendicular and straight 
until near the tip, where they suddenly 
terminate in a hook directed back¬ 
ward and downward. Its hair is brown 
in winter, brown fawn color in summer, 
and grayish in spring. The head is of 
a pale yellow color with a black band 















CHAMOMILE 


CHANNING 


from the nose to the ears and surround¬ 
ing the eyes. The tail is black. Its 
agility, the nature of its haunts, and its 
powers of smell, render its pursuit an 
exceedingly difficult and hazardous 
occupation. 

CHAMOMILE or CAMOMILE (kam'o- 
mll), a well-known European plant. It 
is perennial, and has slender, trailing, 
hairy, and branched stems. The flower 
is white, with a yellow center. Both 
leaves and flowers are bitter and aro¬ 
matic. The fragrance is due to the 
presence of an essential oil, called oil of 
chamomile, of a light blue color when 
first extracted, and used in the prepar¬ 
ation of certain medicines. Both the 
leaves and the flowers are employed in 
fomentations and poultices, and also in 
the form of an infusion as a stimulant 
or anti-spasmodic. 

CHAMPAGNE (sham-pan'), a French 
wine, white or red, which is made chiefly 
in the department of Marne, in the 
former province Champagne, and is 
generally characterized by the property 
of creaming, frothing, or effervescing 
when poured from the bottle, though 
there are also still Champagne wines. 
The creaming or slightly sparkling 
Champagne wines are more highly valued 
by connoisseurs, and fetch greater prices 
than the full-frothing wines, in which 
the small quantity of alcohol they con¬ 
tain escapes from the froth as it rises to 
the surface, carrying with it the aroma 
and leaving the liquor nearly vapid. The 
property of creaming or frothing pos¬ 
sessed by these wines is due to the fact 
that they are partly fermented in the 
bottle, carbonic acid being thereby pro¬ 
duced. Wine of a similar kind can of 
course be made elsewhere, and some of 
the German champagnes are hardly to 
be distinguished from the French. 
Much artificial or imitation champagne 
is sold. 

CHAMPAIGN, (sham-pan'), a city 
in Champaign County, Ilk, 128 miles 
south by west of Chicago, on the Illinois 
Central, the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chi¬ 
cago and Saint Louis, and a branch of 
the Wabash railroads. Pop., 13,160. 

CHAMP-DE-MARS (snan-de-mars), 
that is Field of Mars, an extensive piece 
of ground in Paris, used as a place of 
military exercise. It was here that 
Louis XVI. swore to defend the new con¬ 
stitution in 1790, and it was the site of 
the exhibitions of 1867 and 1878. 

CHAMPLAIN (sham-plan') Lake, a 
lake, chiefly in the United States, be¬ 
tween the states of New York and Ver¬ 
mont, but having the north end of it in 
Canada; extreme length, north to south, 
about 120 miles; breadth, from half a 
mile to 15 miles; area, about 600 square 
miles. It is connected by canal with 
the Hudson River, and has for outlet 
the river Richelieu, or Sorel, flowing 
north to the St.Lawrence. Its scenery is 
beautiful, and attracts many vistors. 

CHAMPLAIN (shan-plan), Samuel, a 
French naval officer and maritime ex¬ 
plorer, born about 1570. His exploits in 
the maritime war against Spain in 1595 
attracted the attention of Henry IV., 
who commissioned him in 1603 to found 
establishments in North America. After 
three voyages for that purpose, in the 
last of which he founded Quebec, he was 


in 1620 appointed governor of Canada. 
He wrote an account of his voyages, and 
died in 1635. 



Champlain. 


CHAMPOLLION (shan-pol-yon), Jean 
Francois, French scholar, celebrated for 
his discoveries in the department of 
Egyptian hieroglyphics, born at Figeac, 
department of Lot, in 1790. At an early 
age he devoted himself to the study of 
Hebrew, Arabic, Coptic, etc., and in 
1809 became professor of history at 
Grenoble. He soon, however, retired to 
Paris, where, with the aid of the trilin¬ 
gual inscription of the Rosetta Stone and 
the suggestions thrown out by Dr. 
Thomas Young, he at length discovered 
the key to the graphic system of the 
Egyptians, the three elements of which 
—figurative, ideographic, and alpha¬ 
betic—he expounded before the Insti¬ 
tute in a series of memoirs in 1823. 
These were published in 1824 at the 
expense of the state. In 1826 Charles 
X. appointed him to superintend the 
department of Egyptian antiquities in 
the Louvre; in 1828 he went as director 
of a scientific expedition to Egypt; and 
in 1831 the chair of Egyptian archaeol¬ 
ogy was created for him in the College 
de France. He died at Paris in 1832. 

CHANCE, in the ordinary acceptation 
of the term, an unexpected occurrence. 
Chance exists only in so far as the in¬ 
tention, desires, or knowledge of men are 
concerned. See Cause. 

CHAN'CELLOR, a high official in 
many of the kingdoms of Europe, the 
office including in its duties the super¬ 
vision of charters and other official wri¬ 
tings of the crown requiring solemn 
authentication. The title and office 
are also ecclesiastical, and hence each 
bishop still has his chancellor, the 
principal judge of his consistory. In the 
new German empire, the chancellor 
(Reichskanzler) is president of the 
Federal Council, and has the general 
conduct of the imperial administration. 
In the United States, a chancellor is the 
judge of a court of chancery or equity 
established by statute. 

CHAN'CELLORSVILLE, the site of one 
of the greatest battles of the American 
civil war, in which, on the 2d, 3d, and 
4th of May, 1863, a nominal victory was 
gained by the Confederates under 
Generals Lee and Jackson over the 
Federal troops, commanded by General 
Hooker. The Federal troops, though 
compelled to retreat across the Rappa¬ 
hannock, carried with them some thou¬ 
sands of prisoners and one more gun 


than they had lost, while the Con¬ 
federates lost from 15,000 to 18,000 
men and their brilliant leader Jackson. 

CHAN'CERY, in England, the highest 
court, next to parliament, and presided 
over by the Lord High Chancellor. In 
the U. States, a court established in 
many states under this name and, in 
effect, a court of equity. In most states 
there are no separate courts of chancery 
or equity, the same judge presiding over 
the court of common law and the equity 
court also. The court of equity origi¬ 
nated the injunction, and, in many ways, 
has larger power than a law court. 

CHANDA (chan-da'), a town of India, 
Central Provinces, surrounded by a wall 
5£ miles long, with manufactures and a 
considerable trade. Pop. 16,137.—The 
District, has an area of 10,785 sq. miles, 
a pop. of 697,610. 

CHAN'DLER, William Eaton, an 
American legislator, born in 1835 in 
New Hampshire. He occupied several 
positions in the departments of the 
national government from 1865 to 1881, 
and from the latter year to 1901 was 
U. States senator from New Hampshire. 

CHANDLER, Zachariah, an Ameri¬ 
can legislator born in New Hampshire 
in 1813, removed to Detroit in 1833, 
and one of the organizers of the repub¬ 
lican party. In 1857 he was elected 
United St ates senator from Michigan and 
was twice re-elected. In 1875-7 he was 
secretary of the interior under Grant, 
and in 1879 was again elected to the 
senate. As chairman of the national 
republican committee he aroused much 
enmity by his forceful methods. He 
died suddenly in 1879. 

CHANG-CHOW-FOO, a city, China, 
province of Fokien, 36 miles s.w. of 
Amoy, which is its port. It stands in a 
valley surrounded by hills and inter¬ 
sected by a river, and is the center of 
the silk manufacture of the province. 
Pop. estimated at from 800,000 to 
1 , 000 , 000 . 

CHANNEL, English. See English 

Channel. 

CHANNEL ISLANDS, a group of 
islands in the English Channel, off the 
w. coast of department La Manche, in 
France. They belong to Britain, and 
consist of Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, 
and Sark, with some dependent islets. 
They form the only remains of the 
Norman provinces once subject to 
England. Area 112 sq. miles, pop. 
95,841. 

CHANNEL TUNNEL. See EngUsh 

Channel. 

CHANNING (chan'ing), William El¬ 
lery, American preacher and writer, 
born at Newport, Rhode Island, in 1780. 
He studied at Harvard College, became 
a decided Unitarian, and propagated 
Unitarian tenets with great zeal and 
success. His first appointment as a 
pastor was in 1803, when he obtained 
the charge of a congregation in Boston, 
and ere long be became known as one of 
the most popular preachers of America. 
His reputation was still further increased 
by the publication of writings, chiefly 
sermons, reviews, etc., on popular sub¬ 
jects. He died at Burlington, Vermont, 
in 1842.—His nephew, William Henry 
Channing, born 1810, also a Unitarian 
preacher (for some time at Liverpool) 





CHANT 


CHARIOT 


and supporter of the socialistic move¬ 
ment, wrote a memoir of his uncle and 
other works. He died in 1884. 

CHANT, a short musical composition 
consisting generally of a long reciting 
note, on which an indefinite number of 
words may be intoned, and a melodic 
phrase or cadence. A single chant con¬ 
sists of two strains, the first of three 
and the second of four bars in length. 
A double chant has the length of two 
single ones. 

CHAOS (ka'os), in old theories of the 
earth, the void out of which sprang all 
things or in which they existed in a con¬ 
fused, unformed shape before they were 
separated into kinds. 

CHAP-BOOKS, a species of cheap 
literature which preceded the popular 
periodicals of the present day. They 
usually consisted of coarsely printed 
(and often coarsely written) publica¬ 
tions sold for a copper or two, and were 
so called because they were prepared 
by the popular publishers expressly for 
sale by the chapmen or pedlars, who 
hawked them from district to district. 
They included lives of heroes and won¬ 
derful personages, tales of roguery and 
broad humor, witch and ghost stories 
etc. 

CHAP'EL, a term applied to buildings 
of various kinds erected for some sort of 
religious service. 

CHAPELLE, Placide Louis, an Ameri¬ 
can Roman Catholic churchman, bom 
in France in 1842, and studied in Mary¬ 
land. In 1891 he was made coadjutor of 
Santa F6, in 1897 archbishop of New 
Orleans, and in 1899 apostolic delegate 
to the Philippine Islands. 

CHAPLAIN (chap'lin), literally a per¬ 
son who is appointed to a chapel, as a 
clergyman not having a parish or similar 
charge, but connected with a court, the 
household of a nobleman, an army, a 
prison, a ship, or the like. 

CHAPTER, one of the chief divisions 
of a book. As the rules and statutes of 
ecclesiastical establishments were ar¬ 
ranged in chapters, so also the assembly 
of the members of a religious order, and 
of canons, was called a chapter. The 
orders of knights used this expression 
for the meetings of their members, and 
some societies and corporations call 
their assemblies chapters. 

CHARADE (sha-rad' or sha-rad'), a 
kind of riddle, the subject of which is a 
word that is proposed for discovery 
from an enigmatical description of its 
several syllables, taken separately as so 
many individual and significant words. 
When dramatic representation is used 
to indicate the meaning of the syllables 
and the whole word it is called an acting 
charade. 

CHAR'COAL, a term applied to an 
impure variety of carbon, especially 
such as is produced by charring wood. 
One kind of it is also obtained from bones 
(see Bone Black); lampblack and coke 
are also varieties. . Wood charcoal is 
prepared by piling billets of wood in a 
pyramidal form, with vacuities between 
them for the admission of air, and 
causing them to burn slowly under a 
covering of earth. In consequence of 
the heat, part of the combustible sub¬ 
stance is consumed, part is volatilized, 
together with a portion of water, and 


there remains behind the carbon of the 
wood, retaining the form of the ligneous 
tissue. Another process consists in 
heating the wood in close vessels, by 
which the Volatile parts are driven off, 
and a charcoal remains in the retorts, 
not so dense as that obtained by the 
other process. Wood charcoal, well 
prepared, is of a deep-black color, 
brittle, and porous, tasteless and in¬ 
odorous. It is infusible in any heat a 
furnace can raise; but by the intense 
heat of a powerful galvanic apparatus it 
is hardened, and at length is volatilized, 
presenting a surface with a distinct ap¬ 
pearance of having undergone fusion. 
Charcoal is insoluble in water, and is not 
affected by it at low temperatures; hence, 
wooden stakes which are to be immersed 
in water are often charred to preserve 
them, and the ends of posts stuck in the 
ground are also thus treated. Owing 
to its peculiarly porous texture, charcoal 

E jossesses the property of absorbing a 
arge quantity of air or other gases at 
common temperatures, and of yielding 
the greater part of them when heated. 
Charcoal likewise absorbs the odorifer¬ 
ous and coloring principles of most 
animals and vegetable substances, and 
hence is a valuable deodorizer and dis¬ 
infectant. Water which, from having 
been long kept in wooden vessels, as 
during long voyages, has acquired an 
offensive smell, is deprived of it by 
filtration through charcoal powder. 
Charcoal can even remove or prevent 
the putrescence of animal matter. It 
is used as fuel in various arts, where a 
strong heat is required, without smoke, 
and in various metallurgic operations. 
By cementation with charcoal, iron is 
converted into steel.. It is used in the 
manufacture of gunpowder. In its 
finer state of aggregation, under the 
form of ivoryblack, lampblack, etc., 
it is the basis of black paint; and mixed 
with fat oils and resinous matter, to give 
a due consistence, it forms the composi¬ 
tion of printing-ink. 

CHARENTE (sha-rant), a river in 
Western France, rising in the depart¬ 
ment of Haute-Vienne, and falling into 
the sea about 8 miles below Rochefort, 
opposite to the isle of Oleron, after a 
course of about 200 miles. It gives its 
name to two departments.—Charente, 
an inland department; area, 2294 sq. 
miles; capital Angouleme. Soil gen¬ 
erally thin, dry and arid; one-third de¬ 
voted to tillage, a third to vineyards, 
and the remainder meadows, woods, 
and waste lands. The wines are of in¬ 
ferior quality, but they yield the best 
brandy in Europe, the celebrated cognac 
brandy being made in Cognac and other 
districts. Pop. 350,305. 

CHARENTE-INFERIEURE (an-fa-ri- 
eur), a maritime department; area, 2635 
sq. miles. Surface in general flat; soil 
chalky and sandy, fertile, and well culti¬ 
vated; a considerable portion planted 
with vines; salt marshes along the coast. 
The pastures are good, and well stocked 
with cattle, horses and sheep. Oysters 
and sardines , abound on the coast. 
Salt and brandy are the only articles 
manufactured to any great extent. 
Capital La Rochelle. Pop. 452,149. 

CHARGE, in heraldry, signifies the 
various figures depicted on the escutch¬ 


eon.— In gunnery charge signifies the 
quantity of powder used at one dis¬ 
charge of a gun.—Charge, in military 
tactics, is the rapid advance of infantry 
or cavalry against the enemy, with the 
object of breaking his lines by the mo¬ 
mentum of the attack. Infantry gen¬ 
erally advance to about 100 yards and 
fire, then gradually quicken their pace 
into the charge-step, and dash at the 
enemy’s lines. Cavalry charge in 
echelon or column against infantry, 
which is usually formed in squares to 
receive them. 

CHARGE-D’AFFAIRES (shir-zha- 
d&f-ar), the title of an inferior rank of 
diplomatic agents. See Minister, For¬ 
eign. 

CHARIOT, a term applied to vehicles 
used both for pleasure and in war. 
Ancient chariots, such as those used 
among the Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks 
and Romans, were of various forms. 



A common form was open behind and 
closed in front, and had only two.wheels. 
In ancient warfare chariots were "of great 
importance; thus we read of the 900 
iron chariots of Sisera, as giving him a 
great advantage against the Israelites. 
The Philistines in their war against Saul 
had 30,000 chariots. The sculptures 
of ancient Egypt show that the chariots 
formed the strength of the Egyptian 
army, these vehicles being two-horsed 
and carrying the driver and the warrior, 
sometimes a third man, the shield- 
bearer. There is no representation of 
Egyptian soldiers on horse-back, and 
consequently when Moses in his song of 
triumph over Pharaoh speaks of the 
“horse and his rider,” “rider” must be 
understood to mean chariot-rider. In 
the Egyptian chariots the framework, 
wheels, pole, and yoke were of wood, 
and the fittings of the inside, the bind¬ 
ings of the framework, as well as the 
harness were chiefly of raw hide or of 
tanned leather. We have also numbers 
of sculptures which give a clear idea of 
the Assyrian chariots. These resembled 
the Egyptian in all essential features, 
containing almost invariably three men 
—the warrior, the shield-bearer, and the 
charioteer. A peculiarity of both is the 
quiver or quivers full of arrows attached 
to the side. The Assyrian war-chariot 
shown in the figure is drawn by three 
horses abreast, and all the appointments 
are rich and elaborate. It has, as will 
be noticed, two quivers crossing each 
other on the side, filled with arrows, and 
each also containing a small axe. A 
socket for holding the spear is also 











CHARITIES 


CHARLES I. 


attached. From the front of the chariot 
a singular ornamental appendage 
stretches forward. War-chariots had 
sometimes scythe-like weapons attached 
to each extremity of the axle, as among 
the ancient Persians and Britons. 


king, and divided the kingdom of the 
Franks with his younger brother Carlo- 
man, at whose death in 771, Charle¬ 
magne made himself master of the whole 
empire, which embraced, besides France, 
a large part of Germany. His first great 


by intercourse with scholars; and, to the 
time of his death, this intercourse 
remained his favorite recreation. His 
mother-tongue was a form of German, 
but he spoke several languages readily, 
especially the Latin, and was naturally 
eloquent. He sought to improve the 
liturgy and church music, and attempted 
unsuccessfully to introduce uniformity 
of measures and weights. He built a 
lighthouse at Boulogne, constructed 
several ports, encouraged agriculture, 
and enacted wise laws. He convened 
councils and parliaments, published 
capitularies, wrote many letters (some 
of which are still extant), a grammar, 
and several Latin poems. His empire 
comprehended France, most of Cata¬ 
lonia, Navarre, and Aragon; the Nether¬ 
lands, Germany as far as the Elbe, Saale, 
and Eider, Upper and Middle Italy, 
Istria, and a part of Sclavonia. 

CHARLES I., surnamed le Chauve, or 
the Bald, King of France, was son of 
Louis le D6bonnaire, and was born 823. 
He died in 877. CHARLES H., sur¬ 
named le Gros, or the Fat, King of 
France, is also known as Charles III., 
emperor of Germany, and was born 
about 832. He was the son of Louis the 
German, and ascended the French 
throne in 885 to the prejudice of his 
cousin, Charles the Simple, but was 
deposed in 887 and died the following 
year. CHARLES III., King of France, 
6urnamed the Simple, was the son of 
Louis the Stammerer, and born in 879, 
died in 929. CHARLES IV., King of 
France, surnamed le Bel, or the Hand¬ 
some, third son of Philippe le Bel was 
born in 1294, and ascended the throne 
in 1322. He died in 1328. CHARLES 
V., surnamed the Wise, King of France, 
was the son of King John, and was born 
in 1337. He died in 1380. He erected 
the Bastille for the purpose of over¬ 
awing the Parisians. CHARLES VI., 
surnamed the Silly, King of France, and 
son of the foregoing, was born at Paris 
in 1368, and in 1388 took the reins of 
government into his own hands. Four 
years later he lost his reason, and one of 
the most disastrous periods of French 
history began. Charles died in 1422. 
CHARLES VII., King of France, was 
born at Paris in 1403. He succeeded 
only to the southern provinces of the 
kingdom, Henry VI. of England being 
proclaimed king of France at Paris. 
The English dominion in France was 
under the government of the Duke of 
Bedford, and so skilfully did the Eng¬ 
lish general conduct his operations that 
Charles had almost abandoned the 
struggle as hopeless, when the appear¬ 
ance of Jeanne d’Arc, the Maid of 
Orleans, gave, as if by a miracle, a 
favorable turn to his affairs, and the 
struggle ended in the expulsion of the 
English from all their possessions in 
France, except Calais, Charles died in 
1461. CHARLES VIII., King of France, 
son of Louis XI., was born in 1470, died 
in 1498. CHARLES IX., King of France, 
son of Henry II., and Catharine de’ 
Medici, bom in 1550, ascended the 
throne at the age of ten years. His 
haughty and ambitious mother seized 
the control of the state. Along with 
the Guises she headed the Catholic 
League against the Calvinists, and her 



Assyrian war-chariot. 


Among the Greeks and Romans chariot- 
races were common. In Britain the 
name chariot was formerly given to a 
kind of light travelling carriage. 

CHARITIES, institutions for the 
relief of the poor, sick, or otherwise 
disabled or incompetent members of 
society. Within the past 25 or 30 years 
organized charity has grown with tre¬ 
mendous strides until at present they 
represent vast sums of wealth and innu¬ 
merable workers, paid and unpaid. 
These charities care for destitute adults, 
incurables of various kinds, criminals, 
the sick, children, homeless aged, in¬ 
digent families, and many other types 
of pitiable persons. The majority of 
these institutions are independent of 
the state and are supported by private 
donations and bequests. 

CHARITIES, United, societies for 
charitable purposes in various cities, 
consisting of a union of many or most 
of the charity organizations in the city. 
These united charity organizations 
have been established in 140 cities of 
the U. States and in 10 Canadian cities. 
The purpose is to secure co-ordination 
of work and to prevent imposition, or 
systematic deception or double dealing 
on the part of applicants. 

CHARITIES AND CORRECTION, the 
national conference of, an organization 
with 1500 members scattered through¬ 
out the U. States, Canada, and Mexico. 
The first meeting was held in New York 
in 1874. In 1879 the conference met in 
Chicago, and yearly meetings are held 
in varions cities. A fee of $2.50 is 
charged for membership which entitles 
the member to the annual publications. 
The general secretary is J. P. Byers, 
Columbus, Ohio. 

CHARITY, Sisters of. See Sisters of 
Charity. 

CHARLEMAGNE (shar-le-man'), King 
of the Franks, and subsequently Em¬ 
peror of the West, was born in 742, 
probably at Aix-la-Chapelle. His father 
was Pepin the Short, king of the Franks, 
eon of Charles Martel. On the decease 
of his father, in 768, he was crowned 


enterprise was the conquest of the 
Saxons, a heathen nation living between 
the Weser and the Elbe, which he under¬ 
took in 772; but it was not till 803 that 
they were finally subdued, and brought 
to embrace Christianity. While he was 
combating the Saxons, Pope Adrian 
implored his assistance against Desider- 
ius, king of the Lombards. Charle¬ 
magne immediately marched with his 
army to Italy, took Pavia, overthrew 
Desiderius, and was crowned King of 
Lombardy with the iron crown. In 
778 he repaired to Spain to assist a 
Moorish prince, and while returning his 
troops were surprised in the valley of 
Roncesvalles by the Biscayans, and the 
rear-guard defeated; Roland, one of the 
most famous warriors of those times, 
fell in the battle. As his power in¬ 
creased, he meditated more seriously the 
accomplishemnt of the plan of his an¬ 
cestor, Charles Martel, to restore the 
Western Empire. Having gone to 
Italy to assist the pope, on Christmas-day 
800 he was crowned and proclaimed 
Caesar and Augustus by Leo III. His 
son Pepin, who had been made king of 
Italy, died in 810, and his death was 
followed the next year by that of Charles 
his eldest son. Thus of his legitimate 
sons one only remained, Louis, king of 
Aquitania, whom Charlemagne adopted 
as his colleague in 813. He died Jan. 
28, 814, in the forty-seventh year of his 
reign, and was buried at Aix-la-Chapelle, 
his favorite and usual place of residence. 
Charlemagne was a friend of learning, 
and deserves the name of restorer of the 
sciences and teacher of his people. He 
attracted by his liberality the most dis¬ 
tinguished scholars to his court (among 
others, Alcuin, from England), and 
established an academy in his palace at 
Aix-la-Chapelle, the sittings of which 
he attended with all the scientific and 
literary men of his court. He invited 
teachers of language and mathematics 
from Italy to the principal cities of the 
empire, and founded schools of theology 
and the liberal sciences in the monas¬ 
teries. He strove to cultivate his mind 


















CHARLES IV. 


CHARLES XII. 


tortuous and unscrupulous policy helped 
to embitter the religious strife of the 
factions. After a series of Huguenot 
persecutions and civil wars a peace was 
made in 1570, which, two years later, on 
24th August, 1572, was treacherously 
broken by the Massacre of St. Bartholo¬ 
mew’s. The king, who had been little 
more than the tool of his scheming 
mother, died two years afterward, in 
1574. CHARLES X., King of France, 
Comte d’Artois, born at Versailles in 
1757, grandson of Louis XV., was the 
youngest son of the dauphin, and 
brother of Louis XVI. He died in 1836. 
His grandson, the Comte de Chambord 
(which see), claimed the French throne 
as his heir. 

CHARLES IV., Emperor of Germany, 
of the house of Luxemburg, was born 
1316, and was the son of King John of 
Bohemia. In 1346 he was elected 
emperor by five of the electoral princes, 



Charles V, of Germany. 

while the actual emperor Louis the 
Bavarian was still alive. On the death 
of the latter a part of the electors 
elected Count Gunther of Schwarzburg, 
who soon after died; and Charles at 
length won over his enemies, and was 
elected and consecrated emperor at 
Aix-la-Chapelle. He died at Prague 
in 1378. CHARLES V., Emperor of 
Germany and King of Spain (in the 
latter capacity he is called Charles I.), 
the eldest son of Philip, archduke of 
Austria, and of Joanna, the daughter 
of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, was 
born at Ghent, Feb. 24, 1500. Charles 
was thus the grandson of the Emperor 
Maximilian and Mary, daughter of 
Charles the Bold, last duke of Burgundy, 
and inherited from his grandparents on 
both sides the fairest countries in 
Europe, Aragon, Naples, Sicily, Sar¬ 
dinia, Castile, and the colonies in the 
New World, Austria, Burgundy, and the 
Netherlands. On the death of Ferdi¬ 
nand, his grandfather, Charles assumed 
the title of King of Spain. Foiled in his 
schemes and dejected with repeated 
failures, Charles resolved to resign the 
imperial dignity, and transfer his heredi¬ 
tary estates to his son Philip. In 1555 
he conferred on him the sovereignty of 
the Netherlands, and on January 15, 
1556, that of Spain, retiring himself to a 
residence beside the monastery of V uste, 
‘n Estremadura, where he amused 
himself by mechanical labors and the 
cultivation of a garden. He still took a 
strong interest in public affairs, though 
latterly he was very much of an invalid, 


his ill health being partly caused by his 
high living. He died on Sept. 21, 1558. 
CHARLES VI., German emperor, the 
second son of the Emperor Leopold I 
was born Oct. 1, 1685. He was destined 
according to the ordinary rules of in¬ 
heritance to succeed his relative Charles 
II. on the throne of Spain. But Charles 
II. by his will made a French prince, 
Philip, duke of Anjou, grandson of 
Louis XIV., heir to the Spanish mon¬ 
archy. This occasioned the war of the 
Spanish Succession, in which England 
and Holland took the part of the 
Austrian claimant. In 1733 a war with 
France and Spain regarding the succes¬ 
sion in Poland terminated unfavorably 
for him, he having to surrender Sicily, 
Naples, and part of Milan, to Spain, and 
Lorraine to France. In 1737 he renewed 
the war with the Turks, this time un¬ 
successfully. Charles died Oct. 20,1740. 
CHARLES VII., Emperor of Germany, 
born in 1697, was the son of Maximilian 
Emanuel, elector of Bavaria. In 1726 
he succeeded his father as Elector of 
Bavaria. In support of his claims he 
invaded Austria with an army, took 
Prague, was crowned king of Bohemia, 
and in 1742 was elected emperor. But 
fortune soon deserted him. The armies 
of Maria Theresa reconquered all Upper 
Austria, and overwhelmed Bavaria. 
Charles fled to Frankfort, and returning 
to Munich in 1744, died there the fol¬ 
lowing year. 

CHARLES I., King of England, Scot¬ 
land, and Ireland, was born at Dun¬ 
fermline, Scotland, in the year 1600, 
and was the third son of James VI. and 
Anne of Denmark. He married Hen¬ 
rietta Maria, daughter of Henry IV. of 
France, and in 1625 succeeded to the 
throne, receiving the kingdom em¬ 
broiled in a Spanish war. The first 
parliament which he summoned, being 



Charles I, of England. 


more disposed to state grievances than 
grant supplies, was dissolved. Next 
year (1626) a new parliament was sum¬ 
moned; but the House proved no more 
tractable than before, and was soon dis¬ 
solved. In 1628 the king w T as obliged to 
call a new parliament, which showed 
itself as much opposed to arbitrary 
measures as its predecessor, and after 
voting the supplies prepared the Petition 
of Right, which Charles was constrained 
to pass into a law. In was in Scotland, 
however, that formal warlike opposition 
was destined to commence. The king 
had on his side the great bulk of the 
gentry, while nearly all the Puritans and 


the inhabitants of the great trading 
towns sided with the parliament. The 
first action, the battle of Edgehill (23d 
Oct., 1642), gave the king a slight ad¬ 
vantage; but nothing very decisive 
happened till the battle of Marston Moor, 
in 1644, where Cromwell routed the 
royalists. Charles at length gave him¬ 
self up to the Scottish army at Newark 
(5th May, 1646). All interposition being 
vain, he was beheaded before the Ban¬ 
queting House, Whitehall, on 30th Jan., 
1649, meeting his fate with great 
dignity and composure. 

CHARLES II., King of England, Ire¬ 
land, and Scotland, son of Charles I. and 
Henrietta Maria of France, was bom in 
1630. He was a refugee at the Hague on 
the death of his father, on which he 
immediately assumed the royal title. 
Cromwell was then all-powerful in Eng¬ 
land ; but Charles accepted an invitation 
from the Scots, who had proclaimed him 
their king July, 1650, and, passing over 



Charles IX. 


to Scotland, was crowned at Scone 
(1651). Cromwell’s approach made him 
take refuge among the English royal¬ 
ists, who, having gathered an army, 
encountered Cromwell at Worcester, 
and were totally defeated. With great 
difficulty Charles escaped to France. 
On the death of Cromwell the Restor¬ 
ation, effected without a struggle by 
General Monk, set Charles on the 
throne after the declaration of Breda, 
his entry into the capital (29th May, 
1&S0) being made amidst universal ac¬ 
clamations. In 1662 he married the 
Infanta of Portugal, Catharine of Bra- 
ganza,'a prudent and virtuous princess, 
but in no way calculated to acquire the 
affection of a man like Charles. For a 
time his measures, mainly counselled by 
the chancellor Lord Clarendon, were 
prudent and conciliatory. But the 
indolence, extravagance, and licentious, 
habits of the king soon involved the 
nation as well as himself in difficulties. 
He died from the consequences of an 
apoplectic fit in February, 1685, after 
having received the sacrament accord¬ 
ing to the rites of the Roman Church. 

CHARLES XII., King of Sweden, was 
born at Stockholm, June 27, 1682. On 
the death of his father, in 1697, when he 
was but fifteen years old, he was de¬ 
clared of age by the estates. Unfor¬ 
tunate in his campaigns against the 
Russians he returned to his own coun¬ 
try and set about the measures neces¬ 
sary to defend the kingdom, and the 
fortunes of Sweden were beginning to 
assume a favorable aspect when he was 






CHARLES XIV. 


CHARM 


slain by a cannon-ball as he was besieg¬ 
ing Frederikshall, Nov. 30, 1718. Firm¬ 
ness, valor, and love of justice were the 
great features in the character of Charles, 
but were disfigured by an obstinate 
rashness. After his death Sweden sank 
from the rank of a leading power. 
CHARLES XIII., King of Sweden, was 
born in 1748, being the second son of 
King Adolphus Frederick. In the war 
with Russia, in 1788, he received the 
command of the fleet, and defeated the 
Russians in the Gulf of Finland. He 
adopted as his successor Marshal Berna¬ 
dette, who became king on the death of 
C harles, Feb. 5, 1818. 

CHARLES XIV. See Bernadotte. 

CHARLES I., King of Spain. See 
Charles V., Emperor of Germany. 

CHARLES IV., King of Spain, bom 
at Naples 12th Nov. 1748, succeeded 
his brother Ferdinand VI. in 1788, was 
all his life completely under the influ¬ 
ence of his wife and her paramour 
Godoy. In 1808 Charles abdicated in 
favor of Napoleon. He died in 1819. 

CHARLES, Archduke of Austria, 
third son of the Emperor Leopold II., 
was born in Florence 5th Sept. 1771. 
After distinguishing himself in various 
campaigns, in 1796 he was appointed 
commander-in-chief of the Austrian 
army on the Rhine, and won several 
victories against the French. In 1805 
he commanded in Italy against Mass^na, 
and won Caldiero (31st Oct.); but in the 
campaign of 1809 in Germany against 
Napoleon he was unsuccessful, the battle 
of Wagram (5th and 6th July) laying 
Austria at the feet of the French em¬ 
peror. With that event the military 
career of Charles closed. He died in 
1847. He published several military 
works of value. 

CHARLES ALBERT, King of Sar¬ 
dinia, born 1798, was the son of Charles 
Emmanuel, prince of Savoy-Carignan. 
He abdicated in favor of his son, Victor 
Emmanuel, and, retiring to Portugal, 
died 28th July, 1849. 

CHARLES EDWARD STUART, called 
the Pretender, grandson of James II. 
king of England, son of James Edward 
and Clementina, daughter of Prince 
Sobieski, was born in 1720 at Rome. 



Prince Charles Edward Stuart. 


In 1742 he went to Paris and persuaded 
Louis XV. to assist him in an attempt 
to recover the throne of his ancestors. 
Fifteen thousand men were on the point 
of sailing from Dunkirk, when the Eng¬ 
lish admiral Norris dispersed the whole 
fleet. Charles now determined to trust 
to his own exertions. Accompanied by 


seven officers he landed on the west 
coast of Scotland, from a small ship call¬ 
ed the Doutelle. Many Lowland nobles 
and Highland chiefs went over to his 
party. With a small army thus formed 
he marched forward, captured Perth, 
then Edinburgh (Sept. 17, 1745), de¬ 
feated an army of 4000 British under 
Sir John Cope at Prestonpans (Sept. 22), 
and advancing obtained possession of 
Carlisle. He now caused his father to 
be proclaimed king, and himself regent 
of England; removed his head-quarters 
to Manchester, and soon found him¬ 
self within 100 miles of London, where 
many of his friends awaited his arrival. 
The rapid successes of the adventurer 
now caused a part of the British forces 
in Germany to be recalled. Want of 
support, disunion, and jealousy among 
the adherents of the house of Stuart, 
some errors, and the superior force op¬ 
posed to him, compelled Prince Charles 
to retire in the beginning of 1746. He 
latterly fell into habits of intoxication, 
and he died Jan. 31, 1788. 

CHARLES MARTEL', ruler of the 
Franks, was a son of Pepin Heristal. 
His father had governed as mayor of 
the palace under the weak Frankish 
kings with so much justice that he was 
enabled to make his office hereditary 
in his family. Chilperic II., king of the 
Franks, refusing to acknowledge Charles 
Martel as mayor of the palace, the latter 
deposed him, and set Clothaire IV. in his 
place. After the death of Clothaire he 
restored Chilperic, and subsequently 
placed Thierri on the throne. Charles 
Martel rendered his rule famous by the 
great victory which he gained in Octo¬ 
ber, 732, over the Saracens, near Tours, 
from which he acquired the name of 
Martel, signifying hammer. He died 
741. Charlemagne was his grandson. 
See Charlemagne. 

CHARLES THE BOLD, Duke of Bur¬ 
gundy, son of Philip the Good and Isa¬ 
bella of Portugal, born at Dijon Nov. 10, 
1433. While his father yet lived Charles 
left Burgundy, and forming an alliance 
with some of the great French nobles for 
the purpose of preserving the power of 
the feudal nobility, he marched on Paris 
with 20,000 men, defeated Louis XI. at 
Montlheri, and won the counties of 
Boulogne, Guines, and Ponthieu. Suc¬ 
ceeding his father in 1467 be commenced 
his reign by severe repression of the 
citizens of Liege and Ghent. Charles 
now turned his arms against the Swiss, 
took the city of Granson, putting 800 
men to the sword. But this cruelty was 
speedily avenged by the descent of a 
Swiss army, which at the first shock 
routed the duke’s forces at Granson, 
March 3, 1476. Mad with rage and 
shame Charles gathered another army, 
invaded Switzerland, and was again 
defeated with great loss at Morat. The 
Swiss, led by the Duke of Lorraine, now 
undertook the reconquest of Lorraine, 
and obtained possession of Nancy. 
Charles marched to recover it, but was 
utterly routed and himself slain. 

CHARLESTON, a city and seaport of 
South Carolina, on a tongue of land 
formed by the confluence of the rivers 
Cooper and Ashley, which unite just 
below the city, and form a spacious and 
convenient harbor extending about 7 


miles to the Atlantic, and defended by 
several forts. The city is regularly laid 
out, most of the principal thoroughfares 
being 60 to 70 feet wide and bordered 
with fine shade-trees. It is much the 



largest town in the state, and is one of 
the leading commercial cities in the 
south. The staple exports are cotton 
(to the value of, say, $20,000,000 
annually), cotton-seed, rice, rosin and 
turpentine, lumber, and phosphate. The 
civil war greatly damaged the trade, but 
there has since been marked commer¬ 
cial and industrial progress. Yellow 
fever has made frequent ravages in 
Charleston, but on the whole it is 
considered more healthy than most 
other Atlantic towns in the southern 
states. It was the scene of the out¬ 
break of the civil war on April 12, 1861, 
and was evacuated by the Confederates 
on February 17, 1865. On 31st August, 
1886, the coast region of the U. States 
from Alabama to New York experienced 
a series of earthquake shocks, from which 
Charleston in particular suffered severely, 
many lives and about five million dollars 
worth of property being destroyed. 
Pop. 64,000. 

CHARLESTON, the county seat of 
Kanawha county, and capital of West 
Virginia, is situated on the Kanawha 
river at the confluence of Elk river 65 
miles from its mouth and 150 miles s.s.w. 
of Wheeling. Pop. 13,109. 

CHARLOTTE, a city and county- 
seat of Mecklenburg County, N. C., 125 
miles west by south of Raleigh, on Sugar 
Creek, and on the Southern and the Sea¬ 
board Air-line railroads. It is in the 
gold region of the State, and a branch 
mint was established here in 1838. Pop. 
21,040. 

CHARLOTTENBURG (shar-lot'en- 

bur/i), a town of Prussia, on the Spree, 
about 3 miles from Berlin, with a royal 
palace and park, great technical school 
or college, also a number of industrial 
and maufacturing establishments. Pop. 
189,290. 

CHARLOTTE-RUSSE (shaf'lot-rys), a 
dish made of whipped-eream surrounded 
with a border of sponge-cake. 

CHARM, anything believed to possess 
some occult or supernatural power, such 
as an amulet, spell, etc., but properly 










CHARNEL-HOUSE 


CHATHAM 


applied (as the name, derived from Lat. 
carmen, a song, indicates) to spells 
couched in formulas of words or verses. 

CHARNEL-HOUSE, a chamber or 
building under or near churches where 
the bones of the dead are deposited. 

CHARON (ka'ron). in Greek mythol¬ 
ogy, the son of Erebus and Night. It 
was his office to ferry the dead in his 
crazy boat over the rivers of the infernal 
regions, for which office he received an 
obolus, or farthing, which accordingly 
was usually put into the mouth of the 
deceased. He was represented as an 
old man, with a gloomy aspect, matted 
beard, and tattered garments. 

CHART, a hydrographical or marine 
map, that is a draft or projection of 
some part of the earth’s surface, with 
the coasts, islands, rocks, banks, chan¬ 
nels, or entrances into harbors, rivers, 
and bays, the points of compass, sound¬ 
ings, or depth of water, etc., to regulate 
the courses of ships in their voyages. 
The term chart is applied to a marine 
map; map is applied to a draft of 
some portion of land (often including 
6ea also). A plane chart is one in which 
the meridians are supposed parallel to 
each other, the parallels of latitude at 
equal distances, and of course the de¬ 
grees of latitude and longitude every¬ 
where equal to each other. A great 
number of excellent charts are pro¬ 
duced by the hydrographic department 
of the British admiralty. The United 
States Coast Survey Department pro¬ 
duces similar charts. 

CHARTER, a franchise or power, 
given to a corporation by a state en¬ 
abling the corporation to perform the 
functions described in the charter. 
Charters were granted by the English 
kings to all sorts of associations in 
the American colonies. In the United 
States today corporations of all kinds 
are chartered by legislatures, inclusive 
of the cities incorporated within the 
state. Thus all public or civic corpora¬ 
tions, of whatever kind, being creatures 
of the state, can be nullified or destroyed 
by the state at the will of the legislature. 
But the state cannot nullify the charter 
of a private corporation as this is for¬ 
bidden by the federal constitution 
which provides that no state can pass 
a law impairing the obligation of con¬ 
tracts—unless this power is reserved 
by the state when it grants the 
charter. 

CHARTER-HOUSE, a celebrated 
school and charitable foundation in the 
city of London. In 1371 Sir Walter 
Manny built and endowed it as a priory 
for Carthusian monks (hence the name, 
a corruption of Chartreuse, the cele¬ 
brated Carthusian convent). After the 
dissolution of the monasteries it passed 
through several hands till it came into 
the possession of Thomas Sutton, who 
converted it into a hospital and school, 
richly endowed, consisting of a master, 
reacher, head schoolmaster, forty-four 
oys and eighty decayed gentlemen, 
with a physician and other officers and 
servants. Among famous men who 
have received their education at the 
Charter-house are Isaac Barrow, Addi¬ 
son, Steele, John Wesley, Blackstone, 
Grote, Thirlwall, Havelock, John Leech, 
and Thackeray. 


CHARTER OAK, a great oak tree in 
Hartford, Conn., which was blown down 
in 1856, and which was believed to have 
been standing for 1000 years previously. 
It received its name from the tradition 
that the charter of Connecticut had been 
concealed in its hollow. 

CHARTREUSE (shar-trewz) orGREAT 
CHARTREUSE, a famous Carthusian 
monastery in Southeastern France, a 
little northeast of Grenoble, situated 
at the foot of high mountains, 3280 
feet above sea-level, the head-quarters 
of the order of the Carthusians. It was 
founded in 1084, but the present build¬ 
ing, a huge, plain-looking pile, dates 
from 1676. The monks of this mon¬ 
astery manufacture the well-known 
liquor called Chartreuse, which owes its 
special properties to the aromatic plants 
growing on the Alps. 

CHARYBDIS (ka-rib'dis), an eddy or 
whirlpool in the Straits of Messina, cele¬ 
brated in ancient times, and regarded 
as the more dangerous to navigators 
because in endeavoring to escape it they 
ran the risk of being wrecked upon 
Scylla, a rock opposite to it. There are 
several whirlpools in this region which 
may have been dangerous enough to the 
undecked boats of the Greeks, but none, 
which the modern navigator with due 
caution may not easily pass. 

CHASE: (1) in printing, an iron frame 
used to confine types when set in 
columns or pages. (2) The part of a 
gun between the trunnions and the 
swell of the muzzle, or in modern guns, 
in which the muzzle has no swell, the 
whole of that part of a gun which is in 
front of the trunnions. 

CHASE, Salmon Portland, American 
statesman and jurist, born in New Hamp¬ 
shire, 1808. Having adopted the law 
as his profession he settled at Cincinnati 
and acquired a practice there. He early 
showed himself an opponent of slavery, 
and was the means of founding the Free- 
soil party, which in time gave rise to the 
great Republican party—the power that 
brought the downfall of slavery. In 
1849-55 he was a member of the United 
States Senate, in which he vigorously 
opposed the extension of slavery into the 
new territories. In 1855 he was elected 
governor of Ohio, being re-elected in 
1857. In 1860 he was an unsuccessful 
candidate for the presidency. In 1861 
he was nominated secretary of the 
treasury, and in this post was signally 
successful in providing funds for carry¬ 
ing on the civil war. In 1864 he resigned 
office, and was appointed chief-justice 
of the supreme courts. He died in 1783. 

CHASING is the art of working 
decorative forms in low-relief in gold, 
silver, or other metals. It is generally 
practised in connection with repousse 
work, in which the figures are punched 
out from behind and are then sculptured 
on the front or chased with the graver. 

CHASSEPOT RIFLE (shas-po), a 
breech-loading rifle, named after its 
inventor, and adopted as the firearm 
of the French infantry in 1866, but since 
given up. It was about 4 lbs. lighter 
than the needle-gun and about 1 lb. 
lighter than the Martini-Henry rifle. 

CHASSEURS (shas-eitr), a name given 
to various sections of light infantry and 
cavalry in the French service. 


CHAS'UBLE, the upper garment worn 
by a priest during the celebration of 
mass. It was originally circular, had a 
hole in the middle for the head, but no 
holes for the arms. In later times the 
sides were cut away to give a freer 



A, Ancient form of chasuble: 1, Apparel of the 
neck. 2222, Chasuble. 33, Orphreys of the 
chasuble. 4, The stole. 5 5, The alb. 6, Ap¬ 
parel of the alb. 7. The maniple. 

B, Modern form of chasuble. 

motion to the arms, and it has now 
become an oblong garment hanging 
down before and behind, made of rich 
materials, as silk, velvet, cloth of gold, 
and has a cross embroidered on the 
back. 

CHAT, the popular name of birds of 
the family Sylviadse or warblers. They 
are small, lively birds, moving inces¬ 
santly and rapidly about in pursuit of 
the insects on which they chiefly live. 
There are three species found in Britain, 
the stone-chat, whin-chat, and wheatear. 
The yellow-breasted chat of the United 
States is a larger bird, belonging to the 
family Turdidse or thrushes. 

CHATEAU (sha-to), the French term 
for a castle or mansion in the country; 
a country-seat.—Chateau en Espagne, 
literaly, a castle in Spain; a castle in 
the air: a phrase of doubtful origin. 

CHATEAUBRIAND (sha-to-bri-an), 
Francois Auguste, Vicomte de, a cele¬ 
brated French author and politician, 
was born at St. Malo in Brittany, of a 
noble family, September 14, 1768. After 
serving in the navy and the army he 
travelled in North America; but the 
news of the flight of Louis XVI. and his 
arrest at Varennes brought him back 
to France. Shortly after he quitted 
France and joined with other emigrants 
the Prussian army on the Rhine. In 
1800 he returned to France, and in the 
following year published bis romance 
of Atala, the scene of which is laid in 
America, and the year after his cele¬ 
brated work, Le G4nie du Christianisme, 
which is a kind of brilliant picture of 
Christianity in an aesthetic and romantic 
aspect. Style, power of description, and 
eloquence are the merits of the book 
rather than any depth of thought; but 
it carried the author’s reputation far 
and wide, and contributed much to the 
religious reaction of the time. In his 
later years he wrote several works, but 
none of the value of his earlier produc¬ 
tions. He died 4th July, 1848. 

CHATHAM, William Pitt, Earl of, 
one of the most illustrious statesmen of 










CHATTANOOGA 


CHEESE 


Britain, the son of Robert Pitt of 
Boconnoc, in Cornwall, born Nov. 15, 
1708, and educated at Eton and Oxford. 
He entered parliament and soon at¬ 
tracted notice as a powerful opponent 
of Walpole. In spite of the king’s dis¬ 
like Pitt was powerful enough to win a 



William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. 


place in the administration (1746), first 
as vice-treasurer of Ireland, and after¬ 
ward as paymaster-general. In 1756 
he became secretary of state and real 
head of the government. Dismissed in 
1757 on account of his opposition to the 
king’s Hanoverian policy, no stable 
administration could be formed without 
him, and he returned to power the same 
year in conjunction with the Duke of 
Newcastle. In was under this adminis¬ 
tration and entirety under the inspira¬ 
tion of Pitt that Britain rose to a place 
among the nations she had not before 
occupied. Wolfe and Clive, both stimu¬ 
lated and supported in their great 
designs by Pitt, won Canada and India 
from the French, and the support the 
Great Commoner gave Frederick of 
Prussia"contributed not a little to the 
destruction of French predominance in 
Europe. The accession of George III. 
brought Lord Bute into power, and 
Pitt, disagreeing with Bute, resigned in 
1761. In 1766 he strongly advocated 
conciliatory measures toward the Amer¬ 
ican colonies, and undertook the same 
year to form an administration, he going 
to the House of Lords as Earl of Chat¬ 
ham. But the ministry was not a suc¬ 
cess, and in 1768 he resigned. After this 
his principal work was his appeals for a 
conciliatory policy toward the colonies. 
But his advice was disregarded, and the 
colonies declared themselves independ¬ 
ent in 1776. Chatham died May 11, 
1778. He received a public funeral and 
a magnificent monument in Westminster 
Abbey. The character of Chatham was 
marked by integrity, disinterestedness, 
and patriotism. With great oratorical 
gifts and the insight of a great states¬ 
man he had liberal and elevated senti¬ 
ments; but he was haughty and showed 
too marked a consciousness of his own 
superiority. 

CHAT'T ANOO'GA, a city and county- 
seat of Hamilton Co., Tenn., 150 miles 
southeast of Nashville, on the Tennes¬ 
see River. The river is navigable eight 
months of the year as far as this place, 
and several lines of railroad pass through 
the city, making it an important rail¬ 
road center. The Chickamauga Na¬ 
tional Military Park, laid out by the 
Federal Government on the site of the 


battle of Chickamauga, is south by east 
of the city, and was dedicated in 1895. 
Another feature of interest is the 
National Cemetery, one of the largest 
in the country, containing 13,322 graves. 
Pop. 84,000. 

CHAT'TELS, property movable and 
immovable, not being freehold. The 
word chattel is originally the same word 
with cattle, formed from late Latin 
capitalia, meaning heads of cattle, from 
L. caput, head. Chattels are divided 
into real and personal. Chattels real are 
such as belong not to the person im¬ 
mediately, but dependently upon some¬ 
thing, as an interest in a land or tene¬ 
ment, or a lease, or an interest in ad- 
vowsons. Any interest in land or tene¬ 
ments, for example, is a real chattel; so 
also is a lease, an interest in advowsons, 
etc. Chattels personal are goods which 
belong immediately to the person of the 
owner, and include all movable property. 

CHATTERERS, the popular name of 
certain insessorial birds of the family 
Ampelidse, as the Bohemian chatterer 
or waxwing and the chatterer of Caro¬ 
lina. 

CHAT'TERTON, Thomas, a youth 
whose genius and melancholy fate have 
gained him much celebrity, was born 
at Bristol in 1752, of poor parents, and 
educated at a charity school. The most 
remarkable of his poems are those pub¬ 
lished under the name of Rowley, 
spurious antiques, such as The Tragedy 
of JEWa, The Battle of Hastings, The 
Bristow Tragedy, etc. He committed 
suicide in 1776. 

CHAU'CER, Geoffrey, “the father of 
English poetry,” born in London prob¬ 
ably about 1340; died there on the 25th 
of October, 1400. Nothing is known of 
his education, but in 1356-59 he was a 



Geoffrey Chaucer. 


page to Princess Lionel. In 1367 we 
find his name as a valet of the king’s 
chamber. Between 1370 and 1380 he 
was employed abroad in seven diplo¬ 
matic missions. In one of these, in 
1372, he was sent to Genoa as a com¬ 
missioner to negotiate a commercial 
treaty. In 1374 he was appointed 
comptroller of the customs on wool at 
London. In 1377 he was sent to Flan¬ 
ders and France on diplomatic business 
and next year to Lombardy. In 1382 
he was appointed comptroller of the 
petty customs. In 1386 he was returned 
to parliament as knight of the shire for 
Kent, but in the same year he shared 
the disgrace of his patron, John of 


Gaunt, was dismissed from his comp- 
trollerships, and reduced to a state of 
comparative poverty. His most cele¬ 
brated work, The Canterbury Tales, was 
written at different periods between 
1373 and 1400. It consists of a series 
of tales in verse (two in prose), supposed 
to be told by a company of pilgrims to 
the shrine of St. Thomas (Becket) at 
Canterbury in 1386. In its pages we get 
such pictures of English life and English 
ways of thought in the 14th century a3 
are found nowhere else. Besides his 
great work Chaucer wrote many poems, 
some of which are founded on French 
or Italian works. He was buried in Wes- 
minster Abbey. 

CHAUFFEUR (sh&'fer) a French 
word, meaning stoker, applied generally 
to the operator of an automobile. It 
also is used to designate certain ruffians 
who during the French Revolution ter¬ 
rorized the country districts bygarrot- 
ing helpless persons. 

CHAUTAU'QUA, a beautiful lake in 
New York, 18 miles long and 1 to 3 
broad, 726 feet above Lake Erie, from 
which it is S miles distant. On its 
banks is the village of Chautauqua, 
the center of a religious and educa¬ 
tional movement of some interest. 
This originated in 1874, when the village 
was selected as a summer place of meet¬ 
ing for all interested in Sunday-schools 
and missions. Since then the Chautauqua 
Literary and Scientific Circle has taken 
origin here, the most prominent feature 
of which is to engage the members— 
wherever they may reside— in a regular 
and systematic course of reading, ex¬ 
tending, when completed, over four 
years and entitling the student to a 
diploma. There are many local branches 
or societies, and it is attempted to start 
the movement in Britain. 

CHAUVINISM (sho'vin-izm), an un¬ 
reflecting and fanatical devotion to any 
cause, especially an exaggerated patriot¬ 
ism, so called from Nicholas Chauvin, 
a soldier so enthusiastically devoted to 
Napoleon I. and so demonstrative in his 
adoration that his comrades turned him 
into ridicule. 

CHECK. See Cheque. 

CHECKERS, the common name for 
the game of draughts. 

CHED'DAR, a parish and thriving 
village, England, county Somerset, 18 
miles s.w. Bristol. The dairies in the 
neighborhood have long been famous 
for the excellence of their cheese, which 
is made from the whole milk, on a highly 
approved method now widely practised. 

CHEESE, one of the most important 
products of the dairy, is composed 
principally of casein, which exists in 
cows’ milk to the extent of about 3 or 4 
per cent, fat, and water. It is made 
from milk, skimmed wholly, partially, 
or not at all, the milk being curdled_or 
coagulated, and the watery portion or 
whey separated from the insoluble curd, 
which being then worked into a uniform 
mass, salted (as a rule), and pressed in 
a vat or mold forms cheese, but requires 
to be cured or ripened for a time before 
being used. The coagulation of the milk 
may be effected either by adding an acid 
as in Holland, or sour milk as in Switzer¬ 
land, or rennet as usual in Britain and 
this country. There are a great many 







CHEIROMANCY 


CHEMISTRY 


varieties of cheese, of which the most 
notable are Stilton, Cheshire, Cheddar, 
Dunlop, among British; and Parmesan, 
Gruydre, Gorgonzola, Gouda, among 
foreign ones. In the United States 
immense quantities of cheese are made, 
almost all the different European kinds 
being imitated. Large factories are 
devoted to the manufacture. Other 
kinds are known as sour-milk, skimmed- 
milk, cream, sweet-milk, etc., cheese. 
Sheep’s and goat’s milk cheese are 
also made. The output of cheese in 
the United States is upward of 300,- 
00,000 pounds annually. New York 
and Wisconsin are the two most pro¬ 
ductive states, and production has been 
materially assisted by the experiments 
of the United States agricultural de- 
artment with various ferments which 
asten the process. 

CHEIROMANCY (ki'ro-), or PALM¬ 
ISTRY, the art of divining by inspection 
of the lines of the hand; it was prac¬ 
tised in India in the remotest ages; in 
Europe, during the middle ages, it was 
in great repute, but latterly it took re¬ 
fuge among the gypsies, who to this day 
find profit in the exercise of their fav- 
onte art 

CHEIROPTERA (ki-rop'te-ra), or 
BATS, an order of mammals, the essen¬ 
tial character of which is the possession 
of a patagium, or expansion of the in¬ 
tegument of the body which connects 
the tail throughout its whole length to 
the hinder limbs as far as the ankle, and 
thence passes along the side of the body 
to the fore-limbs, which are greatly 
elongated, and give support and varied 
movement to the expansion (which is 
popularly called the wing) by means of 
the very,Jong and slender digits. Other 
mammals, as some of the squirrels amd 
the flying lemur, have the power of 
gliding through the air for some dis¬ 
tance, but none of them have the power 
of sustained flight, nor are the anterior 
extremities modified in the same way 
as are those of the bats. The Cheirop¬ 
tera are divided into two sub-orders, 
Fruit-eaters, and Insect-eaters. (See 
Bat.) 

CHE-KIANG, a maritime province, 
China, between lat. 27° and 31° n., and 
including the Chusan Archipelago; area, 
39,150 sq. miles; pop. 11,588,692. It 
is traversed by the Grand Canal, and 
has as its principal ports Ningpo and 
Hangchow, the capital. Staple exports, 
silk and tea. 

CHELONIANS (ke-lo'-), or CHE- 
LONIA, an order of reptiles including 
the tortoises and turtles, and distin¬ 
guished by the body being inclosed in a 
double shell, out of which the head, tail, 
and four legs protrude. See Tortoise, 
Turtle. 

CHELSEA (chel'se), a suburb of Lon¬ 
don, and a mun. and pari, borough, on 
the Thames, opposite Battersea, and 
chiefly distinguished for containing a 
royal military hospital, originally com¬ 
menced by James I. as a theological 
college, but converted by Charles II. 
for the reception of sick, maimed, and 
superannuated soldiers. The building 
was finished in 1692 by Sir Christopher 
Wren. Connected with the hospital is a 
royal military asylum, founded in 1801, 
for the education’ and maintenance of 

P. E.—17 


soldiers’ children. The parliamentary 
borough returns one member. Pop. 
pari. bor. 93,841. 

CHELSEA, a city in Suffolk Co., Mass., 
and a suburb of Boston, from which it is 
distant 2 miles, on the Boston and Maine 
Railroad. It is connected with Charles¬ 
town by a bridge across the Mystic 
River, and with Boston by ferry and 
steam and electric railroads. Pop. 
40,000. 

CHELTENHAM (chel'tn-am), a mu¬ 
nicipal and parliamentary borough and 
fashionable watering-place in England, 
in the county of Gloucester, beautifully 
situated on the small river Chelt, within 
the shelter of the Cotswold Hills. It 
grew rapidly into a place of fashionable 
resort after the discovery of its saline, 
sulphuric, and chalybeate springs in 
1716, to which, in 1788, George III. 
paid a visit. Pop. 49,439. 

CHEMICAL RAYS, a not very appro¬ 
priate name given to the blue and 
violet rays of the spectrum, and also 
the non-luminous rays at the violet end 
of the spectrum, which have a peculiarly 
powerful chemical effect on silver com¬ 
pounds. 

CHEMISTRY, the science which treats 
of the nature, laws of combination, and 
mutual actions of the minute particles 
of the different sorts of matter compos¬ 
ing our universe, and the properties of 
the compounds they form. As a science 
it is entirely of modem origin, in its 
earliest phases being identical with 
alchemy (which see), the great object of 
which was the discovery of the philoso¬ 
pher’s stone. In this pursuit most 
minerals, especially such as presented 
the characters of metallic ores, were sub¬ 
jected to numerous experiments, and 
many important isolated discoveries 
were made by Basil Valentine, Raymond 
Lully, Paracelsus, Van Helmont, and 
others. But during the latter part of 
the 17th century the belief in alchemy 
was greatly on the wane, and just at its 
close the German chemist Becher threw 
out certain speculations regarding the 
cause of combustion, which were after¬ 
ward taken up and extended by Stahl 
in the “phlogistic theory,” and consti¬ 
tute the first generalization of the 
phenomena of chemistry, though the 
theory itself was diametrically opposed 
to the truth. About the middle of the 
18th century Dr. Black made his great 
discovery of a gas differing from atmos¬ 
pheric air, rapidly followed by that of a 
number of other gases by Cavendish, 
Rutherford, Priestley, Scheele, etc.; and 
the discovery of oxygen by the two 
last-named chemists afforded to La¬ 
voisier the means of revolutionizing and 
systematizing the science. By a series 
of experiments he showed that all sub¬ 
stances, when burned, absorb oxygen, 
and that the weight of the products of 
combustion is exactly equal to that of 
the combustible consumed and of the 
oxygen which has disappeared. The 
application of this theory to the great 
majority of the most important chemical 
phenomena was obvious, and the Stahl- 
ian hypothesis disappeared from the 
science. A yet more important step 
was the discovery by Dalton of the laws 
of chemical combination. His theory 
was immediately taken up by Berzelius, 


to whose influence and careful deter¬ 
mination of the chemical equivalents of 
almost all the elements then known, its 
rapid adoption was mainly due. To 
Berzelius we owe almost all the modern 
improvements in the methods of analy¬ 
sis, and to Sir H. Davy the foundation 
of electro-chemistry. Of late years 
every branch of the science has ad¬ 
vanced, but the most extraordinary 
progress has been made in organic 
chemistry. The investigations of chem¬ 
ists have shown that the great ma¬ 
jority of the different substances found 
at the surface of the earth can be 
broken up into several substances of 
less complicated nature, which resist all 
further attempts to decompose them, 
and appear to consist of only one kind of 
matter. These substances, by union 
of which all the different sorts of known 
matter are built up, are about seventy 
in number, and are called the chemical 
elements. When any two or more of 
these elements are brought in contact, 
under the proper conditions, they may 
unite and form chemical compounds 
of greater or less complexity, in which 
the constituents are held in union by a 
form of energy which has received the 
name of chemical affinity. This affinity 
is characterized by its acting between 
dissimilar particles, and producing a 
new kind of matter, readily distinguish¬ 
able from either of the substances com¬ 
bining to form it, and which cannot be 
again separated into its elements by 
merely mechanical processes. 

The properties of chemical com¬ 
pounds may be classified not merely 
under the head of the particular ele¬ 
ments they contain, but also according 
to their special chemical functions. The 
advantages of the latter method were 
early recognized, and the distinction 
between acids and alkalies dates back 
to a period long previous to the ascer¬ 
tainment of their true nature. These, 
and the class of salts'which are produced 
by the mutual action of an acid and a 
base, are the most important classes of 
chemical compounds. An acid is now 
described as a compound containing a 
certain quantity of hydrogen, easily 
replaceable by a metal when it comes 
in contact with it either in the free state 
or as an oxide. 

Bases are compounds which, by re¬ 
acting on acids, yield salts. The most 
important bases are oxides of metals, 
and they are divided into several sec¬ 
tions, of which the most important are 
the alkalies. These substances are the 
hydrates of the so-called alkaline metals, 
and may be compared to water in which 
an atom of hydrogen is replaced by an 
atom of metal. Most of the bases, ex¬ 
cepting the alkalies, are insoluble in 
water, and without any effect on vege¬ 
table colors. Another class of bases of 
great importance is typified by ammonia. 

Sulphides are compounds of the 
metals with sulphur, and form a very 
important class of compounds. They 
are obtained either by heating the 
metals with sulphur in proper propor¬ 
tions, or by passing a current of hydro- 
sulphuric acid gas through a solution of 
a salt. They exist abundantly in the 
mineral kingdom, and form some of the 
most important ores. Some of the sul- 





CHEMISTS 


CHERUB 


phides are capable of acting as bases and 
others as acids, and by combination a 
class of salts, usually distinguished as sul¬ 
phur salts, can be obtained. The greater 
part of the sulphides are insoluble in 
water,and some of them possess extreme¬ 
ly fine colors, and are used as paints. 

Organic chemistry is that branch of 
the science which treats of the com¬ 
pounds existing in plants and animals, 
or which may be produced from sub¬ 
stances found ready formed in their 
tissues. It was at first believed that 
these compounds were peculiar in their 
constitution, quite distinct in their 
chemical relations, and produced by 
what was called vital affinity. The dis¬ 
covery by Wohler, however, that urea 
could be produced artificially from 
purely mineral substances entirely 
altered this view; and since then the 
artificial production of many organic 
compounds has practically annulled the 
distinction between organic and in¬ 
organic chemistry except as a matter 
of convenience. Organic chemistry is 
now most commonly defined as the 
chemistry of the carbon compounds, 
for that element is found in every sub¬ 
stance which can be extracted from 
lants and animals, in combination with 
ydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and less 
frequently with sulphur and phosphorus. 
These elements are so combined as in 
many cases to form compounds of ex¬ 
treme complexity, the constitution of 
some of which is still a matter of much 
difference of opinion among chemists; 
but the constitution of the simpler 
organic compounds is now thoroughly 
understood. 

CHEMISTS and DRUGGISTS, in the 

United States, retail venders of drugs 
and various chemical reagents. They 
are regulated by law and prohibited 
from indiscriminately selling certain 
poisons and other drugs that are deemed 
dangerous or may be used for criminal 
purposes. 

CHEMNITZ (fcem'nits), the principal 
manufacturing town in the kingdom of 
Saxony, on the Chemnitz, 39 miles 
southwest of Dresden. The principal 
manufactures are white and printed 
calicoes, ginghams, handkerchiefs, wool¬ 
en and half-woolen goods, etc. There 
are also extensive cotton-spinning mills, 
and mills for the spinning of combed 
wool and floss-silk; dye-works, print¬ 
works, bleach-works, chemical works; 
large manufactures of cotton hose, etc. 
Pop. 206,584. 

CHEMULPO (che-mul'po), one of the 
new treaty-ports of Korea, exporting 
beans, ginseng, etc., and importing 
European and American manufactures. 

CHENEY, Charles Edward, an Ameri¬ 
can bishop of the Reformed Episcopal 
Church, born in New York in 1836. He 
was ordained in the Protestant Epis¬ 
copal church and in 1873 he joined the 
reformed church in Chicago. 

CHENG, a Chinese musical instru¬ 
ment, consisting of a series of tubes 
having free reeds. Its introduction into 
Europe led to the invention of the 
accordion, harmonium, and other free- 
reed instruments. 

CHENILLE (she-nil'), a sort of orna¬ 
mental fabric of cord-like form, made 
by weaving or twisting together warp- 


threads, with a transverse filling or 
weft, the loose ends of which project all 
round in the form of a pile. Chenille 
carpets have a weft of chenille, the 
loose threads of which produce a fine 
velvety pile. 

CHEOPS (ke'ops), the name given by 
Herodotus to the Egyptian despot whom 
the Egyptians themselves called Khufu. 
He belonged to the rulers who had for 
their capital Memphis; lived about 
2800-2700 b.c., and built the largest of 
the pyramids. According to Herodotus 
he employed 100,000 men on this work 
constantly for 20 years. 

CHEPHREN (kef'ren), or CEPHREN, 
was the successor of Cheops as king of 
Egypt, and the builder of the second 
pyramid. His name is properly Khafra. 

CHEQUE, or CHECK, a draft or bill 
on a bank payable on presentation. A 
check may be drawn payable to the 
bearer, or to the order of some one 
named: the first form is transferable 
without endorsation, and payable to 
any one who presents it; the second 
must be endorsed, that is the person in 
whose favor it is drawn must write his 
name on the back of it. Checks are a 
very important species of mercantile 
currency wherever there is a well- 
organized system of banking. The 
regular use of them for all payments, 
except of small amount, makes the 
transfer of funds a mere matter of cross¬ 
entries and transferring of balances 
among bankers, and tends greatly to 
economize the use of the precious metals 
as a currency. 

CHER (shar), a department of Cen¬ 
tral France, named from the river Cher, 
and formed from part of the old prov¬ 
inces of Berry and Bourbonnais; area, 
2779 square miles; capital, Bourges. 
Pop. 355,349. 

CHERBOURG (shar-bor), a fortified 
seaport and naval arsenal of France, in 
the department of La Manche, 196 miles 
w.n.w. Paris. The fortifications are 


very extensive, and have been greatly 
strengthened in recent years, so that 
Cherbourg, if not impregnable from the 
sea, is at least very difficult of attack. 
There is a great digue or breakwater, 
stretching across the roadstead, which, 
though protected on three sides by the 
land, was formerly open to the heavy 


seas from the north. The digue was 
commenced under Louis XVI., is 4120 
vards long, and is 2\ miles from the 
narbor, in water varying from 42 to 62 
feet deep. A fort and lighthouse occupy 
the center of the digue, and there are 
circular forts at the extremities. The 
principal industry of the town is cen¬ 
tered in the works of the dockyard, the 
commercial trade and manufactures be¬ 
ing comparatively insignificant. William 
the Conqueror founded a hospital, and 
built the castle church. The castle, in 
which Henry II. frequently resided, was 
one of the strongholds of Normandy. 
The town was taken by the British in 
1758. Pop. 42,952. 

CHEROKEES', a tribe of North Amer¬ 
ican Indians occupying an allotted re¬ 
gion in the Indian Territory. Their old 
seats were in Georgia, Alabama, Mis¬ 
sissippi, and Tennessee. The Cherokees 
are the most enlightened of the Indian 
tribes, have invented an alphabet, 
printed books and newspapers in their 
own language, live in well-built villages, 
and have an excellent school system. 
Their numbers are about 20,000. 

CHEROOT (she-rot'). See Cigar. 

CHERRY, a fruit-tree of the prune or 
plum tribe. It is a native of most tem¬ 
perate countries of the northern hemis¬ 
phere. The cultivated varieties prob¬ 
ably belong to two species. The fruit 
of the wild cherry, or gean, is often as 
well flavored, if not quite so large, as 
that of the cultivated varieties. It is 
said that this fruit was brought from 
Cerasus, in Pontus, to Italy, by Lucullus 
about b.c. 70, and introduced into Eng¬ 
land by the Romans about a.d. 46. The 
cherry is used in making the liquors 
Kirschwasser and Maraschino. The 
American wild cherry is a fine large 
tree, the timber of which is much used 
by cabinet-makers and others, though 
the fruit is rather astringent. 

CHERUB (cher'ub), one of an order 
of angels variously represented at differ¬ 


ent . times, but generally as winged 
spirits with a human countenance, and 
distinguished by their knowledge from 
the seraphs, whose distinctive quality 
is love. The first mention of cherubs is 
in Gen. iii. 24. The cherubs in Ezekiel’s 
vision had each four heads or faces, the 
hands of a man, and wings. The four 


































CHERUBINI 


CHESTNUT 


faces were the face of a bull, that of a 
man, that of a lion, and that of an eagle. 
(Ezek. iv. and x.) In the celestial 
hierarchy cherubs are represented as 
spirits next in order to seraphs. 

CHERUBINI (ke-ru-be'ne), Maria 
Luigi Carlo Zenobio Salvatore, an 
eminent Italian composer, born at 
Florence in 1760. His first opera, 
Quinto Fabio, was produced in Alessan¬ 
dria in 1780, and in Rome (in an altered 
form) in 1783, with such success as to 
spread his fame over Italy. After visit¬ 
ing London he finally settled in Paris, 
where he became director of the Ecole 
Royale in 1822, and died in 1842. 
Among his compositions are Iphigenia 
in Aulide, Lodoiska, Faniska, Les Deux 
Journ6es, etc. In his later years he con¬ 
fined himself almost exclusively to the 
composition of sacred music, and gained 
a lasting fame by his Coronation Mass, 
and more especially his gorgeous Re¬ 
quiem. 

CHES'APEAKE BAY, a spacious bay 
of North America, in the states of Vir¬ 
ginia and Maryland. Its entrance is be¬ 
tween Cape Charles and Cape Henry, 
16 miles wide, and it extends 180 miles 
to the northward. It is from 10 to 30 
miles broad, and at most places as much 
as 9 fathoms deep, affording many com¬ 
modious harbors and a safe and easy 
navigation. It receives the Susque¬ 
hanna, Potomac, and James River. 

CHESHIRE (chesh'ir), or CHESTER, 
a maritime county and county palatine 
of England, bounded by the counties of 
Lancaster, York, Derby, Stafford, Salop, 
Denbigh, Flint, the estuaries of the Dee 
and Mersey, and the Irish Sea. The 
area is 657,123 acres, of which only a 
sixteenth is uncultivated. The surface 
is generally level, the soil mostly a rich 
reddish loam variously clayey or 6andy. 
There is some of the finest pasture land 
in England; and cheese, the main 
produce of the Cheshire farmer, is made 
in great quantities. Extensive tracts of 
land are cultivated as market-gardens, 
the produce being sent to Liverpool, 
Manchester, and other towns. Minerals 
abound, especially rock-salt and coal, 
which are extensively worked. Cotton 
manufacture is carried on at Stockport, 
Stalybridge, and the northeastern dis¬ 
trict, ship-building at Birkenhead and 
other places. Pop. 814,555. 

CHESS, a well-known game of great 
antiquity and of eastern origin, having 
probably arisen in India, and thence 
spread through Persia and Arabia to 
Europe. The name itself as well as 
many of the terms used in the game are 
clearly of eastern origin, the word chess 
being formed from the old French 
eschecs, from Persian sh&h, a king; 
rook is from the Sanskrit roka, mean¬ 
ing a ship or chariot; checkmate from 
Persian sh&h m&t, the king is dead. The 
game is played by two persons on a 
board which consistsof sixty-four squares 
arranged in eight rows of eight squares 
each, alternately black and white. Each 
player has sixteen men, eight of which, 
known as pawns, are of the lowest grade; 
the other eight, called pieces, are of 
various grades. They are, on each side, 
king and queen; two bishops, two 
knights, and two rooks or castles. The 
board must be placed so that each player 


shall have a white square to his right 
hand. The men are then set upon the 
two rows of squares next the players; 
the pieces on the first, the pawns on the 
second row, leaving Detween each side 
four unoccupied rows. The king and 
queen occupy the central squares facing 
the corresponding pieces on the opposite 
side. The queen always occupies her 
own color, white queen on white square, 
black on black. The two bishops occupy 
the squares next the king and queen; 
the two knights the square next the 
bishops; the rooks the last or corner 
squares. The pawns fill indiscriminate- 


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Chess-board. 


ly the squares of the second or front row. 
The men standing on the king’s or 
queen’s side of the board are named 
respectively king’s and queen’s men. 
Thus king’s bishop or knight is the bis¬ 
hop or knight on the side of the king. 
The pawns are named from the pieces in 
front of which they stand; king’s pawn, 
king’s knight’s pawn, queen’s rook’s 
pawn, etc. The names of the men are 
contracted as follows:—King, K.; 
King’s Bishop, K.B.; King’s Knight, 
K.Kt.; King’s Rook, K.R.; Queen, Q.; 
Queen’s Bishop, Q.B.; Queen’s Knight, 
Q. Kt. ; Queen’s Rook, Q.R. The pawns 
are contracted: K.P., Q.P., K.B.P., 
Q.Kt.P., etc. The board is divided, in¬ 
versely from the position of each player, 
into eight rows and eight files. Counting 
from White’s right hand to his left, or 
from Black’s left to his right, each file is 
named from the piece which occupies its 
first square, and counting inversely 
from the position of each player to that 
of the other, the rows are numbered 
from 1 to 8. At White’s right-hand 
corner we have thus K.R. square; 
immediately above this K.R. 2; and so 
on to K.R. 8, which completes the file; 
the second file begins with K.Kt. square 
on the first row, and ends with K.Kt. 8 
on the eighth. White’s K.R. 8 and 
K.Kt. 8 are thus Black’s K.R. square 
and K.Kt. square, and the moves of 
each player are described throughout 
from his own position, in inverse order 
to the moves of his opponent. 

The definite aim in chess is the reduc¬ 
tion to surrender of the opposing king. 
The K. in chess is supposed to be in¬ 
violable, that is, he cannot be taken, 
he can only be in such a position that 
if it were any other piece it would be 
taken. Notice of every direct attack 
upon him must be given by the adver¬ 
sary saying check, and when the K. is 


attacked all other plans must be aban¬ 
doned, and all other men sacrificed, if 
necessary, to remove him from danger, 
cover the attack, or capture the assail¬ 
ant. It is also a fundamental rule of the 
game that the K. cannot be moved into 
check. When the K. can no longer be 
defended on being checked by the ad¬ 
versary, either by moving him out of 
danger, or by interposing, or by capture, 
the game is lost, and the adversary 
announces this by saying checkmate. 
When, by inadvertence or want of skill, 
the player having the superior force 
blocks up his opponent’s K. so that he 
cannot move without going into check, 
and no other man can be moved without 
exposing him, the player, reduced to 
this extremity, cannot, without vio¬ 
lating the fundamental rule referred to, 
play at all. In such a case, the one 
player being unable to play and the 
other out of turn, the game is consid¬ 
ered drawn, that is, concluded without 
advantage to either player. The laws of 
the game must be sought in some special 
manual. Perhaps the best code is that 
given in Staunton’s Chess Praxis. 

CHEST, in man and the higher verte¬ 
brates, the cavity formed by the breast¬ 
bone in front and the ribs and backbone 
at the sides and behind, shut off from 
the abdomen below by the diaphragm 
or midriff. It contains the heart, lungs, 
etc., and the gullet passes through it. 
See Thorax. 

CHESTER, a city in Delaware County, 
Pa., 14 miles southwest of Philadelphia, 
on the Delaware River, and on the Balti¬ 
more and Ohio, the Pennsylvania, the 
Philadelphia and Reading railroads. 
Pop. 39,100. 

CHESTER, an English pari., county, 
and municipal borough, county town of 
Cheshire, situated on the Dee about 16 
miles from Liverpool. It is a bishop’s 
see, and contains an old and interest¬ 
ing cathedral recently restored. Pop. 
46,204. 

CHESTNUT, a genus of plants, allied 
to the beech. The common or Span¬ 
ish chestnut is a stately tree, with 
large, handsome, serrated, dark-green 
leaves. The fruit consists of two or 
more seeds enveloped in a prickly 



husk. Probably a native of Asia 
Minor. The tree grows freely and 
may reach the age of many centuries. 
Its fruit ripens only in some cases, 
however, and the chestnuts eaten in 
Britain are mustly imported. Chestnuts 
form a staple article of food among 
the peasants of Spain and Italy. The 
timber of the tree was formerly more in 































CHETAH 


CHICAGO 


use than it is now; it is inferior to that 
of the oak, though very similar to it in 
appearance, especially when old. Two 
American species of chestnuts, have 
edible fruits. The former is often re¬ 
garded as identical with the European 
tree.—The horse-chestnut is quite a dif¬ 
ferent tree from the common chestnut. 

CHETAH (che'ta), or hunting leopard 
of India, a native of Arabia and Asia 
Minor. It has its specific name from 
a short mane-like crest at the back of 
the head. When used for hunting it is 
hooded and placed in a car. When a 
herd of deer is seen, its keeper places its 
head in the proper direction and removes 
its hood. It slips from the car, and, ap¬ 
proaching its prey in a stealthy manner, 
springs on it with several bounds. It is 
about the size of a large greyhound, has 
a cat-like head, but a body more like a 
dog’s. A slightly different species in- 

no nif o A fno 

CHEVALIER (she-vft-lya), Michel, a 
celebrated economist, born at Limoges 
in France, Jan. 13, 1806. He was edu¬ 
cated as an engineer in the School of 
Mines. M. Chevalier was sent to the 
United States and to England on special 
missions. He became a councilor of 
state (1838), professor of political 
economy in the College de France (1840), 
member of the chamber of deputies 
(1846), and member of the Institute 
(1851). He was known as a strong advo¬ 
cate of free-trade, and as a specialist on 
questions of currency. Along with Cob- 
den and Bright he had a great part in 
the commercial treaty of 1860 between 
France and Britain. He died in 1879. 

CHEVIOT SHEEP, a variety of sheep, 
noted for their large carcass and valu¬ 
able wool, which qualities, combined 
with a hardiness second only to that of 
the black-faced breed, constitute them 
the most valuable race of mountain 
sheep. The fleece weighs from 3 to 4 
lbs., and the carcass of ewes varies from 
12 to 16 lbs. per quarter, that of wethers 
from 16 to 20 lbs. 

CHEV'RON, a heraldic and orna¬ 
mental form, variously used. In 
heraldry, the chevron is an ordinary 

^- 7 



Chevron molding. 

supposed to represent two rafters meet¬ 
ing at top. It is one of charges called 
honorable ordinaries, and is usually 
placed as shown in the accompanying 
cut. A similar form is used for the dis¬ 
tinguishing badge worn on the arm of 
a non-commissioned officer in the 


British army. In architecture, the 
chevron molding consists of a variety 
of fret ornament of a zigzag form, com¬ 
mon in Norman architecture. 

CHEWING-GUM, a substance, in¬ 
soluble in saliva, used for continuous 
exercise of the jaws. It is usually 
manufactured of paraffin, tolu balsam, 
and certain resins, sweetened and 
flavored. The habit is general through¬ 
out the United States, men and women 
indulging freely in it. The chewing 
of gum is believed to have a beneficial 
effect upon the digestion. 

CHEYENNE (shi-yen'), the capital of 
the state of Wyoming, on the Union 
Pacific Railway, where it is joined by 
the Denver Pacific; a rising place. Pop. 
17,640.—The river Cheyenne, or Big 
Cheyenne, a tributary of the Missouri, 
is formed by two branches, the N. Fork 
and the S. Fork, which rise in this state, 
and have the Black Hills between them, 
each about 300 miles long, the Big Chey¬ 
enne being 150 more. 

CHIAPAS (chi-a'pas), a state of 
Mexico on the Pacific coast, area 16,048 
square miles. It is in many parts moun¬ 
tainous, is intersected by the river 
Chiapas, and covered with immense 
forests. Capital, Tuxtla-Gutierrez. Pop. 
363,607. 

CHICA (che'kfi.), a red coloring matter 
which the Indians on the upper parts of 
the Orinoco and the Rio Negro prepare 
from the leaves of a plant native to that 
region called Bignonia Chica, and with 
which they paint their skin, in order to 
be better able to resist the rays of the 
eun. See Bignonia. 

CHICA (che'ka), a kind of beer made 
from maize, in general use in Chile, Peru, 
and elsewhere in the mountainous 
regions of South America. The usual 
method of preparing it is to steep the 
maize till it begins to grow, when it is 
exposed to dry in the sun. The malt 
thus prepared is then ground, mixed 
with warm water, and left to ferment. 
The beer, when ready, has a dark-yellow 
color, and a pleasant and somewhat 
bitter and sour taste, and is very intoxi¬ 
cating. Sometimes the Indians instead 
of grinding the malt chew it, and this 
variety of the liquor is considered the 
best. It is the national drink of the 
Indians, and consumed by them in great 
quantities. Pito and poso are other 
names for it. 

CHICAGO, the second city of the 
United States in population and com¬ 
mercial and manufacturing importance. 
It is the metropolis of the west, the 
largest railroad center in the country, 
and the head of navigation of the great 
lakes. Situated on the southwest shore 
of Lake Michigan, it lies 910 miles from 
New York, 810 miles from Washington, 
910 miles from New Orleans, and 2400 
from San Francisco, and has an area 
of 191 square miles. The city is natur¬ 
ally cut into three divisions, or “sides,” 
the north, the south, and the west sides, 
by the Chicago River, and its north and 
south forks. The entire site of Chicago 
is very flat, its highest point being but 
a few feet above the level of Lake 
Michigan. The population is estimated 
at 2,500,000. 

The plan upon which Chicago is laid 
out was a wise provision of the makers 


of the city, who had an eye to its future 
growth. Its park and boulevard system 
is unsurpassed by any city in the world. 
Of parks there are over 2600 acres, the 
chief being Lincoln Park, with many 
monuments, Jackson Park, and the 
newly prospected Grant Park, on the 
lake front before the main part of the 
town. Of boulevards, which connect the 
parks into a system, there are 65 miles 
of magnificent driveways. The bus¬ 
iness center is comparatively small, oc¬ 
cupying an area less than a mile square, 
bounded on the e. by the lake and n. 
and w. by Chicago river. Here are sit¬ 
uated most of the great railway depots, 
the post-office, the court-house, the 
board of trade building and custom¬ 
house, the Art Institute, the principal 
stores, banks, theaters, and hotels, the 
lofty structures that are the chief arch¬ 
itectural features of the city. The ship¬ 
ping business is transacted along the 
river and the canal, the former having a 
frontage, including docks, of 41 miles. 
The livestock and meat industry is car¬ 
ried on at the Union stock-yards, extend¬ 
ing from Thirty-ninth Street to Forty- 
seventh Street, in the geographical cen¬ 
ter of the city. The value of the prod¬ 
ucts in 1908 was about $300,000,000. 

After several years’ agitation and dis¬ 
cussion a plan for the construction of a 
new waterway, 160 feet wide and at 
least 16 feet deep, from the Chicago 
river to the Desplaines, and so on to 
Joliet, was adopted, and the work was 
begun in 1891. On Jan. 2, 1900, this 
great canal was opened, the cost to that 
date having been $33,525,700. The 
city is supplied with water from Lake 
Michigan. Pure water is obtained at 
“cribs” located from 2 to 4 miles from 
the shore, and is conveyed thence to the 
city through five tunnels under the lake. 
It is distributed by ten pumping works 
capable of supplying the city with 
532,000,000 gals, daily. The cost of the 
system was $30,000,000. 

The Chicago river is spanned by fifty- 
four swinging bridges, of from 200 to 
250 feet in length, operated by steam. 
By the elevation of 260 miles of rail¬ 
way tracks and the construction of 
254 subways, dangerous grade cross¬ 
ings have been eliminated. Among the 
public buildings the new post-office and 
custom house, by Henry Ives Cobb, re¬ 
cently finished, is by far the most pic¬ 
turesque. A new county building has 
recently been erected and a new city 
hall is in prospect. 

Chicago is the center of twenty-five 
railroads, has 1500 miles of track, seven 
depots, and handles 275 through and 
800 local trains per day. It has a lake 
tonnage of 12,600,000, and 450 miles of 
street railroad of which 50 are elevated. 

The Public Library is the largest in 
the Northwest, containing over 260,000 
volumes. It was established in 1873, 
and is supported by city taxation. It 
is housed in a magnificent fireproof 
building on Michigan avenue. It is a 
free circulating library, with reading 
and reference rooms. The Newberry 
Library is named after its founder. 
Walter L. Newberry, who left in his will 
for its esablishment property from which 
has been realized over $2,500,000. It 
occupies a handsome building facing 















































CHICAGO, UNIVERSITY OF 


CHILD LABOR 


Washington Place, on the north side. 
The library is for reference only, and 
over 200,000 volumes, many of them 
rare and costly, have been collected. 
The Chicago Law Institute has a fine 
law library in the county building. 
The Crerar Library, with an endowment 
of over $2,000,000 from John Crerar, 
is to be located on the south side, and, 
in accordance with the founder’s will, 
must be kept free from sensational and 
skeptical works. 

The city is governed by a mayor, 
who receives a salary of $7,000; and a 
common council, composed of 70 aider- 
men, whose terms are two years, each of 
the thirty-five wards into which the city 
is divided electing one each year. 

The manufacturing industries of Chi¬ 
cago are second in magnitude only to 
those of New York city and are growing 
rapidly. The total value of manufac¬ 
tures lor 1908 was 1,000,000,000. The 
receipts of grain, and flour in its grain 
equivalent, aggregate about 350,000,000 
bushels yearly. 

The principal hotels in the heart of 
the city are the Auditorium and its 
Annex, the Great Northern, the Palmer 
House, the Grand Pacific, the Welling¬ 
ton, the Victoria, Sherman, and the 
Tremont House; the Virginia, the Met- 
ropole, the Lexington, and in course of 
erection the Blackstone and LaSalle. 
The “ downtown ” theaters, with the 
Auditorium, are Orchestra Hall, Mc- 
Vicker’s, the Illinois, Chicago, Garrick, 
the Grand, Whitney, Powers, the Great 
Northern, Studebaker, Olympic, Majes¬ 
tic, Colonial, Coliseum,Ithe LaSalle, Prin¬ 
cess, and American Music Hall. 

Chicago was founded in 1803 with the 
establishment of Fort Dearborn on the 
site of the present city. The first village 
was laid out in 1830, the town was 
incorporated in 1833, and the city in 
1837. On Oct. 8, 1871, the great fire 
began which in two days virtually 
wiped out the city. The losses were 
about $190,000,000 in property but only 
a few lives were lost. 

CHICAGO, UNIVERSITY OF, founded 
by John D. Rockefeller, in 1889 and 
situated on the Midway Plaisance in 
Chicago. It has a productive fund of 
about $15,000,000, and an annual out¬ 
lay of over $1,000,000. The libraries 
contain nearly 400,000 volumes, and 
the registration is about 3000 students. 
The university offers all degrees except 
for mechanical and civil engineering, 
its doctorate of philosophy covering the 
sciences. It has law, medical, and 
theological departments and a quad¬ 
rangle devoted to the biological sciences 
which cost $1,000,000 to found. It has 
ten periodical publications, a faculty of 
400 instructors, a school of education, 
and an academic department. Much 
of the revenue of the university is 
derived from its real estate, of which it 
owns nearly a solid mile fronting the 
Midway Plaisance. 

CHICK'ADEE, the popular name in 
America of the black-cap titmouse and 
other allied species, being given from 
their note. 

CHICKAHOM'INY, a river in Virginia, 
rising about 20 miles n.w. of Richmond, 
flowing s.e. till it joins the James river. 
Near this river many important battles I 


during the civil war took place—the 
battle of Williamsburg, of the Seven 
Pines, of Gaines’s Mill, etc. 

CHICKAMAU'GA, a small tributary 
of the Tennessee river, state of Tennes¬ 
see, U. States, where a battle took place 
Sept. 19-20, 1863, between the Federal 
troops under Rosecrans and the Con¬ 
federates under Bragg and Longstreet, 
the latter gaining the victory. 

CHICKAMAUGA NATIONAL PARK, 
a military park on the site of the Battle 
of Chickamauga, near Chattanooga on 
the Georgia-Tennessee line. It has an 
area of 15 sq. miles and is laid out as 
nearly as possible to conform to the 
state of affairs at the time of the battle 
itself. The park was dedicated Sept., 
1895, since which time a number of 
fine monuments have been erected in it 
by the different states. The cost of 
the improvements was upward of 
$1,000,000, three-fourths of which was 
appropriated by Congress, the remainder 
by the separate states. 

CHICK'ASAW INDIANS, a tribe of 
American Indians of the Appalachian 
nation. In 1833 they gave up to the 
United States the last of their lands south 
of the Tennessee river, receiving as com¬ 
pensation a money indemnity and new 
lands on the left bank of the Red river, 
in the Indian Territory. The Chicka- 
saws number about 8000. They have 
made considerable advances toward 
civilization, have a senate, house of 
representatives, and more than a million 
dollars in deposit with the Union gov¬ 
ernment. 

CHICKEN-BREASTED, having that 
form of breast, resulting from malfor¬ 
mation or from carious disease or spinal 
weakness, in which the vertebral column 
is curved forward, giving rise to pro¬ 
jection of the sternum or breast-bone. 

CHICKEN-POX, an infectious dis¬ 
ease mainly confined to children. It 
commences with feverishness, and an 
eruption of pimples, which speedily 
become blebs filled with clear fluid and 
as large as split-peas. Within a week 
these dry up into dark-colored scabs, 
which within another week have fallen 
off. The disease is never fatal, and has 
no evil results. A little opening medi¬ 
cine and a mild diet is all the treatment 
requires. 

CHICIC'ERING, Jonas, born 1737, a 
self-taught piano maker of Boston, who 
eventually established the largest piano 
manufactory in the U. States. He was 
greatly esteemed for his public spirit 
and benevolence. He died 1853. 

CHICK'WEED, the popular name of 
one of the most common weeds. It has 
a procumbent more or less hairy stem, 
with ovate pointed leaves, and many 
small white flowers. It is much used 
for feeding cage-birds, which are very 
fond both of its leaves and reeds. 

CHIC'OPEE, a city in Hampden Co., 
Mass., three miles north of Springfield, 
on the east side of the Connecticut river, 
at the mouth of the Chicopee, and on the 
Boston and Maine Railroad. Pop. 
19,167. 

CHIC'ORY, a genus of composite 
plants. The leaves are sometimes 
blanched, to be used as salad. But the 
most important part of the plant is its 
long, fleshy, and milky root, which when 


roasted and ground is now extensively 
used for mixing with coffee. Its 
presence among coffee may easily be 
detected by putting a spoonful of the 
mixture into a glass of clear cold water, 



when the coffee will float on the surface, 
and the chicory separate and discolor 
the water as it subsides. 

CHIEF-JUSTICE, the presiding judge 
of a judicial body. In England the 
chief justice is the superior judge of the 
king’s bench and of the court of common 
pleas. In the U. States he is the pre¬ 
siding judge of the United States Su¬ 
preme Court—of a state supreme court. 
The chief justice of the Federal Supreme 
Court administers the oath of office to 
the president. 

CHIGNON (shen-yon), a French word, 
properly signifying the nape of the neck, 
now used in English and other languages 
to denote ladies’ back hair when raised 
and folded up, usually round a pad, in a 
sort of roll on the back part of the head. 

CHIH-LE (chi-le'), or PE-CHI-LE, 
one of the northern provinces of China, 
watered by the Pei-ho, containing 
Peking, the imperial capital. Area 
about 59,000 sq. miles; pop. 18,000,000. 

CHIHUAHUA (che-wa'wa), a city, 
Mexican Confederation, capital of the 
state of the same name, generally well 
built, and supplied with water by a 
notable aqueduct. It is surrounded by 
silver mines, and is an important entre¬ 
pot of trade. Pop. about 18,279.—The 
state is bounded on the n. by the U. 
States, and on the n.e. by the Rio 
Grande del Norte; has a healthy climate, 
and is rich in silver mines. Pop. 
327,004. 

CHIL'BLAINS are painful inflam¬ 
matory swellings, of a deep purple or 
leaden color, to which the fingers, toes, 
heels, and other extreme parts of the 
body are subject on being exposed to a 
severe degree of cold. The pain is not 
constant, but rather pungent and shoot¬ 
ing at particular times, and an insup¬ 
portable itching attends it. It some 
instances the skin remains entire, but 
in others it breaks and discharges a thin 
fluid. Compound camphor liniment is a 
useful application, and the parts should 
be kept warm. 

CHILDBIRTH. See Birth. 

CHILD LABOR, the emplojunent of 
children under the age provided by law 
at which children are allowed to work. 
Child labor is one of the most distressing 
problems of social life. Although the 








CHILDREN, SOCIETIES FOR 


CHIMPANZEE 


law forbids it. yet poverty compels it, 
and both employers and employed thus 
conspire to defeat the laws which, in 
most states, in virtually all, are really 
a dead letter. Very young children are 
employed in mines, offices, stores, 
factories of many kinds, and, in a word, 
in all trades or occupations in which 
they can be used. Disease, stunted 
growth, defectiveness, moral ruin and 
general vitiation are some of the results. 
Before this great wrong society stands 
avowedly helpless. 

CHILDREN, SOCIETIES FOR THE 
BENEFIT OF, associations to care for 
homeless children, to prevent cruelty to 
(see Bergh, Henry), to encourage the 
industry of children, and to relieve dis¬ 
eased or crippled children. In the U. 
States vast sums of wealth are devoted 
to these various designs. 

CHILDS, George William, an Ameri- 
ican philanthropist and journalist, born 
in Baltimore in 1829, died in 1894. In 
1864 he purchased the Philadelphia 
Public Ledger and soon became quite 
rich. His gifts to charity and education 
were exceedingly large. 

CHILI, or CHILE (che'le, che'la), a 
country of S. America, extending along 
the Pacific coast from lat. 18° s. nearly 
to Cape Horn, and including Chilo6 and 
many other islands and part of Tierra 
del Fuego. It is bounded on the n. by 
Peru (the river Sama being the bound¬ 
ary), on the n.e. and e. by Bolivia and 
the Argentine Republic, from which it 
is separated by the chief range of the 
Cordilleras. Its length from n. to s. 
is about 2400 miles; its breadth, on an 
average 120 miles; area, 293,310 sq. 
miles, divided into a number of prov¬ 
inces and territories; pop. 3,110,085. 
By the war with Peru and Bolivia which 
terminated in 1882 Chili gained all the 
sea-board of Bolivia, and annexed also 
the Peruvian provinces of Tarapaca 
and Tacna. The chief towns are San¬ 
tiago or St. Jago (the capital) and Val¬ 
paraiso. The rivers are numerous, but 
small, and have generally rapid currents. 
The surface is greatly diversified, but 
rises in elevation as it recedes from the 
coast and approaches the Andes, along 
the watershed of which great part of the 
boundary runs. Some of the summits 
here rise to 20,000 feet or more, but the 
elevation decreases toward the south. 
Chilo6 and numerous other islands 
fringe the coast in the south. Earth¬ 
quakes are common, those of 1822, 
1835, and 1868 being particularly 
violent. In the Chilian Andes there are 
twenty volcanoes at least, three of 
which (Antuco, Villarcia, and Osomo) 
are still active. The climate is remark¬ 
ably salubrious. In the northern prov¬ 
inces it rarely rains—in some parts per¬ 
haps never; in the central parts rain is 
sufficiently abundant, while in the ex¬ 
treme south there is even an excess of 
moisture. Among the minerals of Chili 
are gold, silver, copper, lead, iron, zinc, 
antimony, manganese, arsenic, tin, 
sulphur, alum, salt, and cubic nitre. 
Silver and copper are the two most im¬ 
portant metals. The copper mines are 
most numerous in the northern districts. 
The cubic niter, or Chili saltpeter, is a 
great source of wealth. Coal is mined 
at several places. From the 29th 


degree of latitude southward green 
valleys and fertile tracts appear, the 
character of the vegetation getting 
always richer, till in the southern prov¬ 
inces we find the sides of the Andes 
clothed with forests and with herbaceous 
plants and flowers of the richest and 
most beautiful hues. In some of the 
northern districts maize is cultivated; 
in the southern districts wheat and 
barley are the chief agricultural prod¬ 
ucts. Fruits are abundant—apples, 
pears, apricots, peaches, figs, grapes, 
oranges, water-melons, etc. The wild 
animals include the guanaco, puma, or 



Costumes of the environs of Santiago. 


American lion, the chinchilla, coypu, 
deer, etc. Cattle are raised in great 
numbers, from 4000 to 20,000 being 
sometimes reared on one farm. The 
manufactures are of little importance. 
Mineral products form five-sixths of the 
total exports, the principal article being 
cubic niter (or Chili saltpeter) next come 
copper, iodine, wheat, silver, etc. 

Chili is a republic, and is considered 
the best regulated in S. America. It is 
under a president elected for five years 
and a council of state. The legislature 
is composed of a senate elected for six 
years, and a house of deputies elected 
for three years. The army numbers 
about 6000 men; the chief vessels of the 
navy are three iron-clads and five pro¬ 
tected cruisers. The Chilians are mostly 
of Spanish or Indian descent. 

Chili originally belonged to the Incas 
of Peru, from whom it was wrested by the 
Spaniards under Pizarro and Almagro 
in 1535. From this period Chili con¬ 
tinued a colony of Spain till 1810, when 
a revolution commenced, which ter¬ 
minated in 1817 in the independence of 
Chili. Several internal commotions 
have since occurred; but the country 
has been free from these compared with 
other S. American states. A war begun 
with Spain in 1865 led to the blockade 
of the coast by the Spanish fleet, and 
the bombardment of Valparaiso in 
1866. In 1879-81 a war was success¬ 
fully waged with Bolivia and Peru, in 
reference to the rights of Chili in the 
mineral district of Atacama. In 1891 
an insurrection arose against President 
Balmaceda’s administration, a move¬ 
ment which resulted in his overthrow 
and suicide. Since which time the 
country has been prosperous and peace¬ 
ful. 

The earthquakes in Chili are very se¬ 
vere. The last one of importance oc¬ 


curred on Aug. 5, 1906, and continued 
for several days. More than 500 people 
were killed and a property loss of $S,- 
000,000 was sustained, none of which 
was insured. 

CHILLED IRON, iron cast in metal 
molds called chills, where, on account 
of the rapid conducting of the heat, the 
iron cools more quickly on the surface 
than it would do if cast in sand. Chilled 
iron is whiter and has a harder surface 
than iron cast in any other way. 

CHILLICOTHE (-koth'e), a town in 
Ohio, on the west bank of the Scioto, 
with manufacturing and other indus¬ 
tries. Pop. 15,488. 

CHILTERN HILLS, a range of flint 
and chalk hills, England, extending 
through Oxford, Hertford, and Buck¬ 
ingham shires, loftiest summit 905 feet. 
These hills were anciently covered with 
forests, and were infested by numerous 
bands of robbers. To protect the in¬ 
habitants of the neighboring districts 
an officer was appointed by the crown, 
called the Steward of the Chiltern 
Hundreds, and although the duties and 
emoluments have long ceased the office 
still exists, and is made use of to afford 
members of the House of Commons 
(who cannot give up their seats directly) 
an opportunity of resigning their seats 
when they desire to do so. Being re¬ 
garded as an appointment of honor and 
profit under government, the acceptance 
of it disqualifies a member from retaining 
his seat 

CHIMA5RA (ki-me'ra), in class, myth, 
a fire-breathing monster, the foreparts of 
whose body were those of a lion, the 
middle of a goat, and the hinder of a 
dragon. Thus the name came to be used 
for an unnatural production of the fancy. 

CHIMES, a species of music, mechan¬ 
ically produced by the strokes of ham¬ 
mers against a series of bells, tuned 
agreeably to a given musical scale. The 
hammers are lifted by levers acted upon 
by metallic pins, or wooden pegs, stuck 
into a large barrel, which is made to 
revolve by clock-work, and is so con¬ 
nected with the striking part of the 
clock mechanism that it is set in motion 
by it at certain intervals of time, usually 
every hour, or every quarter of an hour. 
The chime mechanism is sometimes so 
constructed that it may be played like 
a piano. 

CHIM'NEY, an erection generally of 
stone or brick containing a passage by 
which the smoke of a fire or furnace 
escapes to the open air. In this sense 
the first chimneys we hear of are no 
earlier than the middle ages. The 
longer a chimney is the more perfect is 
its draught, provided the fire is great 
enough to heat the column of air in it, 
because the tendency of the smoke to 
draw upward is in proportion to the 
difference of weight between the heated 
air in a chimney and an equal column 
of external air. 

CHIMNEY-SWALLOW. See Swallow. 

CHIMPAN'ZEE, the native Guinea 
name of a large West and Central Afri¬ 
can ape belonging to the anthropoid or 
man-like monkeys, and to the same 
genus as the gorilla. When full grown 
it is sometimes about 5 feet high, with 
black hair, and is not so large and power¬ 
ful as the gorilla. Like the orang it hafl 






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Pinnacle Ib. 


.™.?naX^ uting. k u ' s 

: -A v ° s °nem/i 

vHUKiiinr.Tv 1 Mllllnil - - 


K clung. 


'^My^oSbima 

3KSS.» 

^OPJCOFOAI^ 


lueingan .0 


Nam- 


pSunu K »i”'' 

,M0SA 


iiluns 


SCALE OE MILES 




€r r «r*”» s 

, : k n fn ,' 10 • : ' IpOHg/sc 


’TtScgu 

• ‘JilSMom *o*_ 


#P 


Capital of Country__si Treaty Ports_- 

Capital of Province_•> Railroads_ 

Proposed Railroads ^ 
Submarine Cables- 

HammvftikS Sill Map of Cbina,Japan and Korea 
• Copyright 1904 .bj C.S. Hammond I; Co. N Y. 


Aiuot 


xSXm 


yy south L i 
CHINA SEA 


lSell# u “ 


°Z Parebi 

/Tighlingaleo * 
long l * w 4 ^ 

Gulf of* 
'Tonkin „ 


H Longitude 120 East from X Greenwich 125 


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CHINA 


CHINA 


the hair on its forearm turned back¬ 
ward, but differs from it in having an 
additional dorsal vertebra and a thir¬ 
teenth pair of ribs. It walks erect better 
than most of the apes. It feeds on 



Chimpanzee. 

fruits, often robs the gardens of the 
natives, and constructs a sort of nest 
among the branches. It is common in 
menageries, where it shows much in¬ 
telligence and docility. 

CHINA, an immense empire stretch¬ 
ing from the center of Asia, about 75° 
e. Ion., for 3000 miles to the east coast 
of Corea, in 128° e. Ion.; and from the 
Siberian frontier at the river Amoor, 
about 50° 30' n. lat., for 2400 miles 
southward to the island of Hainan. 
This vast empire, second in magnitude 
only to that of Russia and Great Britain, 
has an area of about 4,500,000 sq. miles, 
and a population variously estimated 
at 300,000,000 and 400,000,000, or 
more, and is usually divided into China 
Proper, and the dependencies: Man¬ 
churia, Mongolia, Eastern Turkestan, 
Dzoungaria, and Tibet, of which Tibet 
is practically autonbmous. The depend¬ 
encies, though they cover more than 
3,000,000 sq. miles, contain but a small 
and relatively unimportant part of the 


most remarkable of human structures, 
being an artificial barrier 1500 miles 
long. Two thirds of the interior are 
estimated to be mountainous. The 
general slope is from west to east, and 
the mountains are a continuation of 
those of Tibet and Central Asia. The 
great Kuen-lun range throws off 
branches, the Tsing-Ling, Fu-niu-shan 
and Mu-ling, which, running eastward 
between the great valleys of the Hoang- 
Ho and Yang-tse-kiang, traverse almost 
the whole breadth of China. Further 
north the Nan-shan branch of the Kuen- 
lun range runs under various names 
(Kuliang, Alashan, Inshan, etc.) along 
the northeast of China till it reaches the 
frontier, of Manchuria, north of Peking. 
The third great mountain system of 
China is in the southeast, where exten¬ 
sive chains such as the Nanshan, the 
Ta-yu-ling, and Pu-ling stretch on the 
south side of the Yang-tse-kiang all the 
way form the highlands of Yunnan to 
the eastern sea-board. The two great 
rivers of China are the Hoang-ho and 
the Yang-tse-kiang. Here lie the cen¬ 
tral and richest provinces of China. On 
both sides of the lower Hoang-ho is an 
immense delta plain, consisting gen¬ 
erally of a deep alluvial soil of un¬ 
paralleled fertility. As they approach 
the sea-coast the two rivers are con¬ 
nected by the Grand Canal, 700 miles 
in length, thus completing a magnificent 
system of inland navigation. 

The greater part of China belongs to 
the temperate zone, but it has what is 
called an excessive climate. At Peking 
in summer the heat ranges from 90° to 
100° in the shade, while the winter is so 
cold that the rivers are usually frozen 
from December to March. At Shanghai, 
lat. 31° 20', the maximum temperature 
reaches 100°, and the minimum falls at 
least to 20° below freezing point (12° 
Fahr.). In the south the climate is of a 
tropical character, the summer heat 



Chinese mandarin, lady, boy, female attendant, soldier, and blrd’s-nest seller. 


population (about 30,000,000), China 
Proper being the center of power and 
population. 

Great part of the country is not well 
known. The coast-line forms an irregu¬ 
lar curve of about 2500 miles. The in¬ 
land boundaries are formed mainly by 
Tonquin, Burmah, Tibet, and, on the 
north, partly by the Great Wall separat¬ 
ing China from Mongolia, one of the 


rising to 120°. Here the southwest and 
northeast monsoons blow with great 
regularity, and divide the year between 
them. 

China is well supplied with minerals, 
including gold, silver, copper, iron, and 
other metals, and there are very exten¬ 
sive coal-fields, though the quantity 
raised from them is comparatively small. 
Salt is abundant, and there are inex¬ 


haustible beds of kaolin, or porcelain 
earth. Among animals it is difficult to 
mention any that are characteristic of 
the country; many of them are identical 
with or differ but little from those of 
Europe. Among birds the most beauti¬ 
ful are the gold and silver pheasants. 
Fish swarm in all inland waters as well 
as on the coast, the natural supply being 
immensely increased by artificial means. 
As regards the flora of China, it is tropi¬ 
cal in the south (coco and sago palms, 
banana, pandanus, etc.), sub-tropical 
farther north, and still farther north 
prevails a number of plants and trees 
identical with or closely akin to those 
of middle Europe. Flowering plants, 
shrubs, and trees are so exceedingly 
abundant as to form a feature. The 
bamboo, from the immense number of 
uses to which it is put, is one of the most 
valuable trees. Oaks, the chestnut, 
hazel, pines, yew, walnut, etc., are 
among forest trees. Wax and camphor 
trees abound. Azaleas are exceedingly 
numerous; other flowering plants are 
the camellia rose, passion-flower, cactus, 
lagerstrcemia, etc. Fruits are abundant 
and varied. Rice, as the principal food 
of the people, is the staple crop. Three 
plants of the greatest economical im¬ 
portance to China are the mulberry, 
cultivated to provide food for silkworms, 
cotton, and tea, the last for long re¬ 
garded as exclusively a Chinese product. 
Another important crop is the opium 
poppy, which is extensively grown, 
though the product is inferior to that 
of India. 

Among the chief industries is the silk 
manufacture, which produces some 
varieties of stuffs unsurpassed any¬ 
where. The porcelain of China has 
been famous from the earliest periods, 
and the manufacture of the finest forms 
of it was long known to the Chinese 
alone, though their productions are now 
surpassed by those of Europe. Paper 
is made of a great variety of substances, 
and the art of making it—like various 
others—was practiced in China long 
before Europe acquired it. 

The inland trade of China, aided by 
its vast system of water communication, 
is of incalculable magnitude, the rivera 
and canals literally swarming with 
junks, barges, and boats of all sizes. 
The chief of ports are: Shanghai (by 
far the first), Canton, Hankow, Swatow, 
Tientsin, Ningpo, and Foo-chow. The 
main articles of export are tea and raw 
and manufactured silk; the main im¬ 
ports, cotton goods, opium, metals and 
metal goods. The total exports and 
imports have increased considerably in 
recent years. The chief article of ex¬ 
port is tea. The quantity of opium 
imported, almost wholly from India, 
reaches the value of $30,000,000 an¬ 
nually. Silver bullion, called sycee, 
and gold bullion, usually stamped with 
the name of the banker and the year 
and district in which it is cast, are used 
in larger transactions. 

The Chinese belong to the Mongolian 
race, but in them its harsher features, 
as represented in the genuine Tartars, 
are considerably softened. They are 
generally of low stature, have small 
hands and feet (the last artificially made 
so small in the females as to become a 


















CHINA ASTER 


CHINA-WARE 


deformity), a dark complexion, a wide 
forehead, black hair, eyes and eyebrows 
obliquely turned upward at the outer 
extremities. They are strongly attached 
to their homes, hold age in respect, toil 
hard for the support of their families, 
and in the interior, where the worst 
kind of foreign intercourse has not 
debased them, exhibit an unsophisti¬ 
cated simplicity of manners which re¬ 
calls the age of the patriarchs. The 
Chinese use great politeness in their 
intercourse with each other. They 
scrupulously avoid all contradiction 
andoffensiveexpressions in conversation. 
Drunkenness has hitherto been rare 
among them, but the habit of opium- 
smoking has much extended of late. 
Hard work, done in the most uncom¬ 
plaining way, has become second nature 
with them. Filial piety is also a striking 
feature of their character, and is, in fact, 
the principle upon which Chinese society 
is constituted. They have chambers set 
apart for the worship of their ancestors, 
where religious ceremonies are regularly 
performed. 

The Chinese is the most important 
and most widely spread of the so-called 
monosyllabic languages of eastern Asia, 
in which each word is uttered by a 
single movement of the organs of speech. 
There is no alphabet, each word being 
represented by a single symbol or char¬ 
acter. The chief religions in China are 
Confucianism, Taouism, and Buddhism, 
the last introduced subsequently to the 
others. In the western parts Moham¬ 
medanism has many followers. 

Government, Administration, etc.— 
The government is an absolute despot¬ 
ism. The reigning dynasty is of Manchu- 
Tartar blood. The monarch unites in 
his person the attributes of supreme 
magistrate and sovereign pontiff, and as 
the “Son of Heaven” is in theory 
accountable only to heaven. Four 
principal ministers, two of whom are 
Manchus and two Chinese, form, along 
with two assistants, the inner council 
of state. The Chinese army is said to 
number 300,000 men on a peace footing, 
and 1,000,000 on a war footing, but 
only a small proportion of these are of 
any value for actual service, the great 
bulk of the men having received no 
proper military training or discipline 
and being equipped only with obsolete 
weapons. The navy consists of two 
fleets—one for rivers and another for 
sea; but though it numbers many vessels 
it is not very efficient, and is scarcely 
able to clear the Chinese coast from the 
pirates who infest the creeks and islets. 

The early history of the Chinese is 
shrouded in fable, but it is certain that 
civilization had advanced much among 
them when it was only beginning to • 
dawn on the nations of Europe. The 
Chow dynasty, which was founded by 
Woo-wang, and lasted from about 1100 
b.c. to 258 b.c., is perhaps the earliest 
that can be regarded as historic, and even 
of it not much more is historic than the 
name. The present reigning house is of 
Manchu origin. European relations 
with the Chinese began in 1596 and 
European interference has gone on 
uninterruptedly ever since. The Chinese 
are refractive to European civilization 
and have resisted intercourse persist¬ 


ently. In spite of this, however, every 
European nation of importance has 
secured a foothold in China. In 1850 
began the great Tai Ping rebellion 
against the government. In 1894-5 
was fought the Japanese-Chinese war 
resulting in the defeat of China, the 
payment of an indemnity and the re¬ 
linquishment of Formosa to Japan. In 
1900 an anti-foreign movement broke 
out in north China, mainly instigated, 
it would seem, by a secret nationalist 
society, whose members are known to 
Europeans as the Boxers. Native 
Christians and European and other 
missionaries were murdered; and for a 
time the members of the legations in 
Peking were isolated and in danger of 
being massacred. An international 
relief force, however, succeeded in 
effecting their rescue.. Tsi-Au, the 
empress dowager, died in November, 
1908, the emperor was poisoned and an¬ 
other infant, Pu-Yi ascended the throne. 

CHINA ASTER, the common name 
of a composite plant, hardy and free 
flowering. See Asters. 

CHINA GRASS, a plant of the nettle 
family, a native of southern and eastern 
Asia and the Asiatic islands, and now 
more or less cultivated in many other 
countries, such as southern France, 
Algeria, Natal, Mauritius, Australia, the 
U. States, Mexico, Jamaica, etc. It 
yields a fiber which possesses most 
valuable properties, and has long been 
made in China into a beautiful cloth, 
and is probably destined to play a much 
more important part as a textile ma¬ 
terial. It is very strong, presents 
unusual resistance to the effects of 
moisture, and is fine and silky in ap¬ 
pearance. With wool, hemp, cotton, 
and flax it is believed that it may 
successfully compete, but its full capa¬ 
bilities are hardly as yet known, though 
it is long since trials have been made 
with it as a subject of manufacture. 

CHINA, GREAT WALL OF, the 
largest artificial structure on the face of 
the earth, a barrier extending for about 
1500 miles in the north of China proper, 
of which it partly forms the boundary. 
Its western end is in the deserts of 
central Asia, its eastern reaches the sea 
to the north-eastward of Peking. It 
was erected as a barrier against the 
inroads of the barbarous tribes, and 
dates from about 214 b.c. It is carried 
over height and hollow, and avoids no 
inequality of the ground, reaching in 
one place the height of over 5000 ft. 
above the sea. Earth, gravel, brick, 
and stone were used in its construction, 
and in some places it is much more 
substantial than in others. Its greatest 
height, including the parapet on its top, 
is about 50 feet, and it is strengthened 
by towers at regular distances. 

CHINA INK, a black solid, which, 
when rubbed down with water, forms 
a very pure black indelible ink. It has 
been used in China from time immemor¬ 
ial. There are different accounts of the 
rocess, but it appears to be made by 
oiling the juices of certain plants with 
water to a syrup, adding to this a quan¬ 
tity of gelatine, and then thoroughly 
incorporating the carbonaceous matter. 
There is generally added some perfume 
—a little musk or camphor. The mass 


is then made into square columns of 
different sizes, which are often decorated 
with figures and Chinese characters. 
Many attempts have been made to 
imitate Chinese ink, some of which have 
been tolerably successful. Good Chinese 
ink should have a velvety-black ap¬ 
pearance, with a gloss which becomes 
very conspicuous on rubbing. The 
color it gives on paper should be pure 
black and homogeneous, and if water be 
passed over it it should not run or be¬ 
come streaky. It is indelible by ordi¬ 
nary solvents, but may be removed 
sometimes mechanically. 

CHINA ROSE, the name given to a 
number of varieties of garden rose. 

CHINA SEA, that part of the North 
Pacific Ocean bounded n. by Formosa, 
n.w. by China, w. by Anam and the 
Malay Peninsula, s.e. by Borneo, and e. 
by the Philippines. It contains numer¬ 
ous islands, receives several considerable 
rivers, and forms the important Gulfs 
of Siam and Tonquin. 

CHINA-WARE, porcelain, the finest 
and most beautiful of all tne kinds of 
earthenware, so called from China 
being the country which first supplied 
it to Europeans. The Chinese are said 
to have manufactured porcelain pre¬ 
vious to the Christian era, but it was not 
till five or six centuries later that they 
attained any great perfection in the art. 
Japan also appears to have been early 
acquainted with the manufacture. In 
the beginning of the 16th century the 
ware was first introduced into Europe, 
and won immediate popularity by its 
beauty and novelty. For long it was 
thought impossible to fabricate any¬ 
thing similar in Europe, but at length 
John Frederick Botfecher or Bottiger, a 
native of Saxony who had long devoted 
himself to alchemy, discovered a means 
of producing a porcelain equal in white¬ 
ness to that of China. This led to the 
establishment by the government of 
the far-famed porcelain manufactory 
at Meissen, near Dresden. The Saxon 
porcelain soon became celebrated over 
Europe, and rivalled that of China in 
the excellence of its quality, and the 
beauty of its decorations. Subsequently 
porcelain works were established at 
Vienna, Munich and elsewhere in Ger¬ 
many. In France also about the middle 
of the 18th century the celebrated 
factory at Sevres was set up and soon 
acquired a great renown. The first 
successful attempt in England to manu¬ 
facture porcelain was made by some 
Germans, who established a factory at. 
Chelsea, from which, in 1748, it was 
transferred to Derby. About twenty 
years afterward the valuable discovery 
in Cornwall of an excellent species of 
clay contributed greatly to improve 
the quality of English porcelain, which 
now began to be largely manufactured 
in Staffordshire under the auspices of 
the celebrated Josiah Wedgwood. China- 
ware, when broken, presents a granular 
surface, with a texture compact, dense, 
firm, hard, vitreous, and durable. It is 
semi-transparent, with a covering of, 
white glass, clear, smooth, unaffected 
by all acids excepting the hydrofluoric, 
and resisting uninjured sudden changes 
of temperature. For the process of 
[ manufacture see Pottery. 






CHINA WAX 


CHLORIC ETHER 


CHINA WAX, a sort of wax deposited 
by insects on a deciduous tree with 
light-green ovate, serrated leaves, cul¬ 
tivated in the province of Si-chuen 
(Ssu-chuan) in south-western China. 
The insects, a species of Coccus, are 
bred in galls which are formed on a 
different tree, an evergreen (a species of 
Ligustrum or privet), and these galls are 
transported in great quantities to the 
districts where the wax trees are grown, 
to the branches of which they are sus¬ 
pended. Having emerged from the 
galls the insects spread themselves over 
the branches, which gradually become 
coated with a white waxy substance, 
reaching in 90 or 100 days the thicknes 
of a quarter of an inch. The branches 
are then lopped off and the wax removed. 
It is white in color and is chiefly made 
into candles; it melts at 160° whereas 
tallow melts at about 95°. 

CHINCH, the popular name of certain 
fetid American insects, resembling the 
bed-bug, very destructive to wheat, 
maize, etc., in the southern and western 
states. Also applied to the common 
bed-bug. 

CHINCHIL'LA, a genus of S. Ameri¬ 
can herbivorous rodents very closely 
allied to the rabbit, which they resemble 
in the general shape of the body, in the 
limbs being longer behind than before, 
in the conformation of the rootless 
molars, and by the nature of the fur, 
which is more wooly than silky; but 
differing from the rabbit in the number 
of their incisors and molars, in a greater 
length of tail, and also in having broader 
and more rounded ears. One species 
about 15 inches long, is covered with a 
beautiful pearly-gray fur, which is 
highly esteemed as stuff for muffs, 
pelisses, linings, etc. The chinchilla 



Chinchilla. 


lives gregariously in the mountains of 
most parts of S. America, and makes 
numerous and very deep burrows.. It 
is of a gentle nature, very sportive, 
losing none of its gaiety in captivity, 
and very cleanly. 

CHINCHONA (chin-cho'na). See Cin - 
chona. „ , 

CHINESE EDIBLE DOG, a small dog, 
in form somewhat like a greyhound, 
reared by the Chinese to be used as an 
article of food. . 

CHINESE IMMIGRATION, a political 
question in the U. States, arising from 
a fear that American labor would be 
injured by imported labor from China. 
In 1882 the Chinese exclusion act was 
passed by congress and has been con¬ 
tinued in force ever since. By its pro¬ 
vision all Chinese are excluded except 
those who are certified not to be laborers. 
In 1900 there were 89,863 Chinese in 
the U. States. 


CHINESE LANTERN, a lantern made 
of thin paper, usually variously colored 
and much used in illuminations. 

CHINESE WHITE, oxide of zinc used 
in the arts instead of white lead. It 
is valuable principally as a color. 

CHING'LEPUT (ching'gl-put), or 
CHENGALPAT, a coast district, and its 
capital, Hindustan, presidency Madras. 
The district, which lies s. of Arcot and 
Madras—area, about 2842 sq. miles. 
Pop. 1,136,928. 

CHINIQUY, Charles Pascal Teles- 
phore, a Canadian clergyman, born in 
Quebec in 1809, died in 1899. He took 
part in the temperance crusade of 1846 
and in 1851 established a Roman 
Catholic colony at Kankakee, HI. He 
published Fifty Years in the Church of 
Rome. 

CHIN-KIANG, or TCHANG-KIANG, a 

city, China, province of Kiangsu. Pop. 
135,000. 

CHINOOK, a dialect consisting of 
English, Chinook and other Indian 
tongues, used largely as a trade language 
on the Pacific coast. 

CHINTZ, cotton cloth or calico 
printed with flowers or other devices in 
various colors and now generally glazed. 
Originally a manufacture of the East 
Indies it is now largely manufactured in 
Europe. 

CHIP'MUNK, CHIP'MUCK, the popu¬ 
lar name in America of the ground- 
squirrel. 



Chipmunk. 

CHIPPEWAYS (chip'e-waz), or OJIB- 
BEWAYS, a tribe of N. American In¬ 
dians, U. States and Canada. They 
are distributed in bands round both 
sides of the basin of Lake Superior, 
where they once owned vast tracts. 
They are of the Algonquin stock, tall, 
active, and well formed, subsist chiefly 
by hunting and fishing, and number 
about 18,000. 

CHIPPING SPARROW, a common N. 
American bird, some five or six inches 
long. 

CHIRAGRA (kl-rag'ra), that species 
of gout which attacks the joints of the 
hand (the wrist and knuckles) and 
hinders their motions. It gradually 
bends, distorts, and finally stiffens the 
fingers. 

CHIROMANCY (kl-'ro-man-si). See 
Cheiromancy. 

CHISHOLM VS. GEORGIA, a cele¬ 
brated case decided by the Supreme 
Court of the U. States in 1793, in which 
the court decided that the federal 
judiciary could not exercise power in 
an action brought by a citizen of one 
state against the government of another 
state. 


CHISHOLM, William Wallace, an 
American politician, born in Georgia 
in 1830, died 1877. He was a fierce 
partisan republican in Georgia and in 
1877 was arrested charged with having 
murdered John W. Gully, a democratic 
leader. Chisholm was attacked in jail 
by a mob and shot to death. 

CHITTAGONG (chit'-), a district, 
Hindustan, in the s.e. of Bengal, having 
the Bay of Bengal on the w.; area, 2563 
sq. miles; pop. 1,290,167. Chittagong 
is also the name of a commissionership 
or division of Bengal. Area, 12,118 sq. 
miles; pop. 4,190,081. 

CHIVALRY (chiv'al-ri), a term which 
indicates strictly the organization of 
knighthood as it existed in the middle 
ages, and in a general sense the spirit 
and aims which distinguished the 
knights of those times. The chief 
characteritics of the chivalric ages were 
a warlike spirit, a lofty devotion to the 
female sex, a love of adventure, and an 
undefinable thirst for glory. The 
Crusades gave for a time a religious turn 
to the spirit of chivalry, and various 
religious orders of knighthood arose, 
such as the Knights of St. John, the 
Templars, the Teutonic Knights, etc. 

CHLO'RAL, a liquid first prepared by 
Liebig by passing dry chlorine gas 
through absolute alcohol to saturation, 
afterward by Stadeler by the action of 
hydrochloric acid and manganese on 
starch. The hydrate of chloral, as now 
prepared, is a. white crystalline sub¬ 
stance, which, in contact with alkalies, 
separates into chloroform and formic 
acid. Chloral kills by paralyzing the 
action of the heart. It is a hypnotic as 
well as an anaesthetic, and is frequently 
substituted for morphia. It has been 
successfully used in delirium tremens, 
St. Vitus’s dance, poisoning by strychnia, 
in tetanus, and in some cases of asthma 
and whooping-cough. It should be 
taken with great caution and under 
medical advice, as an extra dose may 
produce serious symptoms and even 
death. The treatment of poisoning by 
chloral is to keep the person warm by 
means of blankets, warm bottles, etc. 
Warm stimulating drinks should also 
be administered, such as hot coffee, hot 
tea, negus, etc. It has been shown that 
an animal kept warm by wrapping in 
cotton wool recovered from a dose of 
chloral that otherwise would have 
killed it. 

CHLO'RATE, a salt of chloric acid. 
The chlorates are very analogous to the 
nitrates. They are decomposed by a 
red heat, nearly all of them being con¬ 
verted into metallic chlorides, with 
evolution of pure oxygen. They de¬ 
flagrate with inflammable substances 
with such facility that an explosion is 
produced by slight causes. The chlor¬ 
ates of sodium and potassium are used 
in medicine. The latter, in doses of 
from five to twenty grains, is largely 
used in scarlet fever, inflamed throat, 
etc. It is also used in the manufacture 
of lucifer-matches, fireworks, and per¬ 
cussion-caps. 

CHLORIC ETHER, a volatile liquid 
obtained by passing hydrochloric acid 
gas into alcohol to saturation and dis¬ 
tilling the products. 




CHLORIDE OF LIME 


CHOPIN 


CHLORIDE OF LIME. See Bleach- 
ing-powder. 

CHLORIM'ETRY, the process of test¬ 
ing the bleaching power of any combina¬ 
tion of chlorine, but especially of the 
commercial articles, the chlorides of 
lime, potash and soda. 

CHLO'RINE is a very heavy gas, being 
about two and a half times as heavy as 
ordinary air; it has a peculiar smell, 
and irritates the nostrils most violently 
when inhaled, as also the windpipe and 
lungs. It exercises a corrosive action 
upon organic tissues. It is not com¬ 
bustible, though it supports the com¬ 
bustion of many bodies, and, indeed, 
spontaneously burns several. In com¬ 
bination with other elements it forms 
chlorides, which act most important 
parts in many manufacturing processes. 
This gas may be liquefied by cold and 
pressure, when it becomes a trans¬ 
parent, greenish-yellow, limpid liquid. 
Chlorine is one of the most powerful 
bleaching agents, this property belong¬ 
ing to it through its strong affinity for 
hydrogen. It is a valuabe disinfectant 
where it can be conveniently applied, 
as in the form of chloride of lime. 

CHLO'RODYNE, a popular patent 
medicine used in allaying pain and in¬ 
ducing sleep, and containing morphia, 
chloroform, prussic acid, extract of 
Indian hemp, etc. There are several 
makes of it, but all have to be used with 
caution. 

CHLO'ROFORM, a volatile colorless 
liquid of an agreeable, fragrant, sweetish 
apple taste and smell, discovered by 
Soubeiran and Liebig in 1832. It is 
prepared by cautiously distilling to¬ 
gether a mixture of alcohol, water, 
and chloride of lime or bleaching-powder. 
Its use as an anaesthetic was introduced 
in 1847 by Prof. Simpson of Edinburgh. 
For this purpose its vapor is inhaled. 
The inhalation of chloroform first pro¬ 
duces slight intoxication; then, fre¬ 
quently, slight muscular contractions, 
unruliness, and dreaming; then loss of 
voluntary motion and consciousness, 
the patient appearing as if sound asleep; 
and at last, if too much be given, death 
by coma and syncope. When skilfully 
administered in proper cases it is con¬ 
sidered one of the safest of anaesthetics; 
but it requires to be used under certain 
precautions, as its application has 
frequently proved fatal. Chloroform 
is a powerful solvent, dissolving resins, 
wax, iodine, etc., as well as strychnine 
and other alkaloids. 

CHLORO'SIS or GREEN SICKNESS, 
a disease specially affecting young girls, 
is characterized by a greenish or yellow¬ 
ish hue of the skin, languor, indigestion 
and general debility, and derangement 
of the system. The pathological con¬ 
dition of chlorosis is a diminution in 
quantity of the red globules of the blood, 
an important constituent of which is 
iron, and accordingly the administra¬ 
tion of iron forms a leading part of the 
treatment of this disease. —The term is 
also applied to a disease of plants in 
which a deficiency of chlorophyll causes 
a blanched and yellow appearance in¬ 
stead of a healthy green in the plant. 
It is artificially produced in some 
esculent vegetables to destroy their 
bitter flavor. 


CHOATE, Joseph Hodges, an Ameri¬ 
can diplomat and lawyer, born in 
Massachusetts in 1832. He became 
noted for his part as counsel for the 
defense in the Tweed Ring case, the 
Tilden will contest and the Chinese 
exclusion case. He represented the U. 
States in the Bering Sea dispute, and in 
1899 was appointed ambassador to 
England. 

CHOATE, Rufus, a noted American 
lawyer, born in Massachusetts in 1799, 
died in 1859. He was a member of the 



U. States senate for some years and was 
an ardent advocate of protection. 
Choate was particularly noted for his 
fine oratory. 

CHO'COLATE, a paste composed of 
the kernels of the Theobroma Cacao or 
cacao-tree, ground and combined with 
sugar and vanilla, cinnamon, or other 
flavoring substance; also a beverage 
made by dissolving chocolate in boiling 
water or milk. It was used in Mexico 
long before the arrival of the Spaniards, 
and is now largely used. 

CHOCTAWS, a N. American Indian 
tribe now settled on a portion (10,450 
sq. miles) of the Indian Territory on the 
Red river. They formerly inhabited 
what is now the w. part of Alabama and 
8. part of Mississippi. They cultivate 
the soil, are partially civilized, having a 
regular constitution prefaced with a 
bill of rights, courts of justice, books 
and newspapers. 

CHOIR (qulr), that part of a cruci¬ 
form church extending eastward from 
the nave to the altar, frequently in¬ 
closed by a soreen, and set apart for the 
performance of the ordinary service. 
The name is also given to the organized 
body of singers in church services. 

CHOKE-CHERRY, a popular name 
for one or more species of cherry dis¬ 
tinguished by their astringency. 

CHOKE-DAMP, or AFTER-DAMP, 
the name given to the irrespirable gas 
(carbonic acid) found in coal-mines 
after an explosion of fire-damp or light 
carburetted hydrogen. 

CHOLAGOGUE (ko'la-gog), a medi¬ 
cine which has the property of carrying 
off bile. 

CHOLERA (kol'e-ra), an acute con¬ 
tagious and very fatal disease. In its 


more ordinary form it commences with 
sickness, vomiting, or perhaps two or 
three loose evacuations of the bowels; 
after which follow a sense of burning at 
the praecordia, an increased purging 
and vomiting of a white or colorless 
fluid, great prostration of strength, 
spasms at the extremities, which in¬ 
crease in violence with the vomiting 
and purging. Such cases may last from 
twelve to thirty-six hours; after this the 
patient generally sinks into a state of 
extreme collapse, and this stage in most 
cases passes by a gradual transition into 
a febrile one, which in a majority of 
instances proves fatal. Sometimes the 
patient is suddenly stricken down and 
dies, collapsed within a few hours with¬ 
out diarrhsea or vomiting. This disease 
is endemic in certain parts of Asia 
(hence it is sometimes called Asiatic 
cholera), and is liable to spread to other 
parts of the world, usually by the ordi¬ 
nary channels of commerical inter¬ 
course. It first appeared in Europe in 
1829, and reached Britain in 1831, 
spreading thence to America. Western 
Europe was again visited by it in 1847, 
1853, 1865, 1873, 1875, and in 1885. 
In 1892 Russia and western Europe 
suffered severely. 

The primary and essential element in 
the production of cholera has been as¬ 
certained to be a constituent of the 
excreta of cholera patients. Whether 
this particular substance is the germ of 
a fungus or other form of minute life 
is not quite certain, but that it is an 
organism capable of propagating itself 
when it is taken into the alimentary 
canal in food, impure water, or the like, 
is beyond a doubt. Dr. Koch asserts 
that the essential cause is a bacillus, 
having the form of a curved rod, hence 
called the comma bacillus, and tnat the 
disease is caused by the multiplication 
of this organism in the small intestines. 
The fact that great numbers are present 
in persons suffering from cholera is gen¬ 
erally admitted, but it is doubted by 
other experts if they do actually produce 
the disease. A method of protective 
inoculation against cholera has been 
lately tried in Spain, but with small 
success. The contagion of cholera is 
not so likely to be conveyed by personal 
intercourse as by residence in an in¬ 
fected district. Sanitary measures 
have proved to be the only efficacious 
means of arresting an epidemic; in¬ 
sanitary conditions decidedly favor it. 



Choplnes. 


CHOPIN (sho-pan), Frederic Francois, 
pianist and musical composer, of French 
extraction, was born at Warsaw in 1810, 
went to Paris in 1831 on account of the 
political troubles of Poland, and died 








CHOPINE 


CHRISTIANITY 


there in 1849. He wrote numerous 
pieces for the pianoforte, chiefly in the 
form of nocturnes, polonaises, waltzes, 
and mazurkas; all of which display 
much poetic fancy, abounding in subtle 
ideas with graceful harmonic effects. 

CHOPINE (chop-en'), a very high shoe 
or elevated clog, introduced into Eng¬ 
land from Venice, in the reign of Queen 
Elizabeth, and which became the 
fashionable wear of court ladies during 
that reign. They were made of wood 
covered with leather of sundry colors, 
white, red, yellow, and sometimes gilt. 
Some of them were of great height, as 
much as 18 inches, the height of the 
chopine being seemingly regarded as a 
mark of the rank of the wearer. 

CHOP-STICKS, the Chinese substi¬ 
tute for our knife, fork, and spoon at 
meals, consisting of two smooth sticks 
of bamboo, wood, or ivory, which are 
used for conveying meat to the mouth 
with wonderful dexterity. 

CHORAL SERVICE, in the Church of 
England, service with intoned responses, 
and the use of music throughout where- 
ever it is authorized. The service is 
said to be partly choral when only can¬ 
ticles, hymns, etc., are sung; wholly 
choral, when, in addition to these, the 
versicles, responses, etc., are sung. 

CHORD (kord)j in music, the simul¬ 
taneous combination of different sounds, 
consonant or dissonant. The common 
chord consists of a fundamental or bass 
note with its third and fifth. When 
the interval between the bass note and 
its third is two full tones the combina¬ 
tion is a major chord; when the interval 
is a tone and a half the combination is 
termed a minor chord; when the inter¬ 
vals between the bass note and its third 
and the third and the fifth are each a 
tone and a half, the chord is called 
diminished. The tonic chord is made up 
of the key-note and its third and fifth; 
the dominant chord, consists of the 
dominant or fifth of the scale accom¬ 
panied by its third and fifth; the sub¬ 
dominant chord has for its root or bass 
the subdominant or fourth of the scale, 
accompanied with its third and fifth.— 
In geom. a chord is a straight line drawn, 
or supposed to extend, from one end of 
an arc of a circle to the other. 

CHOROID (ko'-), a term applied in 
anat. to various textures; as the choroid 
membrane, one of the membranes of 
the eye, of a very dark color, situated 
between the sclerotic and the retina, and 
terminating anteriorly at the great cir¬ 
cumference of the iris. 

CHORUS (kQ'rus), originally an an¬ 
cient Greek term for a troop of singers 
and dancers, intended to heighten the 
pomp and solemnity of festivals. Dur¬ 
ing the most flourishing period of ancient 
tragedy (b.c. 500-400) the Greek chorus 
was a troop of males and females, who, 
during the whole representation, were 
spectators of the action, never quitting 
the stage. In the intervals of the action 
the chorus chanted songs, which related 
to the subject of the performance. 
Sometimes it even took part in the per¬ 
formance, by observations on the con¬ 
duct of the personages, by advice, con¬ 
solation, exhortation, or disuasion. 
In the beginning it consisted of a great 
number of persons, sometimes as many 


as fifty; but the number was afterward 
limited to fifteen. In music, the chorus 
is that part of a composite vocal per¬ 
formance which is executed by the whole 
body of the singers, in contradistinction 
to the solo airs, and concerted pieces for 
selected voices. The singers who join 
in the chorus are also called the chorus. 
The term is also applied to the verses 
of a song in which the company join the 
singer, or the union of a company with a 
singer in repeating certain couplets or 
verses at certain periods in a song. 

CHOTA NAGPORE, a division of Brit¬ 
ish India, presidency Bengal. Total 
area, 43,020 sq. miles. Pop. 4,645,590. 

CHOW-CHOW, a kind of mixed 
pickles put up in mustard. It originated 
in India. 

CHOW CHOW, a Chinese dog, marked 
by the possession of a black tongue. It 
was introduced into the U. States in 
1901. 

CHOWDER, a dish consisting of a 
mixture of fish or clams, potatoes, 
biscuit, vegetables and other ingredi¬ 
ents. The word and dish are of French 
origin. 

CHRIST, a title of our Savior, now 
used almost as a name or part of his 
name. See Christianity and Jesus Christ. 

CHRISTENING, the ceremony at 
which a person or thing is given a name. 
In former times it was generally accom¬ 
panied by baptism at which time the 
person baptized was believed to become 
a Christian, as previous to baptism 
the individual was still a pagan. The 
ceremony of christening a ship was first 
practiced in'1418. Nowadays ships are 
always christened by a woman, pre¬ 
ferably young, who breaks a bottle of 
champagne on the prow as the vessel is 
launched from the ways. 

CHRISTIAN, the name of nine Danish 
kings. Christian II., King of Denmark, 
Norway, and Sweden, was born 1480, 
died 1559. He attained the throne in 
1513, and in 1518 usurped the throne of 
Sweden, from which he was expelled by 
Gustavus Vasa in 1522. He was deposed 
by his Danish subjects in 1523, and re¬ 
tired to the Netherlands, whence he 
returned in 1531 with an army, but was 
defeated, and kept in confinement till 
his death.—Christian IV., King of Den¬ 
mark, son of Frederick II. and the 
Princess Sophia of Mecklenburg, born 
in Zealand in 1577, succeeded to the 
throne as a minor in 1588, and died 1648. 
In the Thirty Years’ war he was beaten 
by Tilly at Lutter in 1626, but after¬ 
ward, in conjunction with Gustavus 
Adolphus, obtained the Treaty of Lii- 
beck, 1629. He has the merit of having 
laid the foundation of the Danish navy, 
extended the trade of his subjects to the 
East Indies, and fitted out several expe¬ 
ditions for the discovery of a north¬ 
west passage. Christian IX died 1906. 

CHRISTIAN BROTHERS COLLEGE, 
a school at St. Louis founded by the 
Brothers of the Christian Schools 
(Roman Catholic) in 1855, and having 
a regular college curriculum of arts and 
sciences. It has about 450 students, 
and income of $30,000. 

CHRISTIAN CATHOLIC CHURCH, 
the name given by John Alexander 
Dowie to a denomination founded by 
him in 1890 at Chicago. The faith was 


based on the belief that miraculous 
healing is possible. Dowie removed 
his organization to Zion City, near 
Chicago, a town built by the Zionites 
and governed by them, since 1902. 
In late years Dowie claimed to be Elijah, 
reincarnated. His followers revolted 
in 1905 and his place was taken by 
Voliva, a subordinate. The manage¬ 
ment of the business of Zion is now in 
the hands of a receiver. 

CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR, YOUNG 
PEOPLE’S SOCIETY OF, a society 
founded in 1881 by Francis E. Clark of 
the Methodist Episcopal church. It 
grew with great rapidity and recently 
had a membership of upward of 
3,000,000. The object of the society is 
to cultivate religious activity in simple 
things of daily fife. 

CHRISTIAN ERA, the great era now 
almost universally employed in Chris¬ 
tian countries for the computation of 
time. It is generally supposed to begin 
with the year of the birth of Christ; but 
that event seems to have taken place 
four years before the present established 
beginning of the era. Time before 
Christ is marked b.c., after Christ a.d. 
The era is computed from the 1st Jan. 
in the fourth year of the 194th olym¬ 
piad, and the 753d year from the build¬ 
ing of Rome. It was first used by 
Dionysius, a Syrian monk, in the 6th 
century, but did not become general 
until about the middle of the 15th 
century. 

CHRISTIANIA, a city and port, the 
capital of Norway, province Aggershuus 



or Christiania, at the head of the long 
narrow inlet called Christiania Fjord, 
about 60 miles from the open sea or 
Skagerrack. Important public build¬ 
ings are the royal palace, the house of 
representatives or Storthing, the gov¬ 
ernor’s palace, and the cathedral. At¬ 
tached to the university—the only one 
in Norway, opened in 1813—is a muse¬ 
um, containing a fine collection of 
antiquities. The manufactures of the 
city consist of woolen cloth, ironware, 
tobacco, paper, leather, soap, spirits, 
glass, etc., and there are extensive 
breweries. The exports are principally 
timber and iron. The environs are 
exceedingly beautiful. Pop. 225,686. 

CHRISTIANITY, the religion insti¬ 
tuted by Jesus Christ. Though the 










CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE 


CHRISTY 


great moral principles which it reveals 
and teaches, and the main doctrines of 
the gospel, have been preserved without 
interruption, the genius of the different 
nations and ages have materially col¬ 
ored its character. The first com¬ 
munity of the followers of Jesus was 
formed at Jerusalem soon after the 
death of their Master. Another at 
Antioch in Syria first assumed (about 
65) the name of Christians; and the 
travels of the apostles spread Chris¬ 
tianity through the provinces of the 
Roman Empire. Palestine, Syria, Asia 
Minor, Greece, the islands of the Medi¬ 
terranean, Italy, and the northern 
coast of Africa, as early as the 1st cen¬ 
tury, contained societies of Christians. 
At the end of the 3d century almost 
one-half of the inhabitants of the Roman 
Empire, and of several neighboring 
countries, professed this belief. While 
Christianity as a system was thus 
spreading, many heretical branches 
had sprung from the main trunk. From 
the Gnostics, who date from the days 
of the apostles, to the Nestorians of 
the 5th century the number of sects 
was large, and some of them exist to 
the present day. The most important 
events in the subsequent history of 
Christianity are the separation of the 
Eastern and Western Churches early 
in the 8th century; and the Western 
reformation, which may be said to have 
commenced with the sectaries of the 
13th century and ended with the estab¬ 
lishment of Protestantism in the 16th. 
The number of Christians now in the 
world is computed at 450,000,000. Of 
these about 212,000,000 are Roman 
Catholics, 83,000,000 belong to the 
Greek Church, and 155,000,000 are 
Protestants. Of the various sects of 
Protestants the most numerous are the 
Lutheran, the Calvinistic, and the 
Anglican Church. 

CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, Society 
for Promoting, a society founded in 
London in 1698, in connection with the 
Church of England, having for its main 
objects the establishment of churches, 
schools, and libraries, and the publica¬ 
tion and circulation of religious and 
moral literature. It is still in active 
operation, publishes a great number of 
religious and instructive works, and 
recently established a training college 
for schoolmistresses. 

CHRISTIANS, the general name of 
the followers of Christ. See Christianity. 

CHRISTIANS, or Christian Connec¬ 
tion, the name of a denomination in the 
United States and Canada, adopted to 
express their renunciation of all sec¬ 
tarianism. They are to be met with in 
all parts of the country, the number of 
their churches being estimated at over 
1000. Each church is an independent 
body; the Scriptures are their only rule 
of faith, and admission to the church is 
obtained by a simple profession of belief 
in Christianity. As a rule they are anti- 
Trinitarians and Baptists. 

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE, a religio- 
scientific discovery claimed by Mrs. 
Mary Baker Eddy of Concord, N. H., 
to have been made by her in 1866. 
Christian Science purports to reveal the 
science of God, also the science of life 
and of man. It claims to be the science 


of the divine Mind or Omniscience. It 
affirms the divine individuality of God, 
and denies all man-made conceptions of 
Him as a finite personality. It declares 
that God can only be spiritually dis¬ 
cerned, and that the material senses 
cannot cognize or comprehend God. 
Mrs. Eddy adds to the accepted 
synonyms for Deity such as Life, Truth, 
Love and Spirit, that God is the Divine 
Principle of all true being; the creative 
principle, the cause, origin, source, basis, 
foundation, government and law of all 
that has actual and permanent existence. 
She repudiates all assumption that God 
has created or consented to any form of 
evil, sin, sickness or death. She declares 
that all of God’s laws mean and pro¬ 
vide for life, and life only. 

It denies the personality of evil as 
devil, and avers that evil has no real 
entity or immortality. Sin or evil is a 
negation—a wrong sense of the truth of 
being—a wrong sense of that which is 
eternally right. It asserts that the 
primary cause of sickness is to be found 
in the mental realm. It declares that 
fear, sin, superstition and ignorance 
have involved the human race in mor¬ 
tality, and that when the world fully 
learns this fact, it will begin to scien¬ 
tifically cope with, and permanently 
master disease. 

Christian Scientists believe in God, 
in the inspiration of the Scriptures, in 
the divinity of Christ, in the supremacy 
of God as Spirit, in prayer without 
ceasing, and in all the essentials of 
Christianity, and claim that the prime 
office of Christian Science is to destroy 
evil and reform mankind. They be¬ 
lieve that all evil will eventually be de¬ 
stroyed and become extinct. 

CfiRISTI'NA, Queen of Sweden, 
daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, born 
1626, died 1689. After the death of 
Gustavus, at Lutzen, in 1632, the states- 
general appointed guardians to the 
Queen Christina, then but six years 
old. In 1644 she took upon herself the 
government. A great talent for busi¬ 
ness, and great firmness of purpose, 
distinguished her first steps. She ter¬ 
minated the war with Denmark begun 
in 1644, and obtained several provinces 
by the treaty concluded at Bromsebro 
in 1645. In 1654 she abdicated in favor 
of her cousin Charles Gustavus, reserv¬ 
ing to herself a certain income, entire 
independence, and full power over her 
suite and household. She left an im¬ 
mense art collection and a large number 
of valuable MSS. Her writings were 
collected and published in 1752. 

CHRISTMAS (kris'mas), the festival 
of the Christian church observed an¬ 
nually on 25th December in memory 
of the birth of Christ, and celebrated by 
a particular church service. The time 
when the festival was first observed is 
not known with certainty; but it is 
spoken of in the beginning of the 3d 
century by Clement of Alexandria, and 
in the latter part of the 4th century 
Chrysostom speaks of it as of great 
antiquity. As to the day on which it 
was celebrated, there was long consider¬ 
able diversity, but by the time of 
Chrysostom the Westerti Church had 
fixed on the 25th of December, though 
no certain knowledge of the day of 


Christ’s birth existed. The Eastern 
Church, which previously had generally 
favored the 6th of January, gradually 
adopted the same date. Many believe 
that the existence of heathen festivals 
celebrated on or about this day had 
great influence on its being selected; and 
the Brumalia, a Roman festival held at 
the winter solstice, when the sun is as it 
were born anew, has often been in¬ 
stanced as having a strong bearing on 
the question. 

CHRISTMAS-BOXES, boxes in 
which presents were deposited at Christ¬ 
mas; hence a Christmas gift. The cus¬ 
tom of bestowing Christmas boxes arose 
in the early days of the church, when 
boxes were placed in the churches for the 
reception of offerings; these boxes were 
opened on Christmas day, and their 
contents distributed by the priests on 
the morrow (boxing-day). 

CHRISTMAS CARDS, ornamental 
cards containing words of Christmas 
greeting to friends to whom they are 
sent. The first of them appeared about 
1862, and consisted of pictures of robins, 
holly, etc.; since then highly artistic 
designs have been introduced, and their 
manufacture has become a considerable 
industry in Germany, France and Eng¬ 
land. immense quanties of them pass 
through the. post-office every Christmas. 

CHRISTMAS CAROL, a carol or 
song descriptive of the birth of Christ, 
or of incidents connected with it, sung 
especially at Christmas. 

CHRISTMAS ROSE, the black 
hellebore, so called from its flower, 
which resembles a large white single 
rose; its foliage is dark and evergreen, 
and the plant blossoms during the 
winter months. 

CHRISTMAS TREE, a small fir- 
tree lighted up by means of tiny small 
candles of colored wax or small Chinese 
lanterns, ornamented with flags, tinsel 
ornaments, etc., and hung all over with 
gifts for children. 

CHRISTOLOGY, that branch of the 
study of divinity which deals directly 
with the doctrine of the person of 
Christ. 

CHRISTOPHE (kris-tof), Henri, King 
of Hayti, was born in the West Indies 
in 1767, and was employed as a slave in 
St. Domingo on the outbreak of the 
blacks against the French in 1793. 
From the commencement of the troubles 
he signalized himself by his energy, 
boldness, and activity in many bloody 
engagements. In 1811 he had himself 
proclaimed King of Hayti by the name 
of Henri I. His cruelty provoked a 
revolt, which being unable to quell he 
shot himself, 1820. 

CHRISTOPHER’S, St. (commonly 
called St. Kitt’s), a British island in the 
West Indies, one of the Leeward Is¬ 
lands, 23 miles in length, and in general 
about 5 in breadth; area 68 sq. miles, 
or 44,000 acres, of which about 17,000 
acres are appropriated to the growth of 
sugar, and 4000 to pasturage. It was 
discovered by Columbus in 1493 and 
colonized by the English in 1623. 
Pop. 29,782. 

CHRISTY, Howard Chandler, an 
American illustrator, born in Ohio in 






CHROMATE 


CHUQUISACA 


1873. In 1893 be began his career as a 
magazine illustrator and in 1901 drew 
the pictures with which Winston 
Churchill’s Crisis is illustrated. 

CHROMATE. See Chrome Iron Ore, 
Chrome Yellow. 

CHROMATIC PRINTING. See Color 
Printing. 

CHROMAT'ICS, the science of colors; 
that part of optics which treats of the 
properties of the colors of light and of 
natural bodies. 

CHRO'MIUM, a metal which forms 
very hard steel-gray masses; it never 
occurs native, but may be obtained by 
reducing the oxide. In its highest de¬ 
gree of oxidation it forms a compound 
of a ruby-red color. By itself it has 
received no practical applications. It 
takes its name from the various and 
beautiful colors which its oxide and acid 
communicate to minerals into whose 
composition they enter. It is the color¬ 
ing matter of the emerald and beryl. 
Chromium is employed to give a fine 
deep green to the enamel of porcelain, 
glass, etc. The oxide of chromium is of 
a bright grass-green or pale-yellow color. 
This element was originally discovered 
in 1797 by Vauquelin, in the native 
chromate of lead of Siberia. See pre¬ 
ceding articles. 

CHROMO-LITHOGRAPHY, a method 
of producing a colored or tinted litho¬ 
graphic picture, by using various stones 
having different portions of the picture 
drawn upon them with inks of various 
colors and so arranged as to blend into 
a complete picture. Sometimes as many 
as twenty different colors are employed. 
In printing, the lighter shades are 
printed off first and the darkest last. 

CHROMOSPHERE, the name given 
to the gaseous envelope which exists 
round the body of the sun, through 
which the light of the photosphere, an 
inner envelope of incandescent matter, 
passes. During total eclipses it had been 
observed that a red-colored envelope 
surrounded the sun, shooting up to 
great distances from the surface. It 
seems to have been first recognized by 
Secchi; and the projecting portions of it 
are commonly described as “red-colored 
protuberances” and “red flames.” To 
this red envelope the name chromo¬ 
sphere was given by Mr. Lockyer. The 
light from it is much fainter than that 
from the photosphere; and till 1868, 
when M. Janssen and Mr. Lockyer 
almost simultaneously pointed out a 
method of viewing it, it was never seen 
except during eclipses. The chromo¬ 
sphere and its prominences, when ex¬ 
amined with the telespectroscope, ex¬ 
hibit a spectrum of bright lines due to 
incandescent gases. The most elevated 
portions consist entirely or almost en¬ 
tirely of hydrogen, the lightest of the 
gases. Lower down are found the gases 
or vapors of the heavier metals—of 
sodium, magnesium, barium, iron, and 
others. The lower the layer of the 
chromosphere examined the more 
densely is the spectrum filled with lines 
of metals, and in the prominences the 
red hydrogen flames tower high above 
all. 

CHRONIC, a term applied to diseases 
which are inveterate or of long con¬ 


tinuance, in distinction to acute dis¬ 
eases, which speedily terminate. 

CHRONICLES, Books of, two books 
of the Old Testament which formed 
only one book in the Hebrew canon, in 
which it is placed last. The name 
Chronicles was given to it by Jerome. 
The book is one of the latest composi¬ 
tions of the Old Testament, and is sup- 
osed to have been written by the same 
and as Ezra and Nehemiah. Accord¬ 
ing to its contents the book forms three 
great parts:—1, genealogical tables; 
2, the history of the reigns of David and 
Solomon; 3, the history of the kingdom 
of Judah from the separation under 
Rehoboam to the Babylonian captivity, 
with a notice in the last two verses of 
the permission granted by Cyrus to the 
exiles to return home and rebuild their 
temple. The Chronicles present many 
points of contact with the earlier scrip¬ 
tures, historical and prophetical, more 
especially, however, with the books of 
Samuel and of Kings. 

CHRON'OGRAPH, the name given to 
various devices for measuring and 
registering very minute portions of 
time with extreme precision. Benson’s 
chronograph is, in principle, a lever 
watch with a double seconds hand, the 
one superimposed on the other. The 
outer end of the lowermost hand has 
a small cup filled with a black viscid 
fluid, with a minute hole at the bottom, 
while the corresponding end of the 
uppermost is bent down so as just to 
reach the hole. At the starting (say) of 
a horse-race, the observer pulls a string, 
whereupon the bent end of the upper 
hand passes through the hold and makes 
a black mark on the dial, instantly 
rebounding. Again, as each horse passes 
the winning-post the string is redrawn 
and a dot made, and thus the time occu¬ 
pied by each horse is noted. This chron¬ 
ograph registers to one-tenth of a second. 
Strange’s chronograph is connected 
with the pendulum of an astronomical 
clock, which makes a mark on a sheet 
of paper at the beginning and end of 
each swing. By touching a spring on 
the appearance (say) of a particular 
star in the field of a telescope, an ad¬ 
ditional dot is made intermediate be¬ 
tween the two extreme ones, and by 
measuring the distance of this from 
either of these extremes the exact time 
can be ascertained to one-hundredth 
of a second. Schultze’s chronograph, 
in which electricity is applied, is yet far 
more precise, registering time to the 
five - hundred - thousandth part of a 
second. 

CHRONOL'OGY, the science which 
treats of time, and has for its object the 
arrangement and exhibition of historical 
events in order of time and the ascer¬ 
taining of the intervals between them. 
Its basis is necessarily the method of 
measuring or computing time by regular 
divisions or periods, according to the 
revolutions of the earth or moon. The 
motions of these bodies produce the 
natural division of time into years, 
months, and days. As there can be no 
exact computation of time or placing of 
events without a fixed point from which 
to start, dates are fixed from an arbi¬ 
trary point or epoch, which forms the 
beginning of an era. The more im¬ 


portant of these are the creation of the 
world among the Jews; the birth of 
Christ among Christians; the Olympiads 
among the Greeks; the building of Rome 
among the Romans; the Hejira or flight 
of Mohammed among the Mohamme- 
dans, etc. See Epoch, Calendar. 

CHRONOM'ETER, any instrument 
that measures time, as a clock, watch, 
or dial; but, specifically, this term is 
applied to those time-keepers which are 
used for determining the longitude at 
sea, or for any other purpose where an 
accurate measure of time is required, 
with great portability in the instrument. 
The chronometer differs from the ordi¬ 
nary watch in the principle of its 
escapement, which is so constructed 
that the balance is free from the wheels 
during the greater part of its vibration, 
and also in being fitted with a “com¬ 
pensation adjustment,” calculated to 
prevent the expansion and contraction 
of the metal by the action of heat and 
cold from affecting its movements. 
Marine chronometers generally beat 
half-seconds, and are hung in gimbals 
in boxes 6 or 8 inches square. The 
pocket chronometer does not differ in 
appearance from a watch except that 
it is somewhat larger. 

CHRON'OSCOPE, an instrument for 
measuring the duration of extremely 
short-lived phenomena, such as the 
electric spark; more especially the name 
given to instruments of various forms 
for measuring the velocity of projectiles. 

CHRYS'ALIS, a form which butter¬ 
flies, moths, and most other insects 
assume when they change from the 
6tate of larva or caterpillar and before 
they arrive at their winged or perfect 
state. In the chrysalis form the animal 
is in a state of rest or insensibility, and 
exists without nutriment, the length 
of time varying with the species and 
season. During this period an elabora¬ 
tion is going on in tne interior of the 
chrysalis, giving to the organs of the 
future animal their proper development. 

CHRYSAN'THEMUM, a large genus 
of composite plants, consisting of herbs 
or shrubs with single, large-stalked 
yellow flowers or with many small 
flowers; the rays are sometimes white. 

CHRYS'OSTOM, John, St., a cele¬ 
brated Greek father of the church, born 
in Antioch about a.d. 344, died at 
Comana in Pontus 407. 

CHUB, a fish of the genus carps. 
The body is oblong, nearly round; the 
head and back green, the sides silvery, 
and the belly white. It frequents deep 



Chub. 


holes in rivers shaded by trees, but in 
warm weather floats near the surface, 
and furnishes sport for anglers. It is 
indifferent food, and rarely attains the 
weight of 5 lbs. 

CHUQUISACA (cho-ke-sa'ki), or 
SUCRE, a city of S. America, the capital 
of Bolivia; well situated on a plateau 
between the Amazon and La Plata 






CHURCH 


CIGAR 


rivers, 9343 feet above sea-level. It 
has a cathedral and a university. It 
was founded by one of Pizarro’s officers 
in 1539. Pop. estimated at about 
25,000.—The province of Chuquisaca 
has an area of 72,000 sq. miles; pop. 
200,000. 

CHURCH, a word which in its widest 
sense denotes the whole community of 
Christians, and was thus used by the 
New Testament writers. In more 
restricted significations it denotes a 
particular section of the Christian com¬ 
munity differing in doctrinal matters 
from the remainder, as the Roman 
Catholic Church, the Protestant Church 
etc.; or to designate the recognized 
leading church of a nation, as the Eng¬ 
lish, Scotch, or French Church. Gen¬ 
erally speaking any building set apart 
for religious ordinances is called a 
church, though when of a minor kind it 
is usually designated a chapel. 

CHURCH CALENDAR, a table of the 
holy days, feasts, and fasts of a church. 
It originated in 448 a.d. and has been 
retained by the Roman Catholic, the 
Lutheran, and the Protestant Episcopal 
churches. 

CHURCH, FATHERS OF THE, 

teachers and writers of the ancient 
church who flourished after the time of 
the apostles and apostolic fathers (the 
immediate disciples -of the apostles), 
from the 2nd to the 6th century. The 
most celebrated among the Greek 
fathers are Clement of Alexandria, 
Origen, Eusebius, Athanasius, and 
Chrysostom. The most distinguished 
among the Latin fathers are Tertullian, 
Augustine, Ambrose and Jerome. 

CHURCH, Frederick Edwin, an Amer¬ 
ican painter, born in 1826 at Hartford, 
Conn., died 1900. He painted N. and S. 
American mountains and American 
landscapes in general. His best known 
picture is his Horseshoe Falls, Niagara. 

CHURCH, States of the. See Papal 
States. 

CHURCHILL, Randolph Henry Spen¬ 
cer, Lord, second son of the sixth Duke 
of Marlborough, born 1849. Having 
entered parliament in 1874, by 1884 he 
had risen to the position of a recognized 
leader of the Conservative party, and 
in 1885 became Indian secretary in 
Lord Salisbury’s government. On the 
defeat of Gladstone’s Irish Bill in 1886 
Churchill became leader of the House of 
Commons and Chancellor of the Ex¬ 
chequer, posts which he unexpectedly 
resigned in December, 1886. He died 
in 1895. 

CHURCH OF GOD, a religious de¬ 
nomination of the U. States, the doc¬ 
trines of which are substantially those of 
the Baptist church. It originated with 
the revival work of John Winebrener, 
in 1830, at Harrisburg, Pa. There are 
about 500 ministers, 580 churches, and 
40,000 communicants. The denomina¬ 
tion has a college at Findlay, Ohio, and 
does considerable missionary work. 

CHURCH TRIUMPHANT, an organi¬ 
zation founded by George Schweinfurth 
in 1883, and centered at Rockford, Ill. 
Schweinfurth claimed that he was 
another incarnation of Christ. The 
church has about 400 members. 

CHURCH WARDENS, officials of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church elected 


for the purpose of caring for the church 
property. In the U. States they are 
generally two and are elected annually. 

CHURN, a vessel for preparing butter 
from cream or milk, in which cream is 
agitated to separate its buttery globules 
in a solid mass from the fluid portions. 

CIBBER, Colley, a dramatic writer 
and actor, born in London 1671, died 
1757. He took to the stage in 1689. 
His first dramatic effort, Love’s Last 
Shift, appeared in 1695; and it was fol¬ 
lowed *by Woman’s Wit, the Careless 
Husband, and the Non-juror, of which 
the Hypocrite of the modern stage is a 
new version. A court pension and the 
appointment of pcet-laureate drew upon 
him the rancor of the wits and poets 
of the day, including Pope. He is 
author of about twenty-five dramas, 
the amusing Apology for the Life of 
Colley Cibber, etc. 

CICERO, Marcus Tullius, the greatest 
Roman orator, was born 106 b.c. at 
Arpinum. He received the best educa¬ 
tion available, studied philosophy and 
law, became familiar with Greek litera¬ 
ture, and acquired some military knowl- 



Cicero—Antique bust. 


edge from serving a campaign in the 
Marsic war. At the age of twenty-five 
he came forward as a pleader, and hav¬ 
ing undertaken the defense of Sextus 
Roscius, who was accused of parricide, 
procured his acquittal. In b.c. 76 he 
was appointed quaestor of Sicily, and be¬ 
haved with such justice that the Sicilians 
gratefully remembered him and re¬ 
quested that he would conduct their 
suit against their governor Verres. 
After thus suit Cicero was elected to the 
office of aedile, b.c. 70, became praetor 
in 67, and consul in 63. It was now that 
he succeeded in defeating the conspiracy 
of Catiline, after whose fall he received 
reater honors than had ever before 
een bestowed upon a Roman citizen. 
But Cicero’s fortune had now reached 
the culminating p^jnt, and soon was to 
decline. The Catilinarian conspirators 
who had been executed had not been 
sentenced according to law, and Cicero, 
as chief magistrate, was responsible for 
the irregularity. Publius Clodius, the 
tribune of the people, raised such a storm 
against him that he was obliged to go 
into exile (b.c. 58). On the fall of the 
Clodian faction he was recalled to Rome, 
but he never succeeded in regaining the 


influence he had once possessed. In 
b.c. 52 he became proconsul of Cilicia, 
a province which he administered with 
eminent success. As soon as his term 
of office had expired he returned to 
Rome (Jan. b.c. 49), which was 
threatened with serious disturbances 
owing to the rupture Detween Caesar 
and Pompey. He espoused the cause 
of Pompey, but after the battle of 
Pharsalia he made his peace with Caesar, 
with whom he continued to all appear¬ 
ance friendly, and by whom he was 
kindly treated, until the assassination 
of the latter (44 b.c.). Antony having 
taken Caesar’s place, Cicero composed 
those admirable orations against him, 
delivered in b.c. 43, which are known 
to us by the name of Philippics (after 
the speeches of Demosthenes against 
Philip of Macedon). He died in his 
sixty-fourth year, b.c. 43. Cicero’s 
eloquence has always remained a model. 
After the revival of learning he was the 
most admired of the ancient writers; 
and the purity and elegance of his style 
will always place him in the first rank 
of Roman classics. His works, which 
are very numerous, consist of orations; 
philosophical, rhetorical, and moral 
treatises; and letters to Atticus and 
other friends. 

CID, an epithet applied to Ruy or 
Roderigo Diaz, Count of Bivar (born 
1026, died 1099), the national hero of 
Spain. He signalized himself by his 
exploits in the reigns of Ferdinand, 
Sancho, and Alphonso VI. of Leon and 
Castile; but the facts of his career have 
been so mixed with glorifying myths 
that it is scarcely possible to separate 
them. His life, however, appears to 
have been entirely spent in fierce war¬ 
fare with the Moors, then masters of a 
great part of Spain. His exploits are set 
forth in a special chronicle, and in a 
Castilian poem, probably composed 
about the end of the 12th century. The 
story of his love for Ximena is the sub¬ 
ject of Le Cid of Corneille. Whatever 
chronicles and songs have conveyed to 
us of the history of the Cid is collected 
in Southey’s Chronicle of the Cid. 

CI'DER, a fermented liquor made 
from the expressed juice of apples. The 
apples are ground a"d crushed until they 
are reduced to a pulp, the juice is allowed 
to run into casks, where it is freely 
exposed to the air until fermentation 
takes place, when a clear liquor of a 
pale-brown or amber color is tne result. 

CIENFUEGOS (the-en-fo-a'gos), a sea¬ 
port of Cuba, on the south coast of the 
island, with a safe and capacious harbor 
on the bay of Jagua, 130 miles s.e. of 
Havana, with which (and other towns) 
it is connected by railway. It is among 
the finest towns of the island, and ex¬ 
ports sugar, wax, timber, etc. During 
the Spanish-American war it was 
blockaded by Admiral Schley. Pop. 
30,038. _ F 

CIGAR (si-gar'), a small roll of manu¬ 
factured. tobacco leaves carefully made 
up, and intended to be smoked by light¬ 
ing at one end and drawing the smoke 
through it. The choicest cigars are 
those made in and imported from 
Havana. Medicated cigars, or cigars 
made of some substance having remedial 
properties, are often used for certain 







CIGARETTE 


CINNABAR 


complaints, as stramonium cigars for 
asthma. Cheroots are peculiarly-shaped 
cigars much thicker at one end than the 
other, and are largely imported from 
Manilla. 

CIGARETTE (sig-a-ret'), a sort of 
small cigar made by rolling fine-cut 
tobacco in thin paper specially prepared 
for the purpose. 

CI'MON, an ancient Athenian general 
and statesman, was a son of the great 
Miltiades. He fought against the 
Persians in the battle of Salamis (480 
b.c.), and shared with Aristides the 
chief command of the fleet sent to Asia 
to deliver the Greek colonies from the 
Persian yoke. The return of Aristides 
to Athens soon after left Cimon at the 
head of the whole naval force of Greece. 
He died shortly after, in 449, while 
besieging Citium in Cyprus. 

CINCHONA (sin-ko'na or sin-chS'na), 
the trees, shrubs, or herbaceous plants, 
with simple opposite leaves. They are 
found almost exclusively in the tropics, 
and many of the species are of great 
medicinal importance as tonics, febri¬ 
fuges, emetics, and purgatives. Among 



Cinchona. 


their chief products are Peruvian bark, 
quinine, ipecacuanha, coffee, chay-root, 
etc. The genus trees seldom exceed 40 
or 50 feet in height, with simple, oppo¬ 
site, entire leaves and small flowers, 
inhabiting chiefly the east side of the 
Andes of Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and 
Colombia. The valuable Peruvian bark 
is yielded by various species. From 
the wasteful method of cutting down 
the trees to get their bark it was believed 
that there would soon be a dearth of the 
valuable medicine, and hence chinchona 
plants were taken from their native 
regions and plantations formed in 
various tropical countries, so that 
Ceylon, India, Java, etc., are now im- 
ortant sources of Peruvian bark. The 
ark is taken off in strips longitudinally, 
and is in time renewed By natural 
growth. 

CINCINNATI, the chief city of Ohio, 
situated on the Ohio river. It is 300 
miles from Chicago, 764 miles from New 
York, and 610 miles from Washington. 
The city is built on a number of eleva¬ 
tions which rise in plateaux from the 
river and is bounded by a semicircle of 
hills upon which the fine residences are 
situated. It has an area of 36 sq ; miles 
and was laid out on a plan similar to 
that of Philadelphia. 


The city was settled in 1788 and the 
settlement passed through various vicis¬ 
situdes until 1819 when it was incor¬ 
porated. Its limits were several times 
increased. The principal public build¬ 
ings are the U. States building for post- 
office, courts, etc., constructed entirely 
of brick, iron and granite, at a cost of 
$5,000,000; the city hall, completed in 
1893, a substantial, spacious, and elegant 
structure costing $1,500,000; the Music 
Hall, with a seating capacity of 5,000; 
the Chamber of Commerce building j 
the County Court-house; the Cincinnati 
College; the Ohio and Miami Medical 
Colleges; the Public Library; the Central 
Union R. R. d6pot;the Masonic Tem- 
le; the Odd Fellows’ building; the 
cottish Rite Cathedral; the City Hospi¬ 
tal, and the Art Museum in Eden Park. 
Among theaters, the Pike, Grand Opera- 
house and Walnut Street are very 
creditable The Ohio Mechanics' In¬ 
stitute has long been a great educational 
force in the city. It owns an ample 
building, with liBrary, lecture-hall, and 
school-rooms. It maintains courses of 
lectures specially devoted to the me¬ 
chanic arts, and a night-school with 700 
pupils, where instruction is given in the 
rudiments of science, mathematics, 
architecture, and kindred subjects. 
The principal libraries are the Public 
Library, with 212,262 books and 33,867 
pamphlets; the Young Men’s Mercantile, 
with 50,000 volumes; the Law Library, 
with 8,000 volumes; the library of the 
Historical Society, with a large number 
of rare books, pamphlets, manuscripts, 
etc. ; and the library of the Mechanics' 
Institute. 

The government of the city has much 
of the so-called “federal” plan. The 
mayor is elected every three years, and 
is not eligible for re-election. He ap¬ 
points a board of review, six members, 
with authority to examine and super¬ 
vise city officers and fix rates of taxa¬ 
tion; and a board of elections, four 
members, which appoints all election 
officers, and conducts the elections and 
canvasses returns. He also appoints 
the prosecutor of the police court. He 
is the chief of police, with powers 
similar to those belonging to an officer 
of the army—to discipline and com¬ 
mand, but not to appoint or discharge. 
There is a board of four police com¬ 
missioners, appointed by the governor 
of the state. The mayor nominates all 
officers of the police court, and with the 
approval of the board appoints them. 
Police officers hold during “good be¬ 
havior,” and can only be removed or 
unished upon charges and a hearing 
y the board. They must pass a medi¬ 
cal and a literary examination before 
appointment. A board of service, 
chosen by popular vote, consisting of 
five members, has charge of the streets, 
waterworks, city infirmary, and parks. 

The vigorous growth of railway 
facilities has apparently reduced the 
importance of river transportation; 
figures show an enormous, tonnage by 
river each year. The city is also a rail¬ 
way center, every important railway 
system having lines passing through it. 
Its inland situation precludes it from 
foreign commerce, but its location in 
the most productive portion of the U. 


States, with its ample means of commu¬ 
nication, must always make it a most 
mportant center of domestic trade. 

It is, however, chiefly a manufactur¬ 
ing city. Its industries ran in this direc¬ 
tion at an early date. The distance 
from any source of supply and the con¬ 
venience of all sorts of materials made 
manufacturing profitable, and there was 
a steady and increasing demand from 
the growing regions lying south and west. 
Pop. 475,000. 

CINCINNATI MUSICAL FESTIVAL, 

a musical feast originated by Theodore 
Thomas in 1873, held every two years, 
comprehending seven concerts. The 
Chicago orchestra furnishes the music 
and a local chorus of 500 assists. 

CINCINNATI, SOCIETY OF THE, a 
patriotic society to perpetuate the 
traditions of the American revolutionary 
war. Its members consist of lineal 
descendants of officers who fought in 
that war and membership is restricted 
to the eldest male descendants of such 
officers. The society was organized in 
1783 at Fishkill, N. Y., and the name 
was adopted from that of the Roman 
patriot Cincinnatus (which see). There 
are at present about 860 members, 
organized into 13 state societies. 

CINCINNATI, UNIVERSITY OF, 
founded in 1858 by Charles McMicken, 
and subsequently enlarged by appro¬ 
priations set apart by the city of Cin¬ 
cinnati. The university has a law and 
a medical school, an academic apart¬ 
ment, a college of engineering, a college 
of dentistry, and a pathological school. 
It has a fund of $3,500,000, 164 in¬ 
structors, 1100 students, and a library 
of 68,000 volumes. 

CINCINNA'TUS, Lucius Quinctius, 
a wealthy patrician in the early days of 
the Roman Republic, born about 519 
b.c. After violently opposing the 
passage of the Terentilian law for the 
equalization at law of patricians and 
plebians, he succeeded Publicola in the 
consulship, and then retired to cultivate 
his small estate beyond the Tiber. 
Here, when Minucius was surrounded 
by the iEquians, the messengers of the 
senate found him at work when they 
came to summon him to the dictator¬ 
ship. He rescued the army from its 
peril, marched to Rome laden with 
spoil, and then returned quietly to his 
farm. At the age of eighty he was again 
appointed dictator to oppose the am¬ 
bitious designs of Spurius Maelius. 

CINNA, Lucius Cornelius, an eminent 
Roman, an adherent of Marius, who, 
obtaining the consulship b.c. 87, along 
with Cneius Octavius, impeached Sulla 
and endeavored to secure the recall of 
Marius. Being driven from the city 
by Octavius, he raised the Italian cities, 
and invested Rome while Marius block¬ 
aded it from the sea. On its capture the 
friends of Sulla were massacred, and 
Cinna and Marius made themselves con¬ 
suls (b.c. 86); but after the death of 
Marius the army refused to follow Cinna 
against Sulla, and put him to death in 
b.c. 84. 

CIN'NABAR, red sulphide of mercury, 
the principal ore from which that metal 
is obtained, occurring abundantly in 
Spain, California, China, etc. It is of a 
cochineal-red color, and is used as a 






CINNAMON 


CIRCUMCISION 


pigment under the name of vermil¬ 
ion. 

CIN'NAMON, the bark of the under 
branches of a species of laurel, which is 
chiefly found in Ceylon, but grows also 
in Malabar and other parts of the East 
Indies. The tree attains the height of 
20 or 30 feet, has oval leaves, pale-yellow 



Cinnamon. 


flowers, and acorn-shaped fruit. The 
Ceylonese bark their trees in April and 
November, the bark curling up into 
rolls or quills in the process of drying; 
the smaller quills being introduced into 
the larger ones. These are then assorted 
according to quality by tasters, and 
made up into bundles. 

CIPHERS, signs used to represent 
numbers, whether borrowed signs, or 
letters, with which the Greeks desig¬ 
nated their numbers, or peculiar charac¬ 
ters, as the modern or Arabic ones. The 
ciphers, such as they are at present 1, 
2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0, did not come in 
common European use until the 11th 
century. For cipher as applied to 
methods of secret writing see Crypto¬ 
graphy. 

CIRCAS'SIA, or TCHERKESSIA, a 

mountainous region in the southeast 
of European Russia, lying chiefly on the 



Circassians—From Hommaire de Hell. 


north slope of the Caucasus, partly also 
on the south, and bounded on the west 
by the Black Sea, and now forming part 
of the government of the Caucasus. 
The mountains, of which the cul¬ 
minating heights are those of Mount 
Elbruz, are intersected everywhere with 


steep ravines and clothed with thick 
forests, and the territory is principally 
drained by the Kuban and its tribu¬ 
taries. Its climate is temperate^ its 
inhabitants healthy and long-lived. 
They are divided into several tribes 
speaking widely-different dialects. 
While they retained their independence 
their government was of a patriarchal 
character, but every free Circassian had 
the right of expressing his opinion in 
the assemblies. They possessed none 
but traditional annals and laws. Polyg¬ 
amy was permissible in theory, but not 
common. The duties of hospitality and 
vengeance were alike binding, and a 
Spartan morality existed in the matter 
of theft. Their religion, which is nomin¬ 
ally Moslem, is in many cases a jumble of 
Christian, Jewish, and heathen tradi¬ 
tions and ceremonies. As a race the 
Circassians are comely, the men being 
prized by the Russians as warriors, and 
the women by the Turks as mistresses, 
a position generally desired by the 
women themselves. The early history of 
Circassia is obscure. Between the 10th 
and 13th centuries it formed a portion of 
the empire of Georgia, but in 1424 the 
Circassians were an independent people, 
and at war with the Tartars of the 
Crimea, etc., to whose khans, however, 
some were occasionally tributary. In 
1705 the Tartars were defeated in a 
decisive battle, but shortly after the 
territorial encroachments of the Rus¬ 
sians on the Caucasian regions began, 
and in 1829 the country was formally 
annexed by them. The Circassians, 
properly so called, have been estimated 
to number from 500,000 to 600,000. 

CIRCE (ser-se), a fabled sorceress of 
Greek mythology, who lived in the 
Island of .Esea, represented by Homer 
as having converted the companions of 
Ulysses into swine after causing them to 
partake of an enchanted beverage. 
Ulysses under the guidance of Hermes 
compelled her to restore his companions, 
and afterward had two sons by her. 

CIRCLE is a plane figure contained by 
one line, which is called the circum¬ 
ference, and is such that all straight 
lines drawn from a certain point (the 
center) within the figure to the circum¬ 
ference are equal to one another.. The 
properties of the circle are investigated 
in books on geometry and trigonometry. 
Properly the curve belongs to the class 
of conic sections, and is a curve of the 
second order. A great circle of a sphere 
is one that has its center coinciding 
with that of the sphere. The celebrated 
problem of "squaring the circle,” is to 
find a square whose area shall be equal 
to the area of any given circle. It is 
not possible to do so. All that can be 
done is to express approximately the 
ratio of the length of the circumference 
of the circle to the diameter, and to de¬ 
duce the area of the figure from this ap¬ 
proximation. 

CIRCUIT, a division of a country, or 
a county, or a state, in which the same 
judges hold court for the trial of facts. 
In the United States, the federal judi¬ 
ciary sits in nine circuits comprising 
the whole territory of the United States, 
and the federal judges move about in 
these circuits holding court in different 
parts thereof. In certain states, also 


there are a number of circuits. In 
Britain a certain number of counties 
form a circuit, and the time of court 
is called assizes. 

CIRCULATION, in an organism, the 
flowing of sap or blood through the veins 
or channels, by means of which the per¬ 
petual and simultaneous movements of 
composition and decomposition mani¬ 
fested in organic life are carried on. Al¬ 
though Galen, who had observed the 
opposite directions of the blood in the 
arteries and veins, may be said to have 
been upon the very point of discovering 
the circulation, the discovery was re¬ 
served for William Harvey, who in 1628 
pointed out the continuity of the connec¬ 
tions between the heart, arteries, and 
veins, the reverse directions taken by the 
blood in the different vessels, the ar¬ 
rangements of valves in the heart and 
veins so that the blood could flow only in 
one direction, and the necessity of the 
return of a large proportion of blood to 
the heart to maintain the supply. In 1661 
Malpighi exhibited microscopically the 
circulation in the web of a frog’s foot, 
and showed that the blood passed from 
arteries to veins by capillaries or inter¬ 
mediate vessels. This finally established 
the theory with regard to animals, but 
the movements of sap in vegetables were 
only traced with difficulty and after 
numerous experiments. Many physi¬ 
ologists indeed are still disposed to 
refuse the term “circulation” to this 
portion of the economy of plants; but 
though sap, unlike the blood,, does not 
exhibit movements in determinate ves¬ 
sels to and from a common center, a 
definite course is observable. In the 
stem of a dicotyledonous tree, for 
example, the sap describes a sort of 
circle, passing upward from the roots 
through the newer woody tissue to the 
leaves, where it is elaborated under the 
action of air and light: and thence de¬ 
scending through the bark toward the 
root, where what remains of it is either 
excreted or mixed with the new fluid, 
entering from the soil for a new period of 
circulation. 

CIRCUMCISION, a rite common 
among the Semites, though by no means 

E eculiar to them, and possibly derived 
y them from the Egyptians or from 
some non-Semitic source. At any rate 
the antiquity of its institution in Egypt 
is fully established by the monuments, 
which make it evident that it was prac¬ 
ticed at a period very much earlier than 
the Exodus. It was, however, a primi¬ 
tive Arab custom, and its practice 
among the Jews may with equal proba¬ 
bility be assigned to an Arab source. 
Whatever its origin, the rite is confined 
to no single race. It was practiced by 
the Aztecs and other peoples of Central 
America, and is still to be found among 
tribes on the Amazon, among the 
Australian tribes, the Papuans, the 
inhabitants of New Caledonia, and those 
of the New Hebrides. In Africa it is 
common among the Kaffirs and other 
tribes widely removed from Semitic 
influence. It is practised also by the 
Abyssinian Christians, and although not 
enjoined in the Koran has been adopted 
by the Mahometans on the example of 
Mahomet himself. It was possibly in 
its origin a sacrifice to the deity pre- 










CIRCUMNAVIGATORS 


CITRUS 


siding oyer generation, though in cer¬ 
tain nations the rite has acquired a new 
symbolic significance according to the 
stage of their spiritual development. 

CIRCUMNAVIGATORS, a term usual¬ 
ly applied to the early navigators who 
sailed round the globe. Magellan, a 
Portuguese in the service of Spain 
headed the first expedition which suc¬ 
ceeded in circumnavigating the globe, 
though he did not live to complete the 
voyage. 

CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE. See 

Evidence. 

CIRCUMVALLA'TION, or LINE OF 
CIRCUMVALLATION, in military af¬ 
fairs, a line of field-works consisting 
of a rampart or parapet, with a trench 
surrounding a besieged place, or the 
camp of a besieging army. 

CIR'CUS. among the Romans, a near¬ 
ly oblong building without a roof, in 
which public chariot-races and exhi¬ 
bitions of pugilism and wrestling, etc., 
took place. The largest of these build¬ 
ings in Rome was the Circus Maximus, 
capable, according to Pliny, of contain¬ 
ing 260,000, and according to Aurelius 
Victor, 385,000 spectators. The games 
celebrated in these structures were 
known collectively by the name of 
ludi circenses, circensian games, or 
games of the circus, which under the 
emperors attained the greatest magnif¬ 
icence. The passion of the common or 
poorer class of people for these shows 
appears from the cry with which they 
addressed their rulers—panem et cir¬ 
censes (bread and the games!). The 
festival was opened by a splendid pro¬ 
cession, or pompa, in which the magis¬ 
trates, senate, priests, augurs, vestal 
virgins, and athletes, took part, carry¬ 
ing with them the images of the great 
gods, the Sibylline books, and some¬ 
times the spoils of war. On reaching the 
circus the procession went round once 
in a circle, tne sacrifices were performed, 
the spectators took their places, and 
the games commenced. These were: 

1. Races with horses and chariots, in 
which men of the highest rank engaged. 

2. The gymnastic contests. 3. The 
Trojan games, prize contests on horse¬ 
back, revived by Julius Caesar. 4. The 
combats with wild beasts or with men 
(criminals or volunteers). 5. Repre¬ 
sentations of naval engagements for 
which purpose the circus could be laid 
under water. The expense of these 
games was often immense. Pompey, 
in his second consulship, brought for¬ 
ward 500 lions at one combat of wild 
beasts, which, with eighteen elephants, 
were slain in five days. 

The modern circus is a place where 
horses are trained to perform antics, and 
where exhibitions of acrobats and vari¬ 
ous pageantries, including a large 
amount of buffoonery, are presented. 

CIRRHO'SIS, a disease characterized 
by growth of fibrous tissue which gradu¬ 
ally encroaches on and by compression 
destroys the true structure of the.organ 
attacked. It is very frequent in the 
liver as a consequence of spirit-drinking; 
and hence the term "drunkard’s liver”. 

CISAL'PINE REPUBLIC, a state set 
up in 1797 by Napoleon I. in North 
Italy, recognized by Germany as an 
independent power at the Peace of 
P. E.—18 


Campo-Formio. It comprised Austrian 
Lombardy, together with the Mantuan 
and the Venetian provinces, Bergamo, 
Brescia, Crema, Verona, and Rovigo, 
the duchy of Modena, the principality 
of Massa and Carrara, Bologna, Ferrara, 
and Romagna, and latterly its area was 
16,337 sq. miles; its pop. 3,500,000. 
The legislative body held its sessions in 
Milan. On January 25, 1802, it received 
the name of the Italian Republic; from 
1805 to 1814 it formed part of the king¬ 
dom of Italy; and it was given to Aus¬ 
tria by the Congress of Vienna in 1615 
as the Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom. 

CIST, a place of interment of an early 
or prehistoric period, consisting of a 
rectangular stone chest or inclosure 
formed of rows of stones set upright, 



Cist, found near Driffield, Yorkshire. 

and covered by similar flat stones. 
Such cists are found in barrows or 
mounds, inclosing bones. In rocky dis¬ 
tricts cists were sometimes hewn in the 
rock itself. 

CISTER'CIANS, a religious order 
named from its original convent, Citeaux 
not far from Dijon, in Eastern France, 
where the society was formed in 1098 
by Robert, abbot of Molesme, under the 
strictest observance of the rule of St. 



Cistercian. 


Benedict. The Cistercians led a severely 
ascetic and contemplative life, and 
having freed themselves from episcopal 
supervision, formed a kind of spiritual 
republic under a high council of twenty- 
five members, with the abbot of Citeaux 
as president. 

CIT'ADEL, a strong fortress in or near 
a city intended to keep the inhabitants 
in subjection, or to form a final point of 
defense in case of an attack of enemies. 


CITATION, a summons or official 
notice given to a person to appear in a 
court as a party or witness in a cause. 

CITH'ERN, or CITTERN, an old 
instrument of the guitar kind, strung 
with wire instead of gut. Its eight 



Cittern, in South Kensington museum. 

strings were tuned to 4 notes, G, B, D, 
and E. It was frequently to be found in 
barbers’ shops for the amusement of the 
waiting customers. 

CITIES OF REFUGE, six out of the 
forty-eight cities, given to the tribe of 
Levi in the division of Canaan, set apart 
by the law of Moses as places of refuge 
for the man-slayer or accidental homi¬ 
cide. Their names were Kedesh, Shec- 
hem, and Hebron on the west side of 
Jordan; and Bezer, Ramoth-Gilead, and 
Golan on the east. 

CITIES OF THE PLAIN. See Sodom 
and Gomorrah. 

CITIZEN, an individual member of 
a political community or state. In the 
United States the term has the very 
same significance as it had under the 
Republic in ancient Rome, that is, a 
free individual, co-sovereign with all 
other free individuals, sharing the power 
of governing with those others. Citi¬ 
zenship in the United States is restricted 
to males, 21 years old, either born in 
the United States or its jurisdiction, or 
naturalized. The term citizen, however, 
is also applied in a more general way, 
to all persons, not aliens, living in the 
United States, whether they have the 
rights of sovereign citizens or not. 

CIT'RIC ACID, the acid of lemons, 
limes, and other fruits. It is generally 
prepared from lemon-juice, and when 
pure is white, inodorous and extremely 
sharp in its taste. In combination with 
metals it forms cyrstalline salts known 
as citrates. The acid is used as a dis¬ 
charge in calico-printing and as a 
substitute for lemon in making bever¬ 
ages. 

CIT'RON, a small evergreen shrub 
introduced into the southern parts of 
Europe from Asia, and yielding a fruit 
which is candied with sugar. The rind 
is considered superior to the pulp. The 
juice is less acid than that of the lemon. 
See Citrus. 

CIT'RUS, an important genus of trees, 
characterized by simple ovate acuminate 
leaves or leaflets united by a distinct 
joint to the leaf-like stalk; by having 
the stamens united by their filaments 
into several irregular bundles, and by 
yielding a pulpy fruit with a spongy 
rind.—Citrus medica is the citron 
































CITY 


CIVIL RIGHTS BILL 


Other species are the lemon, the sweet 
orange, the bitter orange, the shaddock, 
and the forbidden fruit, sometimes used 
as an ornamental addition to dessert. 
The genus furnishes the essential oils 
of orange and lemon peels, of orange 
flowers, of citron peel, of bergamot, and 
oil of orange leaves—all much esteemed 
in perfumery. See Lemon, Orange, etc. 

CITY, in the United States, a muni¬ 
cipality chartered by a state and having 
a magistrate called a mayor. In Britain 
a city is an incorporated town in which 
there is a cathedral. In ancient Rome 
and Greece, a city was synonymous with 
a state, as Rome and the city states of 
Greece. In Germany today there are 
certain “free cities,” such as Hamburg. 
During the 19th century cities, in all 
parts of the world have grown so vastly 
at the expense of the country popu¬ 
lation that fear is expressed of the city 
ultimately swallowing up the rural 
population. In 50 years the city popu¬ 
lation of Britain has increased 20 per 
cent over the rural. In France the only 
increase has been in cities, the rural 
population having < actually decreased, 
and in the United States 33 per cent of 
the people live in cities. Efforts to 
remedy this state of affairs have not 
been successful, as those/who are making 
them persist in living in cities them- 
selves. 

CIUDAD-REAL (thi-o-d&d-ra-al'), a 
town of Spain, capital of the province of 
same name. Pop. 14,769.—The prov¬ 
ince occupies the south extremity of 
New Castile, between the parallel ranges 
of the Sierra Toledo and Sierra Morena; 
area, 7840 sq. miles. Pop. 305,002. 

CIV'ET, a genus of carnivorous mam¬ 
mals found in N. Africa, and in Asia 
from Arabia to Malabar and Java, and 
distinguished by having a secretory 
apparatus in which collects the odorif¬ 
erous fatty substance known as civet. 
The animal, which in form is inter¬ 
mediate between the weasel and the fox, 
and from 2 to 3 feet long by 10 inches 
high, is of a cinereous color, tinged with 
yellow and marked by dusky spots dis¬ 
posed in rows. They are nocturnal, 
and prey upon birds and small animals, 
and may be considered as forming the 
transition from the musteline or marten 
kind to the feline race. The genus has 
been divided into two sub-genera—the 
true civets, having the pouch large and 
well marked; and the genets, in which 
there is a simple depression instead of a 
pouch. Two species of the first and 
eight of the second are at present known, 
the chief scent-yielding species being 
the common civet of N. Africa and the 
zibeth of Asia. The pouch is situated 
between the anus and the genitals, and 
the odorous matter obtained from it 
is, when good, of a clear yellowish or 
brown color, and of about the consist¬ 
ence of butter. In its natural state the 
smell is powerful and very offensive, 
but when largely diluted with oil or 
other materials it becomes an agreeable 
perfume. 

CIVIL ADMINISTRATION, the 

method of conducting the affairs of a 
state in all those respects in which the 
interests of the individual come into 
conflict with the interests of the com¬ 
munity, or which is virtually the same 


thing, into conflict with the interests of 
other individuals. Civil administration 
varies in form from that of an absolute 
monarchy like Turkey, a feudalism such 
as that of India, or a federalism like 
that of the United States with its auton¬ 
omy of commonwealth, county, town, 
and village. An aspect of civil admin¬ 
istration, quite ancient, is that affecting 
colonies, which support an independent 
police and city administration, an 
elective government, and so on. The 
articulars of civil administration will 
e found explained in separate articles. 

CIVIL DAMAGE ACTS, laws of cer¬ 
tain states in the Union in which per¬ 
sons selling intoxicants are made liable 
for injuries sustained because of the 
intoxication by the person intoxicated. 

CIVIL DEATH. See Death, Civil. 

CIVILIZATION, the sum at any given 
time of the attainments and tendencies 
by which the human race or any section 
of it is removed from the savage state. 
The history of progress in civilization is 
usually presented from one of two points 
of view—the first conceiving the race 
as starting from a high civilization, to 
which in point of intellectual and moral 
power it has yet to return; the second 
viewing the civilization of any period as 
the result of a constant and increasingly- 
successful stream of effort upward from 
an origin comparable with the condition 
of the lower animals. The latter is the 
prevailing scientific theory, which finds 
the secret of progress in the interaction 
of function and environment. Accord¬ 
ing to it primitive man, at first feeding 
on wild fruits and berries, and sheltering 
himself under overhanging rocks or 
caves, entered upon the stone age, in 
which, as the contemporary of the mam¬ 
moth and cave-bear, he made himself 
sharp-edged tools by chipping the flakes 
of flint found in the drift under gravel 
and clay. In the newer stone age he 
learned the art of polishing these rough 
implements, with which he cut down 
trees to make canoes, killed wild animals 
for food, and broke their bones for mar¬ 
row, or shaped them into weapons. Fire 
he turned to account to hollow out trees, 
to cook his food, to fashion clay ware. 
Artificial means of shelter were con¬ 
structed by piling rude huts of stones, 
by digging holes in the ground, or by 
driving piles into the beds of lakes and 
raising dwellings on tKem. The artistic 
instincts found expression in drawings of 
animals scratched upon bone or slate. 
The discovery of metals constituted a 
great step in advance. Gold and copper 
came early into use, and bronze was soon 
discovered, though a long time passed 
before iron was smelted and substituted 
for bronze where hardness was required. 
Gradually the roving savage became a 
nomadic shepherd and herdsman, or a 
tiller of the soil, according to his environ¬ 
ment. The practice of barter was in 
part superseded by the beginnings of 
some sort of currency. Gesture language 
gave place in part to an enlarged vocabu¬ 
lary, and picture-writing to the use of 
honetic signs. In the meantime man 
ad begun to question himself and the 
world on profounder issues, entering 
upon the myth-making age, in which 
was projected outward on the chief 
phenomena of nature some shadow of 


his own personality. The worship of 
the sun, moon, and stars, a faith in a 
future life, the worship of dead ances¬ 
tors, fetishes, animals, etc., the belief 
in magic and witchcraft, all sprang into 
being. Prayer came spontaneously to 
him; the idea of propitiation by sacrifice 
would arise from his dealings with his 
fellows and his foes; the sacred books 
began to shape themselves. Tribal and 
national relations, arising from ties of 
family and exigencies of defense, were 
cemented by unity of faith, and the 
higher social unit began to perfect it¬ 
self under the rule of the patriarch, the 
bravest w T arrior, etc. With varying 
needs, arising from diversity of environ¬ 
ment, distinctions of nationality became 
more and more emphatic, and the his¬ 
tory of civilization becomes the history 
of the nations viewed from the philo¬ 
sophic standpoint. 

CIVIL LAW, among the Romans the 
term nearly corresponding to what in 
modern times is implied by the phrase 
positive law, that is, the rules of right 
established by any government. They 
contradistinguished it from natural law 
by which they meant a certain natural 
order followed by all living beings; also 
from the general laws of mankind 
established by the agreement of all 
nations and governments. The final 
digest of Roman law was made in the 
6th century a.d. under the Emperor 
Justinian, but at first was only admitted 
as formally binding in a small part of 
Italy. After the 11th century, in Upper 
Italy, particularly in the school of 
Bologna, the body of the Roman law, 

ut together by Justinian, was formed 

y degrees into a system applicable to 
the wants of all nations; and on this 
model the ecclesiastical and papal 
decrees were arranged, and to a con¬ 
siderable degree the native laws of the 
new Teutonic states. From all these the 
Roman law was distinguished under the 
name of civil law. In this sense, there¬ 
fore, civil law means ancient Roman 
law; and it is contradistinguished from 
canon law and feudal law, though the 
feudal codes of the Lombards have been 
received into the body of civil law. As 
the Roman code exerted the greatest 
influence on the private law of modern 
Europe, the expression civil law is also 
used to embrace all the rules relating to 
the private rights of citizens. Under 
the term civil law, therefore, in both 
Europe and America, is to be under¬ 
stood not only the Roman law, but 
also the modern private law of the 
various countries; for example, in Ger¬ 
many, Das gemeine Deutsche Privat- 
recht; in France the Code Civil des 
Fransais or Code Napoleon. In this 
sense it is chiefly opposed to criminal 
law, particularly in reference to the ad¬ 
ministration of justice, which is to be 
divided into civil justice and criminal 
justice. 

CIVIL LIST, a list of allowances made 
to government officials. The term is 
sometimes applied to the salary lists of 
officials in the United States, but more 
generally it is applied to the allow¬ 
ances made by European states to 
members of reigning families. 

CIVIL RIGHTS BILL, a bill passed 
by congress in 1866, giving equality in 




CIVIL SERVICE 


CLARINET 


citizenship rights to all persons, ex¬ 
cept Indians not taxed. Its purpose 
was to secure civil rights to the newly 
emancipated negroes, a condition cover¬ 
ed by the words of the statute “without 
regard to race, color, or previous con¬ 
dition of slavery or involuntary servi¬ 
tude except as a punishment for crime, 
whereof the party shall have been duly 
convicted.” 

CIVIL SERVICE, a term applied to 
all branches of public service in a state, 
or a government of any kind, exclusive 
of the army and the navy. In the 
United States the federal civil service 
employs 100,000 officials, pertaining to 
the nine general departments, of state, 
navy, treasury, post-office, war, agri¬ 
culture, interior, justice, and labor and 
commerce, and congress. In state, 
city and county government civil 
service consists of virtually the entire 
machinery of these governmental units, 
the city having, as a matter of necessity, 
the largest number of employes. 

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM, a move¬ 
ment beginning in the early part of 
the 19th century to purify the civil 
service of the federal government, and 
latterly extending to the purification 
of state, county, and city governments. 
The cause of civil service reform was 
the policy, instituted in 1829 by 
President Jackson, to the effect that 
“to the victor belong the spoils,” 
spoils here meaning the “patronage,” 
or positions in the gift of an admin¬ 
istration. Each new administration 
would in turn clear the offices of their 
incumbents and replace them with men 
who helped to elect the party ticket. 
The merit system was introduced in 
1875 after ten years of effort to pass 
it in congress, since which time the 
largest part of the civil service has 
been free from interference. Employes 
cannot now be removed “without 
cause.” The reform has spread to cer¬ 
tain states and cities, Chicago being an 
especial example of civil service reform 
among the larger cities. 

CIVIL WAR VETERAN SOCIETIES. 
See Grand Army of the Republic, Sons of 
Veterans, etc., under their names. 

CLAFLIN, Horace Brigham, an Amer¬ 
ican business man, born in Massachusetts 
in 1811, died 1885. His house in New 
York, as early as 1865, did an annual 
volume of business of $72,000,000, and 
since that time the house has probably 
been the largest in America. 

CLAIM, in common law, the assertion 
of right of title to property of any kind. 
In the United States the term is used 
to designate the rights of settlers to 
government lands, and of prospectors to 
mining property found by them. 

CLAIMS, COURT OF, a tribunal 
created by congress, or by the legisla¬ 
tures of the several states for the ad¬ 
judication of claims against the govern¬ 
ment. A sovereign cannot be sued at 
the law and hence, the United States, 
or any of the separate states, being 
sovereign, cannot so be sued. _ It can 
be petitioned, however, and it is to 
provide for this process that courts of 
claims have been created. 

CLAIRVOYANCE, an alleged faculty 
by which certain persons in certain states, 
or under certain conditions, are said to 


be able to see things by some sort of 
mental or spiritual vision apart alto¬ 
gether from the sense of sight; thus 
they are said to be able to tell what an 
absent person is doing, to describe the 
contents of a closed box, etc. It is 
claimed that clairvoyance is the result 
of a kind of natural state of trance, or 
may be induced by mesmerism; and 
in evidence of its existence in ancient 
times the utterances of prophets, sybils, 
etc., have been adduced. 

CLAM, the popular name of certain 
bivalvular shell-fish of various genera 
and species, e.g. the thorny clam, the 
yellow clam, the giant clam, the com¬ 
mon clam of the United States, etc. The 
giant clam has the largest shell known, 
and the animal is used as food in the 
Pacific. The common U. States clam is 
also much used for food. 

CLAN, among the Highlanders of 
Scotland, consisted of the common 
descendants of the same progenitor, 
under the patriarchal control of a chief, 
who represented the common ancestor. 
The name of the clan was frequently 
formed of that of the original progenitor 
with the affix mac (son): thus the Mac¬ 
Donalds were the sons of Donald, and 
every individual of this name was con¬ 
sidered a descendant of the founder of 
the clan, and a brother of every one of 
its members. The chief exercised his 
authority by right of primogeniture, as 
the father of his clan: the clansmen 
revered and served the chief with the 
blind devotion of children. The clans 
each occupied a certain portion of the 
country, and hostilities with neigh¬ 
boring clans were extremely common. 
Next in rank to the chief were a certain 
number of persons, commonly near 
relations of the chief, to whom portions 
of land were assigned, during pleasure 
or on short leases. Each of these usually 
had a subdivision of the clan under him, 
of which he was chieftain, subject, how¬ 
ever, to the general head of the sept. 
The jurisdiction of the chiefs was not 
very accurately defined, and it was 
necessary to consult, in some measure, 
the opinions of the most influential 
clansmen and the general wishes of the 
whole body. 

CLAN-NA-GAsL, a secret society 
founded by patriotic Irishmen in. the 
United States for the purpose of in¬ 
timidating England into granting Ire¬ 
land home rule. It is charged that the 
dynamite outrages in London in 1883 
were due to Clan-na-Gsel agents. 

CLARE, a maritime county, Ireland, 
province Munster (capital, Ennis), be¬ 
tween Galway Bay and the Shannon 
estuary; area, 827,994 acres, of which 
140,000 are under tillage. Oats, pota¬ 
toes, wheat, and barley are the prin¬ 
cipal crops. The chief minerals are 
limestone, lead, and slate, but the prod¬ 
uce of the county is almost wholly 
agricultural. Lakes are numerous, but 
generally of small size, and the county 
is deficient in wood. The salmon-fish¬ 
eries are valuable, and there are im¬ 
mense oyster-beds in some places. Pop. 
112,129. 

CLARENDON, George William Fred¬ 
erick Villiers, Earl of. He was educated 
at Cambridge, entered the civil service 


at an early age, and in 1820 was attach¬ 
ed to the embassy at St. Petersburg. In 
1831 he was sent to France to negotiate 
a commercial treaty, and in 1833, as 
minister plenipotentiary at Madrid, was 
instrumental in negotiating the Quad¬ 
ruple Alliance signed in 1834. Having 
succeeded to his uncle’s title in 1838 he 
returned home in the following year, and 
in Jan. 1840 was appointed lord privy- 
seal, and in October chancellor of the 
duchy of Lancaster. He supported the 
repeal of the corn-laws and the reduc¬ 
tion of duties, and in 1846 was appointed 
president of the board of trade in Lord 
J. Russell’s ministry, and in the follow¬ 
ing year Lord-lieutenant of Ireland. 
He resigned with his party in 1852, 
when the Earl of Derby took office, but 
soon after the formation of the Aberdeen 
ministry he was appointed to the foreign 
secretaryship, which he held until Jan. 
1855. After a few weeks’ interval he 
returned to the post under Lord Palm¬ 
erston, and retained it until 1858, being 
one of the signatories of the Treaty of 
Paris. In 1861 Clarendon was sent as 
ambassador-extraordinary to the coro¬ 
nation of the King of Prussia, and in 
1864 was appointed chancellor of the 
duchy of Lancaster. In the following 
administration, under Russell, he re¬ 
sumed the direction of the foreign office. 
He was sent in 1868 on a special mission 
to the pope and the King of Italy, and 
again occupied the post of foreign 
secretary in the Gladstone ministry till 
his death, in June, 1870. 

CLAR'ENDON PRESS, the press of 
the University of Oxford. In January, 
1586, delegates de impressione librorum 
were appointed by the Convocation of 
the university, Joseph Barnes and others 
after him being styled “Printer to the 
University.” The management of the 
printing-office is committed to a dele¬ 
gacy consisting of the vice-chancellor 
and ten other members of Convocation. 
The north side of the present building, 
called the “learned” or classical side, is 
set apart for the printing of university 
documents and authorized books, the 
“south” for the printing of Bibles and 
Prayer-books. 

CLAR'ET, the name given in Britain, 
and the United States, etc., to the red 
wines of Bordeaux. See Bordelais Wines. 

CLARIFICATION, or the separation 
of the insoluble particles that prevent a 
liquid from being transparent, may be 
performed by depuration, in which the 
liquid is allowed to stand until the 
particles are precipitated, and then 
decanted; by filtration, or straining 
through wool, sand, charcoal, etc.; or 
by coagulation, in which the albumen 
contained in or added to the liquid is 
solidified and precipitated by the action 
either of heat or of acids, the extraneous 
substances being precipitated with it. 
See also Fining. 

CLARINET, or CLARIONET, a wind- 

instrument of the reed kind, played by 
holes and keys. Its lowest note is E 
below the F clef, from which it is cap¬ 
able, in the hands of good performers, of' 
ascending more than three octaves. 
Clarinets in A natural and B flat are 
those chiefly used in the orchestra, 
while instruments in B flat and E flat 
are used in reed bands. 




CLARK 


CLAUDIUS 


CLARK, Alvan, an American optician 
and maker of telescope lenses, born in 
Massachusetts in 1808, died 1887. He 
founded an establishment at Cambridge- 
port, Mass., in 1844, at which have been 
ground the largest telescope lenses in 
the world. 

CLARK, Alvan Graham, an Ameri¬ 
can optician, son of Alvan Clark, born 
in Massachusetts in 1832, died 1897. 
He made the objectives of the great 
Lick and the great Yerkes observatories, 
and discovered the Companion Star to 
Sirius. 

CLARK, George Rogers, an Ameri¬ 
can soldier, born in Virginia in 1752, 
died in 1818. In 1778 he began his 
famous expedition into Illinois capturing 



many of the French villages and de¬ 
feated the English general, Hamilton in 
1779. In 1783 the Virginia legislature 
made him a grant of 8000 acres for his 
services. 

CLARK, John Bates, an American 
economist, born in Rhode Island in 
1847. He is the originator of a new 
conception of economic science and 
has published several works of high 
value to social science and philosophy. 
Since 1895 he has been professor of 
economics at Columbia University. 

CLARK UNIVERSITY, founded at 
Worcester, Mass., in 1887 by Jonas 
Gilman Clark. It is exclusively a 
graduate school and has an endow¬ 
ment of upward of $3,000,000. The 
University publishes The American 
Journal of Psychology, The Pedagog¬ 
ical Seminary, and the Mathematical 
Review. 

CLARK, William, an American trav¬ 
eler and soldier, born in Virginia 1770, 
died in 1838. He was one of the com¬ 
manders of the famous Lewis and Clark 
expedition and was engaged in the 
early fighting against the Indians. He 
was superintendent of Indian affairs 
at St, Louis from 1822 until his death. 

CLARK, William Andrews, an Ameri¬ 
can legislator and capitalist, born in * 


Pennsylvania in 1839. He emigrated to 
Montana in 1863 and acquired immense 
wealth as a merchant. He was elected 
in 1899 to the United States senate but 
was rejected by the committee on elec¬ 
tions. He at once resigned from the 
senate but was forthwith appointed by 
the governer of Montana to the seat 
vacated by his resignation. In 1901 he 
was duly elected senator. 

CLARKE, James Freeman, an Ameri¬ 
can clergyman,.born in New Hampshire 
in 1810, died in 1888. He began to 



preach to Unitarian charges in 1833, and 
during his busy life published a mass of 
literature dealing with the liberal aspect 
of religion, the more important of which 
were Christian Doctrine of Prayer, Or¬ 
thodoxy, Its Truths and Errors, The Ten 
Great Religions, Common Sense in Reli¬ 
gion. Essentials and Non-Essentials in 
Religion, Manual of Unitarian Belief. 

CLARKE, John Sleeper, an Ameri¬ 
can actor, born in Baltimore in 1833, 
died in 1899. In 1867 he visited England 
where he succeeded so well that he took 
up his residence in that country al¬ 
though he afterward paid several visits 
to the United States. 

CLARKE, William Horatio, an Ameri¬ 
can musician and organist, born in 
Massachusetts in 1840. For ten years, 
until 1887, he was organist at Tremont 
Temple, Boston. He is the author of 
A New Method for Reed Organs, a work 
which has had a tremendous sale. 

CLARKS'VILLE, a city and the 
county-seat of Montgomery County, 
Tenn., 45 miles northwest of Nashville; 
near the junction of the Cumberland 
and Red rivers, and on the Louisville 
and Nashville Railroad. It is one of 
the great tobacco markets of the south, 
and has manufactures of iron, agri¬ 
cultural implements, etc. Pop. 11,232. 

CLASSIC, a term derived from L. 
classici, the name given to the citizens 
belonging to the first or highest of the 
six classes into which the Romans were 
divided. Hence the Greek and Roman 
authors have been in modern times 
called classics, that is, the excellent, the 
models. The Germans, however, soon 
gave the word klassisch (classical) a 
wider sense, making it embrace: 1, the 




istandard works of any nation; and 2, 
ancient literature and art, in contradis¬ 
tinction to the modern. 

CLASSIFICATION is commonly de¬ 
fined as the arrangement of things, or of 
our notions of them, according to their 
resemblances or identities; and. its 
general object is to provide that things 
shall be thought of in such groups, and 
the groups in such an order, as will best 
promote the remembrance and ascertain¬ 
ment of their laws. As any collection of 
objects may be classified in a variety of 
ways, no fixed method can be laid down; 
but it will be obvious that in correct 
classification the definition of any 
group must hold exactly true of all the 
members of that group and not of the 
members of any other group. The best 
classification again will be that which 
shall enable the greatest possible num¬ 
ber of general assertions to be made; a 
criterion which distinguishes between a 
natural and an artificial system of 
classification. Classification is perhaps 
of most importance in natural history— 
for example, botany and zoology. In 
the former the artificial or Linnaean 
system long prevailed, in opposition to 
the modern or natural. 

CLAUDIA'NUS, Claudius (commonly 
called Claudian), a Latin poet, native of 
Alexandria, lived at the end of the 4th 
and beginning of the 5th century after 
Christ, under the Emperor Theodosius 
and his sons. He did much to recall to 
dying Rome the splendors of the Augus¬ 
tan literature, ranking considerably 
above any other of the later poets. Be¬ 
sides several panegyrical poems on 
Honorius, Stilicho, and others, we 
possess two of his epic poems, the Rape 
of Proserpine, and an unfinished War of 
the Giants, eclogues, epigrams, and occa¬ 
sional poems. 

CLAU'DIUS, often also called Clodius, 
the name of a distinguished Roman 
family of antiquity. See Appius Clau¬ 
dius. 

CLAU'DIUS, or, in full Tiberius 
Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus, a 
Roman emperor, son of Claudius Drusus 
Nero, stepson of Augustus and Antonia, 



the daughter of Augustus’s sister; born 
at Lyons (10 b.c.). He lived in privacy, 
occupying himself with literature, the 
composition of a Roman history, and 











CLAVICLE 


CLEMENS 


other works, until the murder of Calig¬ 
ula, when he was dragged from his 
hiding-place and proclaimed emperor 
(41 a.d.). The early years of his reign 
were marked by the restoration of the 
exiles, the embellishment of Rome, the 
addition of Mauritania to the Roman 
provinces, and successes in Germany 
and Britain. But latterly he became 
debauched, left the government to his 
wives, and in particular to Messalina, 
who with his freedmen committed the 
greatest enormities. He was poisoned 
by his fourth wife, Agrippina (mother of 
Nero), a.d. 54. 

CLAVTCLE, the collar-bone, a bone 
forming one of the elements of the 
shoulder girdle in vertebrate animals. 
In man and sundry quadrupeds there 
are two clavicles each joined at one end 
to the scapula or shoulder-bone, and at 
the other end to the sternum or breast¬ 
bone. In many quadrupeds the clavicles 
are absent or rudimentary, while in 
birds they are united in one piece popu¬ 
larly called the “merry-thought.” 

CLAY, the name of various earths, 
which consist of hydrated silicate of 
aluminium, with 6mall proportions of 
the silicates of iron, calcium, magnesium, 
potassium and sodium. All the varie¬ 
ties are characterized by being firmly 
coherent, weighty, compact and hard 
when dry, but plastic when moist, 
smooth to touch, not readily diffusible 
in water, but when mixed not readily 
subsiding in it. Their tenacity and 
ductility when moist and their hard¬ 
ness when dry has made them from the 
earliest times the materials of bricks, 
tiles, pottery, etc. Of the chief varieties 
porcelain-clay, kaolin, or china-clay, a 
white clay with occasional gray and 
yellow tones, is the purest. Potter’s- 
clay and pipe-clay, which are similar 
but less pure, are generally of a yellow¬ 
ish or grayish color, from the presence of 
iron. Fire-clay is a very refractory 
variety, always found lying immediately 
below the coal; it is used for making fire¬ 
bricks, crucibles, etc. Loam is the same 
substance mixed with sand, oxide of 
iron, and various other foreign ingre¬ 
dients. The boles, which are of a red or 
yellow color from the presence of oxide 
of iron, are distinguished by their con- 
choidal fracture. The ochres are similar 
to the boles, containing only more oxide 
of iron. Other varieties are fuller’s- 
earth, Tripoli, and boulder-clay, the 
last a hard clay of a dark-brown color, 
with rounded masses of rock of all 
sizes embedded in it, the result of glacial 
action. The distinctive property of 
clays as ingredients of the soil is their 
power of absorbing ammonia and other 
gases and vapors generated on fertile 
and manured lands; indeed no soil will 
long remain fertile unless it has a fair 
proportion of clay in its composition. 

CLAY, Henry, an American states¬ 
man, born at Richmond, Virginia, in 
1777. After acting as clerk in two or 
three state offices he commenced busi¬ 
ness in 1797 as a lawyer at Lexington, 
Kentucky. He soon became famous 
as a public speaker, and at the age of 
twenty-six was a member of the Ken¬ 
tucky legislature. In 1806 he was elected 
to the United States Senate; and in 
1811 to the House of Representatives, 


where he was at once made speaker, 
In 1814 he proceeded to Europe and 
acted as one of the commissioners for 
adjusting the treaty of peace at Ghent 
between America and Great Britain. He 
was an unsuccessful candidate for the 
presidency in 1824, 1832, and 1844. 




He is best known for his endeavors to 
shut out European influences from 
America, and in connection with the 
“Missouri Compromise of 1820,” re¬ 
stricting slavery to the states south of 
lat. 36° 30' n.; and another similar com¬ 
promise of 1850 regarding the admission 
of California, New Mexico, and Utah, 
etc. He died at Washington in 1852. 

CLAYMORE, formerly the large two- 
handed, double-edged sword of the 
Scotch Highlanders; now a basket- 
hilted. double-edged broad-sword. 

CLAY-SLATE, in geology, a rock con¬ 
sisting of clay which has been hardened 
and otherwise changed, for the most 
part extremely fissile and often affording 
good roofing-slate. In color it varies 
from greenish or bluish gray to lead 
color. The cleavage is independent of 
the stratification. It rarely lies parallel 
to the bedding, generally crossing the 
strata at all angles. 

CLAYTON-BULWER TREATY, a 
treaty between the United States and 
Britain ratified in 1850, establishing 
the relations of the two countries as 
to their powers over the projected inter- 
oceanic canal across the Isthmus of 
Panama. According to its provisions 
neither power was to fortify, nor ex¬ 
clusively control the canal or any part 
of central America, its neutrality was 
to be preserved, and other powers were 
to be invited to participate in these 
agreements. The treaty was superseded 
by the Hay-Pauncefote treaty of 1901. 

CLEARANCE OF VESSELS, the ex¬ 
amination of them by the proper cus¬ 
tom-house officers, and the giving of a 
certificate that the regulations have 
been duly complied with. Vessels are 
said to clear inward or outward accord¬ 
ing as they arrive or set sail. 

CLEARING HOUSE, an institution in 
a city by which the banks of the city 
can settle all their relations to each 
other by a single transaction instead of 


each bank settling separately with the 
other. In the United States there are 
nearly 100 clearing houses, the largest 
being that of New York, the clearings of 
which are about $80,000,000,000 (eighty 
billions) annually. The total clearings 
of all the banks in the country are about 
$120,000,000,000, or one hundred and 
twenty thousand million of dollars 
annually. American clearing houses 
are united in an association which has 
proved quite helpful to business. 

CLEAVAGE, the manner or direction 
in which substances regularly cleave or 
split. The regular structure of most 
crystallized bodies becomes manifest as 
soon as they are broken. Each frag¬ 
ment presents the form of a small poly¬ 
hedron, and the very dust appears under 
the miscroscope an assemblage of minute 
solids, regularly terminated. The direc¬ 
tions in which such bodies thus break 
up are called their planes of cleavage; 
and the cleavage is called basal, cubic, 
diagonal, or lateral (or peritomous), 
according as it is parallel to the base of 
a crystal, to the faces of a cube, to a 
diagonal plane, or to the lateral planes. 
In certain rocks again there is a tendency 
to split along planes which may coincide 
with the original plane of stratification, 
but which more frequently cross it at an 
angle. This tendency is the conse¬ 
quence of the readjustment by pressure 
and heat of the components of rocks, 
which is one of the phases of metamor¬ 
phism. 

CLEAVELAND, Moses, an American 
soldier and pioneer, the founder of the 
city of Cleveland, Ohio. The change of 
the form of the name was due to the 
fact that the editor of a newspaper 
spelled the name without the letter a 
in the first syllable because of lack of 
space. Cleaveland was bom in Con¬ 
necticut in 1754 and died in 1806. 

CLEF (French for key), in music, a 
sign placed on a line of a staff, and which 
determines the pitch of the staff and 
the name of the note on its lines. There 
are three clefs now in use: the treble or 

G clef, ^ written on the second line; the 

mean or C clef, which may be placed 

on the first, second, third, or fourth lines; 

and the bass or F clef, §1 seated on the 

fourth line. The mean clef is very 
seldom used in writing vocal music in 
England. 

CLEM'ATIS, a genus of woody climb¬ 
ing plants. The most common species, 
virgin’s bower or traveler’s joy, is con¬ 
spicuous by its copious clusters of white 
blossoms, and afterward by its feather 
tailed silky tufts attached to the fruits. 

CLEM'ENS, Samuel Langhorne, an 
American humorist, more generally 
known by his pseudonym “Mark 
Twain,” bom in Missouri in 1835. He 
worked for some time as a compositor in 
Philadelphia and New York, and then 
in 1855 learned the business of pilot on 
the Mississippi. Thence he went to the 
Nevada mines; became in 1862 local 
editor of a newspaper in Virginia City; 
went to San Francisco; was fo* some 
time a reporter, and worked in the 








CLEMENT 


CLEVELAND 


Calaveras gold-diggings. In 1866 he 
went to the Sandwich Islands, and on 
his return commenced his lecturing 
career. He edited for a time a paper in 
Buffalo, and finally married and settled 
in Hartford, Conn. Mr. Clemens under¬ 
took publishing, but failed, and settled 
dollar for dollar. He removed to Eng¬ 
land, recovered much of his fortune by 
writing, and recently came to the United 
States to spend his remaining years in 
New York. His chief books are the 
Jumping Frog, etc., Roughing It, The In¬ 
nocents Abroad, Tom Sawyer, A Tramp 
Abroad, Life on the Mississippi, Huckle¬ 
berry Finn, American Claimant, Tom 
Sawyer Abroad, The Prince and The 
Pauper, An American at King Arthur’s 
Court. 

CLEM'ENT, the name assumed by 
many popes, the first being Clement of 
Rome. Clement XIV., who abolished 
the order of Jesuits, was one of the most 
distinguished. He died in 1774. 

CLEMEN'TI, Muzio, pianist and com¬ 
poser, born in Rome in 1752. As early 
as his twelfth year he wrote a successful 
mass for four voices. He went in 1780 
to Paris, and in 1781 to Vienna, where 
he played with Mozart before the 
emperor. In 1784 he repeated his visit 
to Paris, but after that remained in 
England till 1802, when he went back 
to the Continent. He returned in 1810 
to England, where he settled down as 
superintendent of one of the principal 
musical establishments in London. He 
died in 1832, and was interred in West¬ 
minster Abbey. He represented per¬ 
haps the highest point of technique of 
his day, and his influence upon modern 
execution has led to his being character¬ 
ized as “the father of pianoforte play¬ 
ing.” 

CLEOPAT'RA, a Greek queen of 
Egypt, born b.c. 69, the eldest daughter 
of Ptolemy Auletes. When she was 
seventeen her father died, leaving her 
as joint-heir to the throne with his 
eldest son Ptolemy, whom she was to 
marry—such marriages being common 
among the Ptolemies. Being deprived 
of her part in the government (b.c. 49) 
she won Caesar to her cause, and was 
reinstated by his influence. In a second 
disturbance Ptolemy lost his life, and 
Caesar proclaimed Cleopatra queen of 
Egypt; though she was compelled to 
take her brother, the younger Ptolemy, 
then eleven years old, as husband and 
colleague. Caesar continued some time 
at Cleopatra’s court, had a son by her 
named Caesarion (afterward put to 
death by Augustus), and gave her a 
magnificent reception when she subse¬ 
quently visited him at Rome. By 
poisoning her brother she remained sole 
possessor of the regal power, took the 
part of the triumvirs in the civil war at 
Rome, and after the battle of Philippi 
sailed to join Antony at Tarsus. Their 
meeting was celebrated by splendid 
festivals; she accompanied him to Tyre, 
and was followed by him on her return 
to Egypt. After his conquest of Ar¬ 
menia he again returned to her and made 
his three sons by her, and also Caesarion, 
kings. On the commencement of the 
war between Augustus and Antony the 
latter lost a whole year in festivals and 
amusements with Cleopatra at Ephesus, 


Samos, and Athens, and when at last 
the fleets met at Actium, Cleopatra 
suddenly took to flight, with all her 
ships, and Antony, as if under the 
influence of frenzy, immediately fol¬ 
lowed her. They fled to Egypt, and 
declared to Augustus that if Egypt were 
left to Cleopatra’s children they would 
thenceforth live in retirement. Au¬ 
gustus, however, demanded Antony’s 
death and advanced on Alexandria. 
Believing Cleopatra, who had taken 
refuge in her mausoleum, to be treacher¬ 
ous and dead, Anthony threw himself 
on his sword, and shortly afterward 
Cleopatra killed herself by applying an 
asp to her arm to escape the ignominy 
of being led in a Roman triumph (b.c. 
30). With her the dynasty of the 
Ptolemies ended. 

CLEOPATRA’S NEEDLES, the name 
given to two Egyptian obelisks, former¬ 
ly at Alexandria, but one of which is 
now in London, the other in New York. 
They are made of the rose-red granite 
of Syene, and were originally erected by 
the Egyptian king Thothmes III. in 
front of the great temple of Heliopolis, 
the On of the Scriptures, where Moses 
was born and brought up. They were 
taken to Alexandria shortly before the 
commencement of the Christian era, 
and after the death of Cleopatra, but 
possibly in pursuance of a design origi¬ 
nated by her. The London obelisk, 
which stands on the Thames Embank¬ 
ment, was presented to the British 
government in 1820, but was long left 
uncared for. In 1877-78, however, it 
was brought to London by the private 
munificence of Sir Erasmus Wilson, and 
erected in its place at a cost of some 
$50,000. The New York obelisk was 
presented to the U. States by the Khe¬ 
dive of Egypt, and was set up in the 
Central Park in 1881. Each is about 
70 feet high and inscribed with numerous 
hieroglyphics. 

CLERGY, the body of ecclesiastical 
persons, in contradistinction to the 
laity. At first there was no strongly- 
marked distinction between clergy and 
laity, but the former soon drew apart, 
consisting, after the apostolic age, of 
bishops, priests, and deacons, and in the 
4th century of many additional inferior 
orders, such as sub-deacons, acolytes, 
etc. With the increased complexity of 
the hierarchy there was a steady accre¬ 
tion of privileges until the burden of 
these became intolerable to the laity. 
The Episcopalians recognize three classes 
of clergy—bishops, priests, and dea¬ 
cons; and generally hold the doctrine 
of the apostolic succession. Large 
numbers of Protestants however, reject 
this dogma, and believe in the ministry 
of only one order. The Catholic clergy¬ 
man, according to the doctrine of the 
Roman Catholic Church, is endowed 
in his spiritual character with a super¬ 
natural power, which distinguishes him 
essentially from the layman. 

CLEVELAND, a city of Ohio, capital 
of Cuyahoga County, on the Cuyahoga 
river, 255 miles from Cincinnati, 343 
miles from Chicago, and 183 miles from 
Buffalo. Population in 1908, 525,000. 

It has an area of 33 sq. miles and is 
built upon a gentle slope from the bank 
of Lake Erie, the river cutting the city 


into two parts. The business part of 
the city extends eastward from the 
lower reaches of the river, parallel with 
the lake-front, for about a mile. 

Among the principal buildings are 
the Central Armory, the Cleveland 
Grays’ Armory, the Western Reserve 
Historical Society Library, Women’s 
College, Lakeside Hospital, several 
lesser hospitals, U. S. building, Northern 
Ohio Insane Asylum, House of Correc¬ 
tion, Adelbert College, Case School of 
Applied Science, Cleveland Medical 
College, city-hall, county court-house, 
and Union Railway D4pot. The board 
of education has under it 73 schools 
with 58,000 enrolled pupils, of whom 
3,460 boys and girls are in the five high 
schools. The Cleveland Public Li¬ 
brary, opened in 1853, has about 150,000 
volumes, and is free; the Case Library 
Association, with property valued at 
$600,000, maintains for subscribers a 
circulating and reference collection of 
over 45,000 volumes; the Law Library, 
opened in 1870, has 20,000 volumes; 
the Western Reserve Historical Society 
has 25,000 books and a valuable collec¬ 
tion of antiquities. 

The city is governed by a mayor and 
a city council, comprising two repre¬ 
sentatives for each of the 11 districts 
formed from the 42 wards. 

The Lake Shore and Mich. Southern, 
the Erie, the N. Y., Chicago and St. L. 
(Nickel Plate), the Cl., Cin., Chic, and 
St. L., the Cleveland and Pittsburg, as 
part of the Pennsylvania system, and 
the Balt, and Ohio, are six great trunk 
lines carrying the traffic of Cleveland, 
while several smaller railways enter the 
city. The lake commerce is large and 
expanding, and fine passenger steamers 
run daily to various ports on the Great 
Lakes. Six suburban street railways 
radiate from Cleveland. 

Cleveland is an important manufac¬ 
turing center. In the building of iron 
and steel vessels Cleveland surpasses all 
lake ports, on the average of the last ten 
years. Sternposts and shafts for U. 
States naval vessels built on the Atlan¬ 
tic coast are forged in Cleveland; also 
heavy castings and forgings for bridges, 
street-railway machinery, and lifts for 
unloading vessels. Here is the center of 
the malleable-iron trade in the U. States. 
Important optical instruments and 
their mountings are made in Cleveland. 
Petroleum refining, hardware, boots and 
shoes, and chemicals give rise to im¬ 
portant industries. 

CLEVELAND, Grover, twnnty-second 
resident of the U. States, born in New 
ersey in 1837. He settled in Buffalo, 
and having acquired an excellent posi¬ 
tion as a lawyer was elected mayor in 
1881. Next year he was elected by the 
democrats governor of New York State, 
and in 1884, having been nominated for 
the presidency by the democratic 
national convention at Chicago, was 
elected on Nov. 4. Civil service reform 
and tariff reform were advocated by 
him during his tenure of office, which 
came to an end in 1889. President 
Harrison then succeeded, but Cleveland 
was again elected president in 1892. 
His second administration was marked 
by the Venezuela boundary dispute 
with Britain in which Mr. Cleveland 




CLIFF-DWELLER 


CLINTON 


practically threatened war on England. 
His administration kept clear of Cuban 
affairs which confronted Mr. McKinley, 
his successor. He has lately become 



Grover Cleveland. 


identified with one of the large life in¬ 
surance companies. He died in 1908._ * 

CLIFF-DWELLER, a name given to 
a certain extinct people who presumably 
built and inhabited the cliff ruins which 
abound in southwest Colorado. Several 
expeditions have been made to these 
ruins but with little effect. It is held by 
some that the cliff dwellers were the 
ancestors of the Pueblo Indians. 

CLIMACTERIC, according to an old 
theory, a critical period in human life 
in which some great alteration is sup¬ 
posed to take place in the constitution. 
The first climacteric is, according to 
some, the seventh year; the others are 
multiples of the first, as 14, 21, etc.; 
63 is called the grand climacteric. 

CLI'MATE, the character of the 
weather or atmospheric phenomena 
eculiar to every country as respects 
eat and cold, humidity and dryness, the 
direction and force of the prevailing 
winds, the alteration of the seasons, 
etc., especially as such conditions affect 
animal and vegetable life. In general, 
geographical latitude is the principal 
circumstance to be taken into view in 
considering the climate of a country, 
and thus the torrid, temperate, and 
frigid zones may each be said roughly 
to have a climate of its own. The 
highest degree of heat is found in the 
equatorial regions, and the lowest, or 
the greatest degree of cold, at the poles. 
In the former the temperature continues 
practically the same all the year round, 
though there may be alternating rainy 
seasons and dry seasons. The varia¬ 
tions in temperature are very con¬ 
siderable in the temperate zones, and 
increase as we approach the polar circles. 
The heat of the higher latitudes, 
especially about 59° or 60°, is, in July, 
greater than that of countries 10 ° nearer 
the equator, and at Tornea, in Lapland, 
where the sun’s rays are very oblique 
even in summer, the heat is sometimes 
equal to that of the torrid zone, because 
the sun is almost always above the 
horizon. But even in the equatorial 
regions, and still more in intermediate 


regions, the temperature is affected by 
local configuration and circumstances. 
In the deserts of Africa, for instance, 
owing to the exceptional radiating power 
of sandy plains and the absence of 
aqueous vapor in the atmosphere, the 
heat is excessive, while in the corres¬ 
ponding latitudes of south America the 
mountainous character of the country 
makes the climate more moderate. Al¬ 
titude above the sea indeed has every¬ 
where the same effect as removal to a 
greater distance from the equator, and 
thus in the Andes we may have a tropi¬ 
cal climate at the sea-level and an arctic 
one on the mountain summits. The 
winds to which a country is most ex¬ 
posed by its situation have also a great 
influence on the climate. In the north¬ 
ern hemisphere if north and east winds 
blow frequently in any region it will be 
colder, the latitude being the same, than 
another which is often swept by milder 
breezes from the south and west. The 
climate of southern Europe, for instance, 
is decidedly affected by the warm 
south winds which blow from the hot 
deserts of Africa. The greater or lesser 
extent of coast-line a country possesses 
in proportion to its area has a decided 
influence on the climate. The almost 
unvarying temperature of the ocean 
equalizes in some degree the periodic 
distribution of heat among the different 
seasons of the year, and the proximity 
of a great mass of water moderates, by 
its action on the atmosphere, the heat of 
summer and the cold of winter. Hence 
the more equable temperature of is¬ 
lands and coasts as compared with that 
of places far inland, and hence the terms 
insular climate and continental climate. 
The British Isles, Tasmania, and New 
Zealand enjoy a mild or insular climate 
as compared with, say, Central Russia, 
or Central Asia. Thus it happens that 
London has a milder winter and a cooler 
summer than' Paris, though the latter is 
nearly 3° farther south. Similarly, 
though Warsaw and Amsterdam are 
almost in the same latitude, the mean 
annual temperature of the former is 
46'48°, while it reaches at the latter 
53-40 Fahr. The proximity of large 
masses of water involves also the pres¬ 
ence of much aqueous vapor in the at¬ 
mosphere, which may be condensed in 
abundant rains so as to greatly influence 
the plant-life of a country. Direction 
of mountain chains, set of ocean cur¬ 
rents, nature of soil, are other modifying 
elements. In exhibiting graphically the 
chief climatic facts of a region various 
methods may be adopted, but in all the 
use of isothermal lines is one of the most 
instructive features. These are lines 
drawn on a map or chart connecting 
those places which have the same mean 
annual temperature or same mean sum¬ 
mer and mean winter temperature. 
In this way we may divide the earth into 
zones of temperature which by no means 
coincide with the limits of the zones into 
which the earth is astronomically 
divided, and when compared with these 
on a map show interesting and instruc¬ 
tive divergences. Geology teaches that 
vast changes have taken place in the 
climate of most if not of all countries, 
the causes of which are not fully under¬ 
stood. 


CLI'MAX, a rhetorical figure in which 
a series of propositions or obj'ects are 
presented in such a way that the least 
impressive comes first, and there is a 
regular gradation from this to the most 
impressive or final. 

CLIMBERS, a name applied to birds 
of the order Scansores from their climb¬ 
ing habits. They have two toes before 
and two behind, and are represented by 
parrots, cockatoos, etc. 

CLIMBING PERCH, a singular fish, 
remarkable for having the pharyngeal 
bones enlarged and modified into a 
series of cells and duplications so that 
they can retain sufficient water to keep 



Climbing perch. 


the gills moist and enable the fish to 
live out of water six days. The climbing 
perch of India proceeds long distances 
overland in search of water when the 
pools in which it has been living have 
dried up. 

CLIMBING PLANTS are plants of 
weak stems which naturally seek sup¬ 
port from their surroundings to rise from 
the ground. Some are twining plants, 
rising by winding themselves or their 
tendrils round the trunks of trees, etc. 
Such are the honey-suckle and scarlet- 
runner. Others, like the ivy, attach 
themselves by small roots developed 
from the stem as they ascend. Some 
in climbing always twine spirally from 
right to left, others again always take 
the opposite direction. 

CLINICAL MEDICINE, that depart¬ 
ment of medicine which teaches how to 
investigate, at the bedside of the sick, 
the nature of diseases, to note their 
course and termination, and to study 
the effects of the various modes of 
treatment to which they are subjected. 
A clinical lecture is the instruction which 
the teacher gives his pupil at the bed¬ 
side of the patient. 

CLINOMETER, an instrument used 
for taking the dip and strike of rock 
strata. 

CLINTON, a town in Iowa, on the 
Mississippi, 42 miles above Davenport, 
with railway workshops, foundries, etc. 
Pop. 26,820. 

CLINTON, DeWitt, an American 
statesman, born in New York state in 
1769, died in 1828. He became a lawyer 
and was one of the opponents of the 
federal constitution. In 1802 he was 
elected U. States senator from New York, 
but resigned to become mayor of New 
York City, a post he filled until 1815. 
In 1812 he was republican candidate 
for president but was defeated by 
Madison. His greatest service was the 
persistent work he did for the promotion 
of the Erie canal. 

CLINTON, George, an American 
statesman, born in New York state 
in 1739, died in 1812. He was a mem¬ 
ber of the continental congress, was a 
brigadier-general on the revolutionary 
army, and the first governor of New 








CLINTON 


CLOCK 


York, a position he held until 1805, when 
he became vice-president of the U. 
States, filling that office until the time 
of his death. He opposed the adoption 
of the federal constitution. 

CLINTON, Sir Henry, a British gen¬ 
eral who served in the Hanoverian war, 
and was sent to America in 1775 with 
the rank of major-general, where he 



Sir Henry Clinton. 


distinguished himself in the battle of 
Bunker Hill. He defeated the Ameri¬ 
cans at Long Island, but had to evacuate 
Philadelphia to Washington. In 1782 
Clinton retired to England. He died 
in 1795. 

CLI'O, in Greek mythology, daughter 
of Zeus and Mnemosyne; the muse of 
history. Her attributes are a wreath of 
laurel upon her head, a trumpet in her 
right hand, and a roll of papyrus in her 
left. 

CLIPPER, a modem build of sailing 
ship, having a long sharp bow, the 
greatest beam abaft the center, and a 
great rate of speed. 

CLIVE, Robert, Lord Clive and Baron 
of Plassey, English general and states¬ 
man, was born in 1725 in Shropshire. 
In his nineteenth year he entered the 
East India Company’s service at Madras 
as a writer, but in 1747 quitted the civil 
for the military service. In 1751 Clive, 
who had already a reputation for skill 
and courage, marched on the large city 



Lord Clive. 


of Arcot with 200 British troops and 
300 Sepoys, and took it, although 
strongly garrisoned, without a blow, 
withstood a siege by Chunda Sahib for 
nearly two months, and at last routed 
the enemy, took possession of important 
posts, and returned to Madras com¬ 
pletely victorious. In 1753 he sailed 
to England to recover his health, and 
was received with much honor. Two 


years later he was back in India, in his 
governorship of St. David’s, from which 
he was soon summoned to command the 
expedition sent to Bengal, where the 
nabob Suraj-ud-Bowlah had attacked 
the British, destroyed their factories, 
taken Calcutta, and suffocated over 120 
of his prisoners in the Black Hole. Clive 
soon took possession of Calcutta and 
brought Suraj-ud-Dowlah to terfhs, 
but having no trust in the loyal inten¬ 
tions of the nabob he resolved to de¬ 
throne him. With the help of Meer 
Jaffier, one of the nabob’s officers, he 
effected his purpose, and in the battle 
of Plassey completely overthrew Suraj- 
ud-Dowlah’s forces. Meer Jaffier now 
became the new nabob, and Clive was 
made governor of Calcutta. Here he was 
equally successful against the encroach¬ 
ments of the Dutch, defeating their 
forces both by sea and land. In 1761 he 
was raised to the Irish peerage with the 
title of Lord Clive, Baron of Plassey. 
In 1764 fresh troubles in India brought 
him back, but now as president of Ben¬ 
gal, with command of the troops there. 
Before his arrival, however, Major 
Adams had already defeated the Nabob 
of Oude, and Lord Clive had only the 
arranging of the treaty by which the 
Company obtained the disposal of all 
the revenues of Bengal, Bahar, and 
Orissa. In 1767 he finally returned to 
England. His health was by this time 
broken, and in one of his habitual fits of 
melancholy he put an end to his life, 
November 22, 1774. 

CLOCK, an instrument for measuring 
time and indicating hours, minutes, 
and usually seconds, by means of hands 
moving on a dial-plate, and differing 
from a watch mainly in having the 
movement of its machinery regulated by 
a pendulum, and in not being portable. 
The largest and most typical clocks also 
differ in having their machinery set in 
motion hy means of a falling weight 
or weights, the watch wheel-work being 
moved by the force of an uncoiling 
spring; but many clocks also have a 
spring setting their works in motion. 
The use of a horologium, or hour-teller, 
was common even among the ancients, 
but their time-pieces were nothing else 
than sun-dials, hour-glasses, and clepsy¬ 
drae. In the earlier naif of our era we 
have accounts of several attempts at 
clock construction: that of Boethius in 
the 6th centhry, the clock sent by 
Harun al Rashid to Charlemagne in 809, 
that made by Pacificus, archdeacon of 
Verona, in the 9th century, and that of 
Pope Sylvester II. in the 10th century. 
It is doubtful, however, if any of these 
was a wheel-and-weight clock, and it 
is probably to the monks that we owe 
the invention of clocks set in motion 
by wheels and weights. In the 12th 
century clocks were made use of in the 
monasteries, which announced the end 
of every hour by the sound of a bell put 
in motion by means of wheels. From 
this time forward the expression, “the 
clock has struck,” is often met with. 
The hand for marking the time is also 
made mention of. In the 14th century 
there are stronger traces of the present 
system of clock-work. Dante particu¬ 
larly mentions clocks. Richard, ahbot 
of St. Albans in England, made a clock 


in 1326, such as had never been heard 
of till then. It not only indicated the 
course of the sun and moon, but also 
the ehb and flood tide. Large clocks on 
steeples likewise were first made use of 
in the 14th century. Watches are a much 
later invention, although they have 
likewise been said to have been invented 
as early as the 14th century. A cele¬ 
brated clock, the construction of which 
is well known, was set up in Paris for 
Charles V. in 1379, the maker being 
Henry de Vick, a German. It probably 





gtf-j 

V. W'jWM 

Is 

f 


rj5 


Strassburg clock. 

formed a model on which clocks were 
constructed for nearly 300 years, and 
until Huyghens applied the pendulum 
to clock-work as the regulating power, 
about 1657. The great advantage of the 
pendulum is that the beats or oscillations 
of a pendulum all occupy substantially 
the same time (the time depending on 
its length), hence its utility in imparting 
regularity to a time-measurer. The 
mechanism by which comparative regu¬ 
larity was previously attained, though 
ingenious and simple, was far less perfect; 
and the first pendulum escapement, 
that is, the contrivance by which the 
pendulum was connected with the clock¬ 
work, was also less perfect than others 
subsequently introduced, especially Gra¬ 
ham’s dead-beat escapement, invented 
in 1700. In a watch the balance-wheel 
and spring serves the same purpose as 
the pendulum, and the honor of being 
the inventor of the balance-spring was 
contested between Hugyhens and the 
English philosopher Dr. Hooke. Vari¬ 
ous improvements followed, such as the 
chronometer escapement, and the addi¬ 
tion of a compensation adjustment, by 
which two metals having unequal rates 
of expansion and contraction under 
variations of temperature are combined 
in the pendulum or the balance-wheel, 
so that, each metal counteracting the 
other, the vibrations are isochronous 





























CLOISTER 


CLOUD 


under any change of temperature. This 
arrangement was perfected by Harrison 
in 1726, and is especially useful in 
navigation. See Watch. 

CLOIS'TER, an arched way or gallery, 
often forming part of certain portions of 
monastic and collegiate buildings, usual¬ 
ly having a wall of the building on one 
side, and an open colonnade, or a series 



Part of the cloister—Westminster Abbey. 

of windows with piers and columns ad¬ 
joining an interior yard or court on the 
other side. Such galleries were origin¬ 
ally intended as places of exercise and 
recreation, the persons using them being 
under cover. The term is also used as 
equivalent to convent or monastery. 

CLOSE CORPORATION, a corpora¬ 
tion which fills up its own vacancies, 
the election of members not being open 
to the public. 

CLOSE-HAULED, in navigation, said 
of a ship when the general arrangement 
or trim of the sails is such as to enable 
her to sail as nearly against the wind as 
possible. 

CLO'SURE, a rule in British parlia¬ 
mentary procedure adopted in 1887 
by which, at any time after a question 
has been proposed, a motion may be 
made with the speaker’s or chairman’s 
consent “That the question be now put,” 
when the motion is immediately put and 
decided without debate or amendment. 
So also if a clause of a bill is under debate 
a motion that it stand or be added may 
be put and carried in the same way. 
The motion must be supported by more 
than 100 members and opposed by less 
than 40, or have the support of 200 mem¬ 
bers. The introduction of the closure 
was intended to prevent debates from 
being too much spun out. 

CLOTH, a fabric formed by inter¬ 
weaving threads or fibers of animal or 
vegetable origin, as wool, hair, cotton, 
flax, hemp, etc. Cloth may also be 
made by felting as well as by weaving. 
See Cotton, Woolen, Silk, etc. 

CLOTHES-MOTH, the name com¬ 
mon to several moths, whose larvae are 
destructive to woolen fabrics, feathers, 
furs, etc., upon which they feed, using 
at the same time the material, for the 
construction of the cases in which they 
assume the chrysalis state. 

CLOTHING, the clothes or dress, that 
is the artificial coverings collectively, 
which people wear. Nothing is more 
necessary to comfort than that the body 
should be kept in nearly a uniform 
temperature, thus preventing the dis¬ 
turbance of the important excretory 
functions of the skin by the influence of 


heat or cold. Hence in a Changeable 
climate the question of clothing becomes 
of special importance. The chief end 
proposed by clothing ought to be pro¬ 
tection from the cold. A degree of cold 
amounting to shivering cannot be felt 
without injury to the health, and the 
strongest constitution cannot resist the 
benumbing influence of a sensation of 
cold constantly present, even though it 
be so moderate as not to occasion im¬ 
mediate complaint, or to induce the 
sufferer to seek protection from it. This 
degree of cold often lays the foundation 
of the whole host of chronic diseases, 
foremost among which are found scrof¬ 
ula and consumption. The only kind of 
dress that can afford the protection re¬ 
quired by the changes of temperature 
to which the cooler or temperate 
climates are liable, is woolen. Those who 
would receive the advantage which the 
wearing of woolen is capable of affording, 
must wear it next the skin; for it is in 
this situation only that its health-pre¬ 
serving power can be felt. The great 
advantages of woolen cloth are briefly 
these:—the readiness with which it 
allows the escape of sweat through its 
texture; its power of preserving the 
sensation of warmth to the skin under 
all circumstances; the slowness with 
which it conducts heat; the softness, 
lightness, and pliancy of its texture. 
Cotton cloth, though it differs but little 
from linen, approaches nearer to the 
nature of woolen, and on that account 
must be esteemed as the next best sub¬ 
stance of which clothing may be made. 
Silk is the next in point of excellence, 
but it is very inferior to cotton in every 
respect. Linen possesses the contrary 
of most of the properties enumerated 
as excellencies in woolen. It retains the 
matter of perspiration in its texture, and 



Cloud—Cirrus. 



Cloud—Stratus. 

speedily becomes imbued with it; it 
gives an unpleasant sensation of cold to 
the skin; it is very readily saturated 
with moisture, and it conducts heat too 
rapidly. Clotnes should be so made as 
to allow the body the full exercise of 
all its motions. The neglect of this pre¬ 
caution is productive of more mischief 
than is generally believed, and the 


misery and suffering arising from it 
often begin while we are yet in the 
cradle. 

CLOUD, a collection of visible vapor 
or watery particles suspended in the 
atmosphere at some altitude. They 
differ from fogs only by their height and 
less degree of transparency. The aver¬ 
age height of clouds is calculated to be 
2 \ miles, thin and light clouds being 
much higher than the highest moun¬ 
tains, while thick heavy clouds often 
touch low mountains, steeples, and even 
trees. Clouds differ much in form and 
character, but are generally classed 
(following Luke Howard, in his Essay 
on Clouds) into three single or primary 
forms, viz.:—1. The cirrus, so called 
from its resemblance to a lock of hair, 
and consisting of fibers which diverge 
in all directions. Clouds of this descrip¬ 
tion float at a great height, usually from 
3 to 5 miles above the earth’s surface. 
2. The cumulus or heap, a cloud which 
assumes the form of dense convex or 
conical heaps, resting on a flattish base, 
called also summer-cloud. Under ordi¬ 
nary circumstances these clouds accom¬ 
pany fine weather, especially in the heat 
of summer. They attain their greatest 
size early in the afternoon and gra¬ 
dually decrease toward sunset. 3. The 
stratus, so named from its spreading 
out uniformly in a horizontal layer, 
which receives all its augmentations of 
volume from below. It belongs essen¬ 
tially to the night, and is frequently 
seen on calm summer evenings after sun¬ 
set ascending from the lower to the 
higher grounds, and dispersing in the 
form of a cumulus at sunrise. These 
three primary forms of clouds are sub¬ 
divided as follows:—1. The cirro-cumu¬ 
lus, composed of a collection of cirri, 
and spreading itself frequently over the 



Cloud—Cumulus. 



Cloud—Nimbus. 

sky in the form of beds of delicate snow¬ 
flakes. 2. The cirro-stratus or wane- 
cloud, so called from its being generally 
seen slowly sinking, and in a state of 
transformation; when seen in the dis¬ 
tance, a collection of these clouds sug¬ 
gests the resemblance of a shoal of fish, 
and the sky, when thickly mottled with 
them, is called in popular language a 

































CLOUD-BURST 


CLYMER 


mackerel sky. 3. The eumulo-stratus or 
twain-cloud, one of the grandest and 
most beautiful of clouds, and consisting 
of a collection of a large fleecy clouds 
overhanging a flat stratum or base. 
4. The nimbus, cumulo-cirro-stratus, or 
rain-cloud, recognizable, according to 
Mr. Howard, by its fibrous border and 
uniformly gray aspect. It is a dense 
cloud spreading out into a crown of 
cirrus and passing beneath into a shower. 
It presents one of the least attractive 
appearances among clouds, but it is 
only when the dark surface of this cloud 
forms its background that the splendid 
phenomenon of the rainbow is exhibited 
in perfection. 

CLOUD-BURST, a sudden and very 
heavy fall of rain. The term was first 
used in the United States and after¬ 
ward in India, to describe the same 
phenomenon. Cloud-bursts occur fre¬ 
quently in the Rocky Mountains, in 
which 10 to 21 inches of rain fall within 
an hour. 

CLOUD ON TITLE, a defect or fault 
in a title to realty. It may be removed 
by a proceeding in a court of equity. 

CLOVER, or TREFOIL, a name of 
different species of plants. There are 
about 150 species. Some are weeds, 
but many species are valued as food for 
cattle. Common red clover, is a bien¬ 
nial, and sometimes, especially on chalky 
soils, a triennial plant. This is the kind 
most commonly cultivated, as it yields 
a larger product than any of the other 
sorts. White clover, is a most valuable 
plant for pasturage over the whole of 
Europe, Central Asia, and North Ameri¬ 
ca, and has also been introduced into 
South America. The bee gathers much 
of its honey from the flowers of this 
species. 

CLOVES, a very pungent aromatic 
spice, the dried flower-buds of a native 
of the Molucca Islands, belonging to the 
myrtle tribe, now cultivated in Sumatra, 
Zanzibar, Malacca, Jamaica, etc. The 



Clove. 


tree is a handsome evergreen from 15 to 
30 feet high, with large elliptic smooth 
leaves and numerous purplish flowers on 
jointed stalks. Every part of the plant 
abounds in the volatile oil for which the 
flower-buds are prized. The spice yields 
a very fragrant odor, and has a bitterish, 
pungent, and warm taste. It is some¬ 
times employed as a hot and stimulating 
medicine, but is more frequently used in 
culinary preparations. 

CLOVIS, King of the Franks, born 
465, succeeded his father Childeric in 
the year 481, as chief of the warlike 
tribe of Salian Franks, who inhabited 
Nothern Gaul. In 486 he overthrew the 
Roman governor at Soissons and occu¬ 
pied the country between the Somme 


and the Loire. He died at Paris, 
which he had made his capital, on Nov. 
27, 511, in the thirtieth year of his 
reign. 

CLOWN, the buffoon or practical 
jester in pantomime and circus per¬ 
formances. On the old English stage the 
clown was the privileged laughter- 
provoker, who, without taking any part 
in the dramatic development of the 
piece represented, carried on his im¬ 
provised jokes and tricks with the 
actors, often indeed addressing himself 
directly to the audience instead of 
confining himself to what was going on 
on the stage. In Shakespeare’s dramas, 
a distinct part is assigned to the clown, 
who no longer appears as an extempore 
jester, although the part he plays is to 
a certain extent in keeping with his 
traditional functions. He is now con¬ 
fined to the pantomime and the circus. 

CLUB, an association of men, or of 
men and women, or of women alone, 
for social purposes, for political pur¬ 
poses, or for purposes other than these. 
The club originated in England, but 
there is not in the United States, pro¬ 
bably, a single club which, in its usages, 
is precisely similar to the English 
clubs. The London clubs originated in 
the coffee houses and the first of impor¬ 
tance was that which met in the 
Mermaid Tavern. This was attended by 
Raleigh, Shakespeare, Beaumont and 
Fletcher and other literary celebrities 
of that time. The first political club 
was established in 1659 and from this 
time forward clubs grew in number and 
variety representing every art, profes¬ 
sion, and business in existence, one may 
almost say. A bare list of the clubs of 
London would fill several pages of this 
book. London has scores of sporting 
clubc, athletic clubs, travelers’ clubs, 
pistol and gun clubs, in short clubs for 
every kind of purpose which could 
possibly bring men together, from the 
study of oriental tongues to prize¬ 
fighting and moral reform. 

In the United States the club idea 
has been expanded so as to include 
women and their purposes. — The 
women’s clubs—organized chiefly for 
reform—are associated in a national 
federation which meets annually. This 
federation takes in not only the reform 
clubs of women but also self-improve¬ 
ment clubs, temperance clubs, art and 
press clubs and all clubs formed ex¬ 
clusively of women. 

Of men’s clubs in the United States. 
New York City is the center and its 
clubs are the most famous in America. 
Among them may be mentioned The 
Union Club (1836), The Century Club 
(1846), The Union League Club (1863), 
The University Club (1865), The Knick¬ 
erbocker Club (1871), The Lotus, a 
literary club (1870), The Manhattan 
Club (1864), a political club, The 
Players’ Club (1888) and the Lambs’ 
Club. Chicago has a number of strong 
political clubs the more noted of which 
are the Marquette Club (republican) and 
the Iroquois (democratic). The Prese 
Club of Chicago is the best known press 
club in the world. Every large city in 
the United States has its quota of 
clubs, virtually of the same character. 
In this country the tendency of the 


larger clubs is to extend the lodging 
house feature of the establishment 
which until recently was not a general 
practice in American clubs. 

CLUB-FOOT, a congenital distortion 
of the foot. There are several varieties. 
Sometimes the foot is twisted inward; 
sometimes the heel is raised and the toes 
only touch the ground; sometimes the 
foot is twisted outward; or it rests 
only on the heel. In > most cases the 
deformity is curable by modern surgery. 

CLYDE (klld), a river of Scotland, 
which has its sources amid the hills that 
separate Lanarkshire from the counties 
of Peebles and Dumfries, passes by 
Lanark, Hamilton, Glasgow, Renfrew, 
Dumbarton, Greenock, etc., and forms 
finally an extensive estuary or firth 
before it enters the Irish Sea, at the 
southern extremity of the island of 
Bute. From its source to Glasgow, 
where navigation begins, its length is 
70 or 80 miles. The Clyde, by artificial 
deepening, has been made navigable 
for large vessels up to Glasgow, and is 
the most valuable river in Scotland for 
commerce. 

CLYDE, Lord, Sir Colin Campbell, 
was born in Glasgow, in 1792. He 
served in Spain under Sir John Moore 
and Wellington, being engaged in the 
battles of Barossa and Vittoria, and 



Lord Clyde. 


having displayed distinguished gal¬ 
lantry at the siege of San Sebastian, 
where, as well as at the Bidassoa, he 
was severely wounded. In 1854 he 
became major-general, with the com¬ 
mand of the Highland Brigade in the 
Crimean war. His services at the battles 
of Alma and Balaklava, and during the 
war generally, were conspicuous, so that 
on the outbreak of the Indian mutiny 
he was appointed to the chief command 
there. Landing at Calcutta on 29th 
August, 1857, he relieved Havelock and 
Outram at Lucknow, and crushed the 
rebellion entirely before the end of the 
year. For his services here Sir Colin 
received the thanks of both Houses of 
Parliament, was created a peer with 
the title of Baron Clyde. In 1862 he 
was made field-marshal. He died 
August 14, 1863, and was buried in 
Westminster Abbey. 

CLYMER, George, one of the signers 
of the Declaration of Independence, 
born in Philadelphia in 1739, died 1813. 
He was one of the treasurers of the 
continental congress and took part in 
the revolutionary war both as soldier 







WORLDS PRODUCTION OF COAL 













PRODUCTION OF COAL PER MINER. 


TONS 




























COACH 


COAL GAS 


and investigating delegate from con¬ 
gress. Clymer was a member of the 
constitutional convention of 1787 and a 
member of congress from 1789 to 1791. 

COACH, a general name for all cov¬ 
ered carriages drawn by horses and in¬ 
tended for the rapid conveyance of 
passengers. The earliest carriages ap¬ 
pear to have been all open, if we may 
judge from the figures of Assyrian and 
Babylonian chariots found on the 
monuments discovered amid the ruins 
of Nineveh and Babylon. At Rome 
both covered and uncovered carriages 
were in use. After the fall of the Roman 
Empire they went out of use again, and 
during the feudal ages the custom was 
to ride on horseback, the use of carriages 
being considered effeminate. They do 
not appear to have become common till 
the 15th century, and even then were 
regarded exclusively as vehicles for 
women f«nd invalids. Later on they 
became, especially in Germany, part of 
the appendage of royalty. They seem 
to have been introduced into England 
about the middle of the 16th century, 
but were for long confined to the aristoc¬ 
racy and the wealthy classes. Hack¬ 
ney-coaches were first used in London 
in 1625. They were then only twenty 
in number, and were kept at the hotels, 
where they had to be applied for when 
wanted. In 1634 coaches waiting to be 
hired at a particular stand were intro¬ 
duced, and had increased to 200 in 
1652, to 800 in 1710, and to 1000 in 
1771. Stage-coaches were introduced 
into England about the same time as 
hackney-coaches.—The first stage-coach 
in London appears to have run early 
in the 17th century, and before the 
end of the century they were started 
on three of the principal roads in Eng¬ 
land. Their speed was at first very 
moderate, about 3 or 4 miles an hour. 
They could only run in the summer, 
and even then their progress was often 
greatly hindered by floods and by the 
wretched state of the roads generally. 
In 1700 it took a week to travel from 
York to London: in 1754 a body of 
Manchester merchants started a con¬ 
veyance, the Flying Coach, of an im¬ 
proved kind, which did the journey to 
London in the unusually short period 
of four days and a half, and thirty years 
later a Mr. Palmer of Bath, after a 
considerable amount of opposition, 
succeeded in inducing the government 
to put in practice certain suggestions 
which he made, by which he showed 
that great saving both of time and 
money in the conveyance of passengers 
and letters would be effected. The 
result was the establishment of the 
system of mail-coaches, which con¬ 
tinued to be the means of traveling in 
England until their place was taken by 
the railways. The first mail-coach 
started between London and Bristol 
on the 8th of August, 1784. 

The revival of coaching as a sport in 
recent years has caused, of course a 
revival of the industry of coach build¬ 
ing, and elegant coaches are now 
turned out in Europe and the United 
States by numerous factories. The 
weight of a road coach varies from 
2200 to 3000 pounds and it is drawn by 
four horses. The typical American 


coach is that made at Concord, N. H. 
Other vehicles, such as hackney-coaches, 
landaus, etc., are not coaches at all. 
For their description see separate 
articles. 

COACH-DOG, a short-haired dog of 
moderate _ size, and rather handsome 
shape, white with numerous black spots, 
kept as an attendant upon carriages, 
and of no use otherwise. Called also 
Dalmatian dog. 

COACHING, the art or sport of driv¬ 
ing a four-in-hand coach. Coaching as 
a necessary means of transportation is 
treated in the article on Coach (which 
see). Coaching was never brought to 
a high degree of perfection in America 
until it recently came into vogue as a 
pastime. In America it is used for 
sight seeing in large American and 
European cities, and in Europe until 
recently was practiced as a pastime. 
Today its place is almost entirely filled 
by the rapid growth of the automo¬ 
bile. 

COADJU'TOR, a Latin term, nearly 
synonymous in its original meaning with 
assistant. The term is especially applied 
to an assistant bishop appointed to act 
for and succeed one who is too old or 
infirm for duty. 

COAGULA'TION, the changing of a 
fluid into a more or less solid substance, 
or the separation of a substance from a 
solution, through the substance becom¬ 
ing more or less solid. Thus albumen of 
egg can be dissolved in cold water, but 
if the solution be warmed, the albumen 
undergoes a change, separates out in 
white flocky masses, and cannot again 
be redissolved in the water. Coagu¬ 
lation is well exemplified by the “curd¬ 
ling” of milk and “clotting” of blood. 

COAHUILA (ko-4-we'la), a state of 
Mexico, on the frontier of the United 
States, rich in woods and pastures, and 
having several silver-mines; area, 50,890 
square miles; pop. 280,899. 

COAL, a solid, opaque, inflammable 
substance, mainly consisting of carbon, 
found in the earth, largely employed as 
fuel, and formed from vast masses of 
vegetable matter deposited through the 
luxuriant growth of plants in former 
epochs of the earth’s history. In the 
varieties of coal in common use the com¬ 
bined effects of pressure, heat, and 
chemical action upon the substance have 
left few traces of its vegetable origin; 
but in the sandstones, clays, and shales 
accompanying the coal, the plants to 
which it principally owes its origin are 
presented in a fossil state in great pro¬ 
fusion, and frequently with their struc¬ 
ture so distinctly retained, although re¬ 
placed by mineral substances, as _ to 
enable the microscopist to determine 
their botanical affinities with existing 
species. The great system of strata in 
which coal is chiefly found is known as 
the carboniferous. There are many 
varieties of coal, varying considerably 
in their composition, as anthracite, 
nearly pure carbon, and burning with 
little flame, much used for furnaces and 
malt kilns; bituminous (popularly so 
called) or “household coal;” and cannel 
or “gas-coal,” which burns readily like 
a candle, and is much used in gas-mak¬ 
ing. All varieties agree in containing 
from 60 to over 90 per cent of carbon, 


the other elements being chiefly oxygen 
and hydrogen, and frequently a small 
portion of nitrogen. For manufactur¬ 
ing purposes coals are generally con¬ 
sidered to consist of two parts, the 
volatile or bituminous portion, which 
yields the gas used for lighting, and the 
substance comparatively fixed, usually 
known as coke, which is obtained by 
heating the coal in ovens or other close 
arrangements, and thus removing the 
volatile or smoke-yielding matter, while 
the full heating power of the coal still 
remains in the coke. 

The principal coal deposits of Europe 
and America are found in the United 
States, Great Britain, Germany, France, 
Belgium, Russia, and Austria-Hungary, 
Coal is found in immense quantities in 
China and Japan, in India, and other 
oriental countries but its production 
there is limited. In the United States 
the largest deposits are found in the 
great coal belt of the Appalachians 
which extends from Pennsylvania to 
Alabama, a tract about 800 miles long 
and nearly 100 wide. In this region 
all kinds of coal are produced. Bitu¬ 
minous coal is produced in large quanti¬ 
ties in Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky. 
The western states from Colorado to the 
Pacific are also rich in coal but its 
mining is backward. 

The coal production of the world 
at present is about 900,000,000 tons 
annually of which the United States pro¬ 
duces 270,000,000, Great Britain 250,- 
000,000 and Germany 165,000,000 tons. 
Austria Hungary comes fourth and falls 
to 40,000,000. 

Coal is mined by means of shafts and 
tunnels which tap the seams in which 
great chambers are mined, the coal be¬ 
ing transported underground on trucks, 
and brought to the surface through the 
shafts. Various improvements in ma¬ 
chinery have recently facilitated the 
work, although coal mining still remains 
one of the most disagreeable and dan¬ 
gerous trades practiced. 

COAL BRASS, the iron pyrites found 
in coal-measures, so named on account 
of its brassy appearance. Coal con¬ 
taining much pyrites is bad for iron 
smelting, and it is unpleasant for 
domestic use on account of the sulphur¬ 
ous acid which it gives off on burning. 
Coal brass is useful in the manufacture 
of copperas, and in alkali works. 

COAL-CUTTING MACHINE, any ma¬ 
chine for cutting out coal in the pit, the 
chief objects they are intended to serve 
being the cheapening of the work, the 
saving of a large quantity of coal, which 
in the ordinary process of holing by 
hand-labor with the pick is broken up 
into slack and dust, and the removal of 
the danger attending upon the employ¬ 
ment of hand-labor. The instruments 
of excavation in these machines are con¬ 
structed on various principles, some 
having an action like that of an ordinary 
pick, others a horizontal cutting-tool. 
There are usually arrangements for 
regulating the depth and force, and to 
a certain extent the direction of the 
blow, and the precision obtained is 
fully equal to that of hand-labor. 

COAL GAS, the variety of carburetted 
hydrogen which produces common gas¬ 
light. 







COALING-STATIONS 


COCA 


COALING-STATIONS, stations estab¬ 
lished by government at various im¬ 
portant points throughout the world, 
where the ships, both of the navy and 
the mercantile marine, may obtain 
supplies of coal. The utility of such 
stations, when properly fortified, as 
points of refuge, defense, and repair for 
ships in the event of war can hardly be 
over-estimated. 

COALITION, a term used in diplo¬ 
macy and politics to denote a union 
between different parties not of the 
same opinions, but who agree to act to¬ 
gether for a particular object. Among 
states it is understood to mean theoret¬ 
ically someting less general in its ends, 
and less deeply founded than an alli¬ 
ance. 

COAL-TAR, or GAS-TAR, a substance 
obtained in the distillation of coal for 
the manufacture of illuminating gas, a 
dark-colored more or less viscid mass, 
consisting principally of oily hydrocar¬ 
bons. It passes over -with the gas into 
the condenser, along with ammonia 
liquor, but being heavier than the latter, 
it is easily separated from it when the 
whole is allowed to stand. It was 
formerly of comparatively little use; 
but in recent years a great number of 
valuable products have been derived 
from it by distillation, such as ammonia, 
naphtha, creosote, carbolic acid, and 
benzine, while it is also the source of the 
whole series of aniline colors, and other 
dyes, of alizarine, salicylic acid, etc. 

COAL TAR COLORS, dyes made from 
the combinations of various hydro¬ 
carbons derived from coal tar. The 
possibility of making these dyes was 
discovered by the German chemist, 
Runge, in 1834. This observation was 
carried farther by Perkins in 1856, 
but the most interesting discovery 
in this connection was that of the' 
German chemists Graebe and Lieber- 
mann who made a color from anthracene 
which was really the coloring matter 
found in madder root. This w T as in 1868 
and the progress of organic chemistry 
since then has made it possible to 
prepare from aniline and other hydro¬ 
carbons a variety of dyes varying in¬ 
finitely in shade. 

COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY, 

The United States, a bureau pertaining 
to the department of the treasury, for the 
urpose of surveying the coasts and 
oundaries of the country and determin¬ 
ing geographical positions in the interior. 
It was organized on the recommenda¬ 
tion of President Jefferson in 1807 and 
its work since that time has included 
almost every region in the United 
States. Some of the important work 
done by the survey was triangulation, 
along the Atlantic coast to the Florida 
Keys, observation of the gulf stream, 
surveys of the boundary line between 
Alaska and British Columbia, soundings 
in all American waters, explorations of 
rivers and mountains, and magnetic 
observations in various parts of the 
country. The bureau issues a line of 
publications important for commerce, 
science, and defense. 

COAST ARTILLERY, artillery for the 
defense of coasts. The United States 
uses 8, 10, and 12-inch breech loading 
guns, rapid-fire guns, and other forms 


of ordnance. The 16-inch breech load¬ 
ing rifle of the LTnited States is one of 
the largest and most effective rifles 
in existence. It requires a charge of 
576 pounds smokeless, and 1176 pounds 
black powder, and fires a projectile of 
2400 pounds, a velocity (muzzle) of 
2300 feet per second. The Italian and 
French rifles are a little larger but not 
so effective. English coast artillery has 
not been brought to the same per¬ 
fection or that of the United States. 

COAST DEFENSE, the art of fortify¬ 
ing and defending a coast from an 
enemy. This is done by the use of large 
guns (see Coast Artillery), by tactics 
which obstruct the enemy’s advance, 
by harassing the enemy from different 
points of attack with isolated instru¬ 
ments or boats, by mining the water 
w r ith torpedoes, and by the use of 
search lights to disclose the enemy’s 
location. Since modern coast defense 
methods have been perfected no good 
opportunity of testing it has offered. 
The test made by Dewey at Manila 
Bay in 1898 was not a fair one, as the 
Spaniards were not only poor tacticians 
but their torpedoes were worthless. 

COAT OF ARMS. See Arms and 
Heraldry. 

COAT OF MAIL, a piece of armor in 
the form of a shirt, consisting of a net¬ 
work of iron or steel rings, or of small 
laminse or plates, usually of tempered 
iron, laid over each other like the scales 
of a fish, and fastened to a strong linen 
or leather jacket. 

CO'BALT, a metal of a grayish-white 
color, very brittle, of a fine close grain, 
compact, but easily reducible to pow¬ 
der. It crystallizes in parallel bundles 
of needles. It is never found in a pure 
state, but usually as an oxide, or com¬ 
bined with arsenic or its acid, with sul¬ 
phur, iron, etc. The great use of cobalt 
is to give a permanent blue color to 
glass and enamels upon metals, porce¬ 
lain, and earthenwares. 

COBB, Howell, an American legis¬ 
lator, born in Georgia in 1815, died in 
1868. He was congressman for four 
terms until 1851, and in the last term 
was speaker of the house. His other 
positions were governor of Georgia 
(1855) secretary of the treasury in 
Buchanan’s cabinet, and president of 
the congress which adopted the con¬ 
stitution of the confederacy. He was 
a bitter anti-reconstructionist. 

COB'DEN, Richard, English politi¬ 
cian, the “apostle of free trade,” born 
in Sussex 3d June, 1804, died in London 
2d April, 1865. His first political writ¬ 
ing w r as a pamphlet on England, Ire¬ 
land, and America, which was followed 
by another on Russia. In both of these 
he gave clear utterance to the political 
views to which he continued through his 
life rigidly to adhere, advocating non¬ 
intervention in the disputes of other 
nations, and maintaining it to be the 
only proper object of the foreign policy 
of England to increase and strengthen 
her connections with foreign countries 
in the way of trade and peaceful inter¬ 
course. Having joined the anti-corn- 
law league, formed in 1838, it was 
chiefly the extraordinary activity of 
Cobden, together with Bright and other 
zealous fellow-workers, which won vic¬ 


tory for the movement. In 1841 Cobden 
entered parliament as member for Stock- 
port, and after several years of un¬ 
wearied efforts at last induced Sir 
Robert Peel, then prime minister, to 
bring in a bill for the repeal of the corn 



Richard Cobden. 


laws, a measure which became law in 
1846. His last great work was the 
commercial treaty which he w T as the 
means of bringing about between Britain 
and France in 1860. During his later 
years he lived a good deal in retirement. 

COBDEN CLUB, an association formed 
about a year after the death of Mr. Cob¬ 
den, mainly by the influence of Mr. 
Bright and Mr. T. B. Potter, for the 
purpose of encouraging the growth and 
diffusion of those economical and polit¬ 
ical principles with which Mr. Cobden’s 
name is associated. The Cobden Club 
has distributed a vast number of books 
and pamphlets. 

COBRA DE CAPELLO, the Portu¬ 
guese name of the hooded or spectacled 
snake, which is found in Southern Asia, 
a closely allied species, also called cobra, 
or asp, being found in Egypt. It is 
called spectacled snake from a singular 
marking on the back of the neck, while 
its other name is given from the remark¬ 
able manner in which it spreads out the 
skin on the sides of the neck and head 
■when disturbed or irritated, raising the 
anterior part of its body so as to appear 
to stand erect, and expanding its hood. 
So exceedingly poisonous is its bite, 
that in numerous instances death has 
followed within a few minutes, and under 
ordinary circumstances a few hours 
is the longest term where prompt 
measures have not been taken. But 
indeed recovery rarely takes place, 
though injection of potash into the 
veins is said to be a remedy. In India 
thousands of natives lose their lives 
yearly through cobra bites. Its food 
consists of small reptiles, birds, frogs, 
fishes (being an excellent swimmer), 
etc. Its great enemy is the ichneumon. 
It is one of the snakes that the snake- 
charmers perform tricks with. 

COBWEB, the web or network spun 
by spiders to catch their prey. 

COCA, a South American plant. The 
leaf is a stimulating narcotic, and is 
chewed by the inhabitants of countries 
on the Pacific side of South America, 
mixed with finely-powdered chalk. It 
has effects somewhat similar to those of 
opium. A small quantity of it enables 
a person to bear up against fatigue even 
when receiving less food than usual 





GUARDING THE AMERICAN COASTS 
DURING THE ABSENCE OF THE 
U.S. FLEET. 


'"Vhe l S. ll^or ‘Department's 'Defence Guns tchich Protect the Eastern Shores of jlmcrica 




1.OOO-lb. Profoctile Exploding 100-lb. Projectile Exploding 

From 12*ir». gun From 6-in. gun 


100-lb. Prolcctllo Exploding 800-lb. Projectile Exploding 


Fr 



RAMMING HOME A PROJECTILE IN A 10-IN. DISAPPEARING GUN 

.. . ...I, such rl.I.liU ./» III.- .■llli.ll,,,.’ ... III.’ .-.clll. II,.’ slwil • IIi.-miii.-i »r 



FIRING THE 10-IN. GUN AT A HOSTILE hmi . . 

CeD fired t fn)in'a I l(>-iiiclf b t atter™*!n 8 /eMi n than &S? 2 “ & a^rv ol 12-inch 




























































































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•• 










COCAINE 


COCOA-NUT 


and it prevents the difficulty of respira¬ 
tion experienced in climbing high 
mountains. Used in excess it brings 
on various disorders, and the desire for 
it increases so much with indulgence 
that a confirmed coca-chewer is said 
never to have been reclaimed. Coca- 
leaves depend for their influence on a 
crystaliizable alkaloid called cocaine, 
which, besides having effect similar to 
the leaf, possesses valuable anaesthetic 
properties, and in recent times has been 
especially employed to prevent suffering 
in operations on the eye, having also 
similar effects when applied to the 
tongue, larynx, ear, etc. 

COCAINE (ko'ka-in). See Coca. 

COCCUS, a genus of insects of the 
order Hemiptera, family Coccidae, or 
scale-insects. The males are elongated 
in their form, have large wings, and 
are destitute of any obvious means of 
suction; the females, on the contrary, 
are of a rounded or oval form, about an 
eighth of an inch in length, have no 
wings, but possess a beak or sucker, by 
which they suck up the juices of the 
plants on which they live. At a certain 
period of their lives the females attach 
themselves to the plant or tree which 
they inhabit, and remain thereon im¬ 
movable during the rest of their exist¬ 
ence. In this situation they are im¬ 
pregnated by the male; after which 
their body increases considerably, in 
many species losing its original form 
and assuming that of a gall, and, after 
depositing the eggs, drying up and 
forming a habitation for the young. 
Cochineal consists of the bodies of the 
females of the Coccus cacti, a native of 
Mexico, which feeds on various species of 
cactus, particularly on one called nopal. 

COCH'IN, a small native state of 
India, on the s. w. or Malabar coast 
connected with the Presidency of 
Madras. Area, 1361 sq. miles; pop. 
815,218. 

COCHIN-CHINA, a country forming 
part of the peninsula of South-eastern 
Asia, and generally regarded as com¬ 
prising the whole of Anam and Lower 
or French Cochin-China. The latter 
belonged to Anam till, in 1863 a portion 
of it was finally ceded to France after a 
war occasioned by the persecution of 
French missionaries; another portion 
being declared French territory in 1867. 
The territory thus acquired covers 
21,710 sq. miles, and in 1894 had a pop. 
of 2,226,935. 

COCHIN-CHINA, a term applied to a 
variety of the domestic fowl, imported 
from Cochin-China. It is a large un¬ 
gainly bird, valuable chiefly owing to its 
fecundity, eggs being laid even during 
the winter. 

COCHINEAL (koch'in-el), a dye-stuff 
consisting of the dried bodies of the 
females of a species of insect, a na¬ 
tive of the warmer parts of America, 
particularly Mexico, and found living on 
a species of cactus called the cochineal- 
fig. The insects are brushed softly off, 
and killed by being placed in ovens or 
dried in the sun, having then the appear¬ 
ance of small berries or seeds. A pound 
of cochineal contains about 70,000 of 
them. The finest cochineal is prepared 
in Mexico, where it was first discovered, 
and Guatemala; but Peru, Brazil, 


Algiers, the East and West Indies, and 
the Canary Islands have also entered 
into this industry with more or less 
success. Cochineal produces crimson 
and scarlet colors, and is used in making 
carmine and lake. 

COCHRANE, John, an American 
legislator and soldier, born in New York 
State in 1813, died in 1898. He was 
democratic member of congress from 
1856 to 1862 and was a brigadier-gen¬ 
eral in the Union army during the civil 
war. In 1864 he was candidate for the 
vice presidency with Fremont. 

COCK. See Fowl. 

COCKADE', a plume of cock’s feath¬ 
ers, with which the Croats in the ser¬ 
vice of the French in the 17th century 
adorned their caps. A bow of colored 
ribbons was adopted for the cockade in 
France, and during the French revolu¬ 
tion the tricolored cockade—red, white, 
and blue—became the national dis¬ 
tinction. National cockades are now to 
be found over all Europe. 

COCKATOO', the name of a number of 
climbing birds belonging to the family 
of the parrots. They have a large, hard 
bill; a crest, capable of being raised and 
lowered at the will of the bird, com¬ 
monly white, but sometimes yellow, 
red, or blue; a tail somewhat longer 
than that of the parrot, and square or 
rounded; long wings; and, for the most 



Lead beater’s cockatoo. 


part, a white plumage, though in some 
genera the plumage is dark. They are 
found especially in the Eastern Archi¬ 
pelago and Australia. They live on 
roots, fruits, grain, insects, etc., and 
usually congregate in flocks. These 
birds are easily tamed, and when 
domesticated become very familiar. 

COCK'CHAFER, a species of lamel- 
licorn beetle, remarkable for the length 
of its life in the worm or larva state, as 
well as for the injury it does to vegeta¬ 
tion after it has attained its perfect con¬ 
dition. The common cockchafer is 
hatched from an egg which the parent 
deposits in a hole about 6 inches deep, 
which she digs for the purpose. At the 
end of about three months the insect 
emerges as a small grub or maggot, and 
feeds on the roots of vegetables in the 
vicinity with great voracity. When 
full grown it is over an inch in length; 
it makes its way underground with ease, 
and commits great devastation on grass 
and corn crops. In the fourth year the 
insect appears as a perfect coleopterous 
insect—a beetle over an inch long, of a 
black color, with a whitish down. It 
usually emerges from the ground about 


the beginning of May, from which cir¬ 
cumstance the English name May bug 
or beetle has been given it. In its per¬ 
fect state it is very destructive to the 
leaves of various trees. 

COCKER, a dog of the spaniel kind, 
allied to the Blenheim dog, used for 
raising woodcocks and snipes from their 
haunts in woods and marshes. 

COCK-FIGHTING, an amusement 
racticed in various countries, first per- 
aps among the Greeks and Romans. 
At Athens there were annual cock¬ 
fights, and among the Romans quails 
and partridges were also used for this 
purpose. 

COCK'NEY, a nickname for a London 
citizen, as to the origin of which there 
has been much dispute. The word is 
often, but not always, employed slight¬ 
ingly as implying a peculiar limitation of 
taste or judgment. The epithet is as 
old at least as the time of Henry II. 

COCK OF THE PLAINS, a large North 
American species of grouse, inhabiting 
desolate plains in the western states. 

COCK OF THE ROCK, a South Amer¬ 
ican bird of a rich orange color with a 
beautiful crest, belonging to the mana- 
kin family. 

COCKPIT, in a man-of-war, the place 
where the wounded are dressed in battle 
or at other times, and where medicines 
are kept. 

COCK'ROACH, a genus of insects, 
characterized by an oval, elongated, 
depressed body, which is smooth on its 
superior surface. They have parch- 
ment-like elytra, and in the female the 
wings are imperfectly developed. They 
are nocturnal in their habits, exceeding¬ 
ly agile, and devour provisions of all 
kinds. Cockroaches, like other orthop¬ 
terous insects, do not undergo a com¬ 
plete metamorphosis: the larvae and 
nymphs resemble the perfect insect, 
except that they have merely rudiments 
of wings. The eggs are carried below 
the abdomen of the female for seven or 
eight days till she finally attaches them 
to some solid body by means of a gummy 
fluid. The species are numerous. 

COCKSWAIN (colloquially cok'sn), 
the officer who manages and steers a 
boat and has the command of the boat’s 
crew. 

CO'COA, a name given to the ground 
kernels of the cacao or chocolate tree 
repared to be made into a beverage, 
ee Cacao. 

CO'COA-NUT, or COCO-NUT, a woody 
fruit of an oval shape, from 3 or 4 to 6 or 
8 inches in length, covered with a 
fibrous husk, and lined internally with 
a white, firm, and fleshy kernel. The 
tree which produces the cocoa-nut is a 
palm, from 40 to 60 feet high. The 
trunk is straight and naked, and sur¬ 
mounted by a crown of feather-like 
leaves. The nuts hang from the sum¬ 
mit of the tree in clusters of a dozen or 
more together. The external rind of the 
nuts has a smooth surface. This in¬ 
closes an extremely fibrous substance, 
of considerable thickness, which im¬ 
mediately surrrounds the nut. The 
latter has a thick and hard shell, with 
three black scars at one end, through 
one of which the embryo of the future 
tree pushes its way. This scar may be 
pierced with a pin; the others are as 





COCOA-NUT OIL 


COFFEE 


hard as the rest of the shell. The kernel 
incloses a considerable quantity of 
sweet and watery liquid, of a whitish 
color, which has the name of milk. This 
palm is a native of Africa, the East and 
West Indies, and South America, and 
is now grown almost everywhere in 
tropical countries. Food, clothing, and 
the means of shelter and protection are 
all afforded by the cocoa-nut tree The 
kernels are used as food in various modes 
of dressing, and yield on pressure an oil 
which is largely imported into various 
countries. When dried before the oil is 
expressed they are known as copra. The 
fibrous coat of the nut is made into the 
well-known cocoa-nut matting; the 
coarse yarn obtained from it is called 
coir, which is also used for cordage. 
The hard shell of the nut is polished 
and made into a cup or other domestic 
utensil. The fronds are wrought into 
baskets, brooms, mats, sacks, and many 
other useful articles; the trunks are 
made into boats or furnish timber for 
the construction of houses. By boring 
the tree a white sweetish liquor called 
toddy exudes from the wound, and 
yields by distillation one of the varieties 
of the spirit called arack. A kind of 
sugar called jaggery is also obtained 
from the juice by inspissation. 

COCOA-NUT OIL, a solid vegetable 
fat, largely used in candle-making 
and in the manufacture of soaps and 
pomatum. This fat is got by pressure 
from the albumen of the cocoa-nut ker¬ 
nel, and is as white as lard, and some¬ 
what firmer. Manila and Ceylon send 
large quantities of the oil to the U. S. 

COCOON', the name given to the web 
or ball spun by caterpillars before pass¬ 
ing into the chrysalis state. The valu¬ 
able product thus obtained from the 
silkworm is well known. 

COD, a genus of well-known soft- 
finned fishes, distinguished by the fol¬ 
lowing characteristics:—A smooth, ob¬ 
long, or fusiform body, covered with 
small soft scales; ventrals attached 
beneath the throat; gills large, seven- 
rayed, and opening laterally; a small 
beard at the tip of the lower jaw; 
generally two or three dorsal fins, one 
or two anal, and one distinct caudal 
fin.. The most interesting species is 
the common or bank cod. Though 
found plentifully on the coasts of other 
northern regions, as Britain, Scandi¬ 
navia, and Iceland, a stretch of sea 
near the coast of Newfoundland is 
the favorite annual resort of count¬ 
less multitudes of cod, which visit the 
the Grand Banks to feed upon the 
crustaceous and molluscous animals 
abundant in such situations, and thus 
attract fleets of fishermen. Few mem¬ 
bers of the animal creation are more 
universally serviceable to man than the 
codfish. Both in its fresh state and when 
salted and dried it is a substantial and 
wholesome article of diet; the tongue is 
considered a delicacy, and the swim¬ 
ming-bladders or sounds, besides being 
highly nutritious, supply, if rightly 
prepared, an isinglass equal to the best 
Russian. The oil extracted by heat 
and pressure from the liver is of great 
medicinal value, and contributes con¬ 
siderably to the high economic value of 
the cod. The cod is enormously prolific, 


the ovaries of each female containing 
more than 9,000,000 of eggs; but the 
numbers are kept down by a host of 
enemies. The spawning season, on the 
banks of Newfoundland, begins about 
the mouth of March and terminates in 
June; but the regular period of fishing 
does not commence before April on 
account of the storms, ice, and fogs. 
The season lasts till the end of June, 
when the cod commence their migra¬ 
tions. The average length of the com¬ 
mon cod is about 2J or 3 feet, and the 
weight between 30 and 50 lbs., though 
sometimes cod are caught weighing 
three times this. The color is a yellow¬ 
ish-gray on the back, spotted with 
yellowish and brown; the belly white 
or reddish, with golden spots in young 
individuals. It is caught by lines and 
hooks. 

COD, Cape. See Cape Cod. 

CODE, in jurisprudence, is a name 
given to a systematic collection or 
digest of laws. The following are the 
chief codes which have affected the laws 
of Europe and the United States: The 
Theodosian Code, a compilation exe¬ 
cuted in 429 by a commission on behalf 
of Theodosius the Younger, and pro¬ 
mulgated as law throughout the eastern 
and western empires. The Justinian 
Code, a code compiled in 528, in the 
reign of the Emperor Justinian, incor¬ 
porating all the codes, rescripts, edicts 
previously in use (see Civil Laws). The 
Code Napoldon, or Code Civil, under¬ 
taken under the consulship of Napoleon 
by the most eminent jurists of France, 
and published in 1804. The Code Na¬ 
poleon (under which name other four 
codes of commercial law, criminal law, 
penal law, and law of procedure, drawn 
up at the same time, are often included) 
was a code in the strictest sense, that is, 
not merely a collection of laws, but a 
complete and exclusive statement of the 
law virtually amounting to a recasting 
of the laws of the country. Under the 
first empire the adoption of the Code 
Napoleon was made obligatory on all 
the countries subject to the French, 
and although it has been judged defect¬ 
ive in some technical respects, its brev¬ 
ity, clearness, and modern spirit have 
made it popular in all the countries 
where it has been introduced. At present 
it is recognized in Belgium (with some 
modifications), in Baden, in Italy, and 
elsewhere in Europe. 

CODEINE (ko-de'-in), a crystallizable 
alkaloid obtained from opium, in which 
it exists to the amount of 6 or 8 ozs. per 
100 lbs. It is used to produce sleep and 
to soothe irritable coughs; and is the chief 
remedy in diabetes; dose | grain and 
upward. It is a poison in excessive doses. 

COD'ICIL, in law, a supplement to a 
will, to be considered as a part of it, 
either for the purpose of explaining or 
altering or of adding to or subtracting 
from the testator’s former disposition. 
A codicil may not only be written on the 
same paper or affixed to or folded up 
with the will, but may be written on a 
different paper and deposited in a 
different place. In general the law 
relating to codicils is the same as that 
relating to wills, and the same proofs of 
genuineness must be furnished by 
signature, and attestation by witnesses. 


A man may make as many codicils as 
he pleases, and, if not contradictory, 
all are equally valid. 

COD-LIVER OIL, an oil extracted 
from the livers of different kinds of cod. 
The finest and palest oil is got from 
fresh and carefully-cleaned liver, the 
oil being extracted either in the cold or 
by a gentle heat. The darker kinds are 
got at a higher temperature, and often 
from the livers in a putrefying state. 
Only the pale oils are used in medicine; 
the dark oils are too rank and acrid, and 
they are only used in dressing leather. 
Cod-liver oil is a somewhat complex 
substance, but the main ingredients 
appear to be olein and margarin. Acetic 
butyric, and other acids are also present, 
and to these the oil may owe some of its 
odor. This oil is now a recognized agent 
in the treatment of rheumatism, gout, 
scrofula, and especially of consumption, 
being taken internally and containing 
a quantity of easily-assimilated nutritive 
matter. 

CODY, William Frederick (Buffalo 
Bill), an American scout, marksman 
and showman, born in Iowa in 1845. 
During the civil war he was a scout for 
the Union army and was subsequently 
a contractor for the supply of buffalo 
meat to the constructors of the Kansas 
Pacific Railroad, an enterprise which 
earned him his soubriquet. Of late years 
he originated his “Wild West Show,” 
which took Europe by storm. 

CO-EDUCATION, the education of 
the two sexes (1) in the same institution, 
and (2) in the same class room or labora¬ 
tory. The practice is almost universal 
in the public schools and state colleges 
and universities, and in many of the 
large endowed colleges and universities. 
In Europe women are not admitted to 
the large schools except in England, 
Sweden, Switzerland and Austria. In 
this country co-education was advo¬ 
cated as early as 1826 by Horace Mann 
in the high schools of Massachusetts, 
and in 1833 Oberlin College opened its 
doors to women. Today virtually all 
the universities of the U. States and 
Canada (with the exception of a few 
religious institutions) admit women 
either as undergraduate students, grad¬ 
uate students, or both. The merits 
of the controversy as to the desirability 
of co-education is a very difficult 
question to decide. 

COFFEE is the seed of an evergreen 
shrub which is cultivated in hot climates, 
and is a native of Abyssinia and of 
Arabia. This shrub is from 15 to 20 
feet in height, and belongs to the Rubi- 
aceae. The leaves are green, glossy on 
the upper surface, and the flowers are 
white and sweet-scented. The fruit is 
of an oval shape, about the size of a 
cherry, and of a dark-red color when 
ripe. Each of these contains two cells, 
and each cell a single seed, which is the 
coffee as we see it before it undergoes 
the process of roasting. Great attention 
is paid to the culture of coffee in Arabia. 
The trees are raised from seed sown in 
nurseries and afterward planted out in 
moist and shady situations, on sloping 
grounds or at the foot of mountains. 
Care is taken to conduct little rills of 
water to their roots, which at certain 
seasons require to be constantly sur- 




COFFER-DAM 


COINAGE 


rounded with moisture. When the 
fruit has attained its maturity cloths 
are placed under the trees, and upon 
these the laborers shake it down. They 
afterward spread the berries on mats, 
and expose them to the sun to dry. The 
husk is then broken off by large and 
heavy rollers of wood or iron. When the 
coffee has been thus cleared of its husk 
it is again dried in the sun, and, lastly, 
winnowed with a large fan, for the pur- 
ose of clearing it from the pieces of 
usks with which it is intermingled. 
A pound of coffee is generally more 
than the produce of one tree; but a tree 
in great vigor will produce 3 or 4 lbs. 
Next in quality to the Mocha coffee may 
perhaps be ranked that of Southern 
India and that of Ceylon, which is strong 
and well flavored; but comparatively 
little coffee now comes from Ceylon. 



Java and Central America produce large 
quantities of excellent coffee. Brazilian 
coffee, though produced more abun¬ 
dantly than any other, stands at the 
bottom of the list as regards quality. 
Liberian coffee may also be mentioned. 
Of the best Mocha coffee grown in the 
province of Yemen little or none is said 
to reach the western markets. Arabia 
itself, Syria, and Egypt consume fully 
two-thirds, and the remainder is ex¬ 
clusively absorbed by Turkish or 
Armenian buyers. The only other 
coffee which holds a first rank in eastern 
opinion is that of Abyssinia. Then 
comes the produce of India, which those 
accustomed to the Yemenite variety 
are said to consider hardly drinkable. 
American coffee holds in the judgment 
of all Orientals the very last rank. 

COFFER-DAM, a temporary wooden 
inclosure formed in water in order to 
obtain a firm and dry foundation for 
bridges, piers, etc. It is usually formed 
of two or more rows of piles driven close 
together, with clay packed in between 
the rows. . 

COFFIN, the chest or box in which a 
dead body is inclosed for burial. Coffins 
were used by the ancients mostly to 
receive the bodies of persons of dis¬ 
tinction. Among the Romans it was 
latterly the almost universal custom 
to consume the bodies with fire, and 


deposit the ashes in urns. In Egypt 
coffins seem to have been used in ancient 
times universally. They were of stone, 
earthenware, glass, wood, etc. A sort 
of ancient coffin is known as a sarcoph¬ 
agus. Coffins among Christians were 
introduced with the custom of burying. 
(See Burial.) Modern coffins are usually 
made of wood, and are sometimes in¬ 
closed in a leaden case. It has been 
often proposed that they should be made 
with a hole opposite the place of the 
mouth of the body, so as to allow 
breathing in case of revival. Of course 
it would be necessary, at the same time, 
to let the coffin stand for some days in a 
convenient place, as is the custom in 
some parts of Germany. It has re¬ 
cently been proposed to employ coffins 
of wicker-work, while some strenuously 
advocate the burning of all dead bodies. 
See Cremation. 

COFFIN, Charles Carleton, an Ameri¬ 
can journalist and writer, born in New 
Hampshire in 1823, died in 1896. He 
was war correspondent during the civil 
war for -the Boston Journal and later 
made a tour of the world. His pub¬ 
lished works deal largely with war and 
travel. 

COFFIN, James Henry, an American 
mathematician and scientist, born in 
Massachusetts in 1806, died in 1873. 
He was one of the first scientists ap¬ 
pointed to the Smithsonian Institution 
and his publications deal with meteor¬ 
ology, astronomy nad psychology. 

COFFIN, William Anderson, an Ameri¬ 
can painter, born in Pennsylvania in 
1855. His paintings are chiefly land¬ 
scapes. His picture, Rain, was pur¬ 
chased by the Metropolitan Museum, 
and he was awarded a bronze medal 
at the Paris exposition of 1889. 

COGHLAN, Rose, an Anglo-American 
actress, born in England in 1853. Her 
first appearance was as one of the 
witches in Macbeth. She made her 
American debut with E. A. Sothern in 
1871 at New York, and since that time 
has appeared in Shakespearean and 
other parts in the principal American 
cities. 

COGNAC (kon-yak), a town in France, 
dep. Charente, and near the river 
Charente, 22 miles w. Angouleme, 
leasantly situated on a hill, crowned 
y the remains of an old castle. It is 
famous for the brandy which bears its 
name, and which is exported to all parts 
uf the world. Pop. 18,932. 

COGNATES, relations by the mother’s 
side. See Agnates. 

COG'NISANCE, in heraldry, a crest, 
coat of arms, or similar badge of dis¬ 
tinction appertaining to a person or 
family; in law, judicial or formal notice 
or acknowledgment of a fact. 

COGNO'MEN, the hereditary family 
name (such ns Cicero, Cato, etc.) among 
the ancient Romans. The other two 
names generally borne by every well¬ 
born Roman, viz. the praenomen and 
nomen (as in Marcus Tullius Cicero) 
served to denote the individual (Marcus), 
and the gens (Tullius) or clan to which 
his family belonged. 

COGNO'VIT, in law, is a written con¬ 
fession given by the defendant that the 
action of the plaintiff is just, or that he 
has no available defense. 


COG-WHEEL, a wheel with cogs o> 
teeth. 

COHABITATION, the living together 
of a man and woman as husband and 
wife. The term does not exclusively 
mean the very act of sexual intercourse 
itself, but implies it. 

COHE'SION, the force by which the 
various particles of the same material 
are kept in contact, forming one con¬ 
tinuous mass. Its action is seen in a 
solid mass of matter, the parts of which 
cohere with a certain force which resists 
any mechanical action that would tend 
to separate them. In different bodies it 
is exerted with different degrees of 
strength, and it is measured by the 
force necessary to pull them asunder. 
Cohesion acts at insensible distances, 
or between particles in contact, and is 
thus distinguished from the attraction 
of gravitation. It unites particles into 
a single mass, and that without pro¬ 
ducing any change of properties, and 
is thus distinguished from adhesion, 
which takes place between different 
masses or substances; and from chemical 
attraction or affinity, which unites 
particles of a different kind together and 
produces a new substance. Hardness, 
softness, tenacity, elasticity, mallea¬ 
bility, and ductility are to be considered 
as modifications of cohesion. The great 
antagonist of cohesion is heat. 

COHESION FIGURES, a class of 
figures produced by the attraction of 
liquids for other liquids or solids with 
which they are in contact, and divided 
into surface, submersion, breath, and 
electric cohesion figures. _ Thus a drop 
of an independent liquid, as oil or 
alcohol, will spread itself out on the 
surface of water always in a definite 
figure, but differing with each fluid 
dropped on the water. Breath figures 
are produced by putting a drop of the 
liquid to be examined on a slip of mica, 
and breathing on it, when each fluid 
takes a distinct characteristic shape. 
Electric cohesion figures are produced 
by electrifying drops of various liquids 
placed on a plate of glass. 

COHOBA'TION, the repeated dis¬ 
tillation of the same liquid from the same 
materials. 

COHOES (ko-hoz'), a city of Albany 
Co., New York, on the west bank of the 
Hudson River, at the mouth of the 
Mohawk, with unlimited water-power 
derived from the Mohawk Falls. There 
are large cotton and other mills. Pop. 
26,140. 

COIMBATORE (ko-im-ba-tor'), a town 
of Hindustan, Madras Presidency, capi¬ 
tal of district to which it gives name, 
situated on the river Noyil, with wide 
streets, abundant water, and a healthy 
climate. Pop. 53,080.—The district has 
an area of 7860 square miles. It is fer¬ 
tile, producing sugar, cotton, rice, and 
tobacco; and well watered by several 
rivers. Pop. 2,202,312. 

COINAGE, Coins. See Coining, Money, 
Numismatics, Currency. 

COINAGE, the conversion of a metal 
into pieces of money, (coins) stamped 
with impressions which are provided 
for by law. The right to coin money is 
a prerogative of the State and one of the 
foremost marks of sovereignty. The 
circulation of coins rests, in the first 





COKE 


COLEOPTERA 


instance, upon the authority of the State, 
but that authority must be exercised 
in good faith. Coinage issued by in¬ 
dividuals would lack authority and 
lack also the guaranty of good faith. 
There have been occasions of great 
dearth of money where private persons 
have issued coins. Such issues are 
known as tokens, and gain circulation 
either from their similarity to legal coins 
or from the promise of redeeming them. 
Their total lack of uniformity gives a 
picture of what might be expected were 
the issue of coins left wholly to private 
initiative. Almost equally obvious is 
the necessity for the manufacture by 
the State of the coins which it issues. 
To delegate the manufacture of its coins 
to a private establishment, as was done 
in France before 1879, required such 
a minute control of all its operations by 
State officials that the plan has gener¬ 
ally been abandoned. The greater in¬ 
tegrity of a national mint over a private 
enterprise is further illustrated by the 
fact that the mints of the leading nations 
are frequently called upon to execute 
the coinage for smaller States which 
have no mints of their own. Thus, in 
1901, the United States Mint executed a 
gold coinage for Costa Rica. 

In many countries, notably England 
and the United States, the government 
makes no charge for coining gold 
(free coinage) and in others a charge is 
made, called seignorage, the term being 
derived from the feudal system of 
France. Perfectly free coinage has been 
found to be most advantageous to the 
general welfare of a nation. 

COKE, the carbonaceous residue of 
coal which has been heated in an oven or 
retort, or in any way by which little air is 
admitted, until all volatile matter has 
been expelled. The simplest method of 
producing coke is based on the prepara¬ 
tion of wood charcoal, the coal being 
arranged in heaps which are smothered 
with clay or coal-dust, and then set on 
fire, sufficient air being admitted to 
keep the mass at the proper temperature 
for decomposition without wasting the 
coke. After the volatile portions are got 
rid of, the heap is allowed to cool, or is 
extinguished with water, and the coke 
is then ready. Methods of heating the 
coal in close or open ovens until the 
gaseous and fluid products are driven off 
are also commonly used. Gas-coke is 
that which remains in the retorts after 
the gas has been given off. Good oven- 
coke has an iron-gray color, sub-metallic 
luster, is hard, and somewhat vesicular; 
but gas-coke has rather a slagged and 
cindery look, and is more porous. Coke 
contains about 90 per cent of carbon, 
and is used where a strong heat is 
wanted without smoke and flame, and 
it is accordingly largely consumed in 
drying malt and similar purposes. It 
used to be burned regularly in locomo¬ 
tive-engines, but raw coal is now com¬ 
monly substituted. The largest quanti¬ 
ties are consumed in smelting opera¬ 
tions. 

COKE, Sir Edward, an eminent Eng¬ 
lish lawyer, was the son of a Norfolkshire 
gentleman and was born in 1551. He 
died, September, 1634. His principal 
works are Reports, from 1600 to 1615; 
Institutes of the Laws of England, in 


four parts; the first of which contains 
the celebrated commentary on Little¬ 
ton’s Tenures (“Coke Upon Littleton”); 
A Treatise of Bail and Mainprise, Com¬ 
plete Copyholder. 



Sir Edward Coke. 


COLBERT (kol-bar), Jean Baptiste, 
a celebrated French minister of finances, 
born at Rheims in 1619. After serving 
in various subordinate departments Col¬ 
bert was made intendant, and at length 
comptroller-general of the finances. His 
task was a difficult one. He found dis¬ 
order and corruption everywhere. The 
state was the prey of the farmers- 
general, and at the same time main¬ 
tained only by their aid. The people 
were obliged to pay 90,000,000 livres 
of taxes, of which the king received 
scarcely 35,000,000, the revenues were 
anticipated for two years, and the 
treasury empty. Colbert at once com¬ 
menced a system of stringent reforms, 
abolishing useless offices, retracting 
burdensome privileges, diminishing sala¬ 
ries, and distributing and collecting the 
taxes by improved methods till he had 
reduced them almost to one-half. To 
his talents, activity, and enlarged views 
the development and rapid progress 
of industry and commerce in France 
was largely due. He constructed the 
Canal of Languedoc; declared Mar¬ 
seilles and Dunkirk free ports; granted 
premiums on goods exported and im¬ 
ported; regulated the tolls; estab¬ 
lished insurance offices; made uniform 
laws for the regulation of commerce, 
labored to render the pursuit of it well 
esteemed, and invited the nobility to 
engage in it. The French colonies in 
Canada, Martinique, etc., showed new 
signs of life; new colonies were estab¬ 
lished in Cayenne and Madagascar, and 
to support these Colbert created a con¬ 
siderable naval force. Under the pro¬ 
tection and in the house of the minister 
(1663) the Academy of Inscriptions was 
founded. Three years afterward he 
founded the Academy of Sciences, and 
in 1671 the Academy of Architecture. 
He enlarged the Royal Library and the 
Garden of Plants, and built an observ¬ 
atory, in which he employed Huyghens 
and Cassini. He began the measurement 
of the meridian in France, and sent men 
of science to Cayenne. After having 
conferred the greatest benefits on his 
country he died in 1683, out of favor 
with the king and the people. 

COLD, the absence of sensible heat, 
especially such a want of heat as causes 


some discomfort or uneasiness. The 
temperature in which man and other 
animals live is generally below the na¬ 
tural heat of the body, but this is easily 
kept up in ordinary cases by means of 
the food taken in and digested. A high 
degree of cold, however, produces bodily 
depression, and is a frequent source of 
disease, or even of death. For the ail¬ 
ment called a cold, see Catarrh. 

COLD-BLOODED ANIMALS, a term 
applied to those animals, such as rep¬ 
tiles, the temperature of whose blood 
ranges from the freezing-point, or near 
it, to 90° Fahr., in accordance with that 
of the surrounding medium. 

COLD CREAM, a cooling ointment 
prepared in various ways. A good 
variety may be made by heating four 
parts of olive-oil with one of white wax. 
This ointment cools the skin, rendering 
it soft and pliable, and is successfully 
applied for the cure of chapped hands. 

COLD-WATER CURE. See Hydrop¬ 
athy. 

COLD WAVE, a term used by the 

United States weather bureau and 
applied to sudden changes in tempera¬ 
ture. Cold waves are caused by the 
pressure of the heavy cold air of the 
north or northwest upon the lighter 
warm air of the Southern and Eastern 
parts of the United States. They ad¬ 
vance with an even front causing the 
temperature to drop from a few degrees 
to 40 or 50 degrees in a few hours. 

COLE, Timothy, an American en¬ 
graver, born in England in 1852 and 
known as the engraver of numerous 
fine pictures published by the Century 
company of New York. Many cities 
consider Mr. Cole the best of modem en¬ 
gravers. 

COLEMAN, William Tell, an Ameri¬ 
can pioneer, one of the 49’ers who went 
to California with the prospectors on 
the discovery of gold in that state. 
He was conspicious as a leader of early 
vigilance committees. Coleman was 
born in Kentucky in 1824 and died in 
1893. 

COLEN'SO, John William, D.D., Bish¬ 
op of Natal, born in 1814; educated at 
Cambridge; assistant-master at Harrow 
till 1842; appointed in 1853 first hishop 
of Natal, South Africa. He published 
treatises on Algebra and Arithmetic 
which have been popular text-books in 
schools and colleges. His work on the 
Pentateuch and Book of Joshua, which 
called in«question the historical accuracy 
of these books, involved the author in a 
conflict with his ecclesiastical superiors, 
and he was deposed by the Bishop of 
Cape Town. But the decisions of the 
privy-council of chancery were in his 
favor, and he continued to officiate as 
bishop. He died in 1883. 

COLEOP'TERA, an order of insects, 
commonly known as beetles. They have 
four wings, of which the two superior 
are not suited to flight, but form a cover¬ 
ing and protection to the two inferior, 
and are of a hard and horny or parch¬ 
ment-like nature. The inferior wings, 
when not in use, are folded transversely 
under the superior. The coleoptera 
undergo a perfect metamorphosis. The 
larva generally resembles a short thick 
worm with six legs and a 6caly head and 
mouth. 




COLERIDGE 


COLLISION 


COLERIDGE, Samuel Taylor, a cele* 
brated English poet and philosopher, 
was bom on 21st October, 1772, at 
Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire. He died 
July 25th, 1834. The dreamy and trans¬ 
cendental character of Coleridge’s poetry 
eminently exhibits the man. In his best 
moments he has a fine sublimity of 
thought and expression not surpassed by 
Milton; but he is often turgid and ver¬ 
bose. As a critic, especially of Shake- 
spere, Coleridge’s work is of the highest 
rank, combining a comprehensive grasp 
of large critical principles and a singu¬ 
larly subtle insight into details. Coler¬ 
idge’s poetical works include The 
Ancient Mariner, Christabel (incom¬ 
plete), Remorse, a tragedy, Kubla Khan, 
a translation of Schiller’s Wallenstein, 
etc.; his prose works, Biographia Liter- 
aria, The Friend, The Statesman’s Man¬ 
ual, Aids to Reflection, On the Consti¬ 
tution of Church and State, etc. Pos¬ 
thumously were published specimens of 
his Table Talk, Literary Remains, etc. 



One of the coleoptera. 

a, Head, b, Thorax, c. Abdomen, d d, Elytra. 
ee, Wings. //.Antennae. 

COLFAX, Schuyler, an American 
statesman, born in New York City in 
1823, died in 1885. In 1836 he settled 
in Indiana and started the South Bend 
Register. After serving seven terms in 
congress he was speaker for six years till 
1869, he was elected Vice-President of 
the United States in the last mentioned 
year. 

COLGATE, James Boorman, an Amer¬ 
ican banker, born in New York City in 
1818. He was conspicuous during the 
panic of 1873 for his large loans to the 
government 

COLGATE, Samuel, an American 
philanthropist and capitalist, born in 
New York City in 1822, died in 1897. 
He was famous as a manufacturer of 
soaps and for his liberal distribution to 
religion and education of a part of the 
fortune he made in his business. In 
honor of him the name of Madison 
University was changed in 1889 to 
Colgate University. 

COLGATE UNIVERSITY, founded at 
Hamilton, N. Y., in 1818 by the Baptist 
Education Society. In 1846 it was in¬ 
corporated as Madison University, and 
its name was changed in 1889 to Col¬ 
gate University in honor of Samuel 
Colgate, its greatest benefactor. The 
University has a property of $2,160,000, 
a library of 35,000 volumes, and a regis¬ 
tration of 300 students. A Baptist 
divinity school forms part of the insti¬ 
tution. 

CO'LIC, a painful disorder of the 
bowels, usually of a spasmodic character, 
unaccompanied by diarrhoea, and pre¬ 
senting itself in various forms. When 
the pain is accompanied with a vomit¬ 
ing of bile or with obstinate costiveness 
P. E.—19 


it is called a bilious colic; if with windy 
distension, it takes the name of flatulent 
or windy colic; if with heat and inflam¬ 
mation, it takes the name of inflamma¬ 
tory colic, or enteritis. There are many 
other.varieties of this complaint, some 
of which are peculiar to certain occupa¬ 
tions or districts, as the painters’ colic 
(see Lead Poisoning), the Devonshire 
colic. 

COLIGNY (kol-in-ye), Gaspard de, 
French admiral, born in 1517, dis¬ 
tinguished himself under Francis I. 
and Henry II., who made him in 1552 
Admiral of France. After the death 
of Henry II., Coligny took the Protest¬ 
ant side in the religious strifes of the 
time, and became the head of the 
Huguenot party. He was generally 
unfortunate in the battles he fought, 
but speedily repaired his defeats by 
prudence and good management. When 
peace was made Coligny was received 
with apparent favor at court. But this 
was only a blind; and on the night of 
St. _ Bartholomew’s (Aug. 24, 1572) 
Coligny was basely slaughtered, and his 
corpse given up to the outrages of the 
mob. 

COLLATERAL RELATIONS, de¬ 
scendants of brothers or sisters, or the 
brothers or sisters of the ascending lines. 

COLLATERAL SECURITY, additional 
security, such as a deed granted over 
other property besides that already 
mortgaged. 

COLLATION, a comparison of one 
copy or thing of a like kind with another, 
especially manuscripts and editions of 
books.—In canon law, the presentation 
of a clergyman to a benefice by a bishop 
who has the right of patronage. In such 
a case the combination of the act of 
presentation and institution constitute 
collation. 

COL'LEGE, in a general sense, a body 
or society of persons invested with cer¬ 
tain powers and rights, performing cer- 
tian duties, or engaged in some common 
employment or pursuit. In the U. 
States and Great Britain some societies 
of physicians are called colleges. So, 
also, there are colleges of surgeons, a 
college of heralds, etc. The most famil¬ 
iar application of the term college, 
however, is to a society of persons en¬ 
gaged in the pursuits of literature, in¬ 
cluding the professors, lecturers, or 
other officers, and the students. As 
applied to an educational institution 
the name is somewhat loosely used. The 
higher class of colleges are those in 
which the students engage in study for 
the purpose of taking a degree in arts, 
medicine, or other subjects, and are 
connected with, or have more or less 
the character of universities. The early 
history of these institutions is somewhat 
obscure; the probability is that they 
were originally founded in the various 
universities of the middle ages, with 
similar objects and from the same 
charitable motives. Hostels or board¬ 
ing-houses were provided (principally 
by the religious orders, for the benefit 
of those, of their own fraternity), in 
which the scholars lived under a certain 
superintendence, and the endowment of 
these hostels by charitable persons for 
the support of poor scholars completed 
the foundation of a college. Out of this 


has developed the modern English 
college as seen at Oxford and Cambridge, 
where each college, though a member or 
component part of the university, is a 
separate establishment whose fellows, 
tutors, and students live together under 
a particular head, called master, princi¬ 
pal, warden, etc., of the college. In 
Scotland, the U. States, and Germany 
the college is practically one with the 
university, the latter body performing 
all the functions alike, of teaching, 
examining, degree-conferring, etc. See 
Universities. 

COLLIE, a variety of dog especially 
common in Scotland, and from its 
intelligence of much use to shepherds. 
It is of medium size and varies much in 
coloring, black and white being com¬ 
mon, and black with tan-colored legs, 
muzzle, etc., being highly esteemed. 
The head is somewhat fox-shaped, the 
ears erect, but with drooping points, 
the tail rather long, bushy, and with a 
strong curl. 

COLLIMATION, Line of, in an as¬ 
tronomical instrument, such as a teles¬ 
cope or transit instrument, the straight 
line which passes through the center of 
the object-glass and intersects at right 



angles a system of spider-threads placed 
at the focus of the eye-piece. The prop¬ 
er adjustment of the line of collimation 
of the instrument is necessary to accur¬ 
ate observation of the time at which 
movements of the heavenly bodies take 
plsiC6 

COLLIMA'TORS, two small sub¬ 
sidiary telescopes used for collimating 
astronomical instruments, that is, for 
adjusting the line of collimation, and for 
determining the collimation error. 

COLLINS, William Wilkie, born in 
London in 1824. He was educated for 
the bar, but turned aside to literature, 
in which he has specially distinguished 
himself as a novelist of great dramatic 
and constructive power. Among his 
best-known works are Antonina, The 
Woman in White, The New Magdalen, 
The Evil Genius, etc. He died in 1889. 

COLLISION, in maritime affairs, the 
shock of two ships coming into violent 
contact, whereby one or both may 
suffer more or less injury. Collision may 
happen without blame being imputa¬ 
ble to either party, as where the loss is 
occasioned by a storm, in which case the 
misfortune must be borne by the party 
on whom it happens to light. Or a col¬ 
lision may arise where both parties are 
to blame—where there has been a want 
















COLLODION 


COLON 


of due diligence or skill on both sides; in 
•which case neither party has an action 
against the other. Thirdly, it may 
happen by the misconduct of the suffer¬ 
ing party only, and then the rule is that 
the sufferer must bear his own burden. 
Lastly, it may have been the fault of the 
6hip which ran the other down; and in 
that case the injured party would be en¬ 
titled to an entire compensation from 
the other. Strict laws and regulations 
to prevent collisions have been laid 
down, which contain rules concerning 
lights, and sailing and steering rules. 
By the rule of the road at sea, if two 
sailing ships are approaching each other 
end on, or nearly so, the helms of both 
must be put to port, so that each may 
pass on the port side of the other; in 
crossing so as to involve risk of collision 
the sailing ship with the wind on the port 
side shall keep out of the way of the 
ship with the wind on the starboard, but 
if they have both the wind on the same 
side the ship which is to windward shall 
keep out of the way of the one that has 
it to leeward. If a steam ship and a 
sailing ship are approaching, so as to 
involve collision the former must keep 
out of the way of the latter. If one 
vessel is overtaking another she must 
keep out of the way of the last-named 
vessel. 

OOLLO'DION, a substance prepared 
by dissolving pyroxiline (gun-cotton) 
in ether, or in a mixture of ether and 
alcohol, which forms a useful substitute 
for adhesive plaster in the case of slight 
wounds. When the fluid solution is 
applied to the cut or wound it immedi¬ 
ately dries into a semi-transparent, 
tenacious film, which adheres firmly to 
the part, and under it the wound or 
abrasion heals without inflammation. 
In a slightly modified form collodion 
is also employed as the basis of a photo¬ 
graphic process called the collodion pro¬ 
cess. See Photography. 

COL'LOIDS, non-crystallizable sub¬ 
stances, such as gelatine, gum, etc. 
See Dialysis. 

COLLOT D'HERBOIS (kol-o-dar- 
bwa), Jean Marie, French revolutionary, 
born in 1750, On the outbreak of the 
revolution he soon became prominent 
as a leader of the Mountain or extreme 
party. After filling several missions he 
was sent by Robespierre along with 
Fouch6 to Lyons in 1793, with almost 
unlimited powers, and was guilty of the 
most flagrant enormities. Returning 
to Paris he became a determined op¬ 
ponent of Robespierre, and being chosen 
president of the Convention (19th July, 
1794), contributed to his fall. A few 
weeks after he was banished to Cayenne, 
■where he died in 1796. 

COLLU'SION, in law, a secret agree¬ 
ment between opposing litigants to ob¬ 
tain a particular judicial decision on a 
preconcerted statement of facts, whether 
true or false, to the injury of a third 
party. Collusion, when proved to exist, 
nullifies the judgment obtained through 
it. 

COLOGNE (ko-lon'), German, Koln 
(keuln), a city of Rhenish Prussia, on the 
left bank of the Rhine, forming, in con¬ 
nection with Deutz, which serves as a 
tete-du-pont on the opposite side of the 
river (across which is a bridge of boat6 


and an iron railway and general traffic 
bridge), a fortress of the first rank. The 
old fortifications, dating from the middle 
ages, are being, or have been recently, 
swept away, new works being construct¬ 
ed in accordance with the principles of 
modern fortification. There are many 
fine old buildings as well as excellent 
modern ones; the churches in particu¬ 
lar are interesting. The most important 
edifice of all is the cathedral, begun in 
1248, one of the finest and largest Gothic 



Cologne, showing cathedral and church 
ot St. Martin. 

structures in Europe. It was only 
completed in the 19th century, there 
being expended on it in 1828-84 over 
$5,000,000. It is in the form of a cross; 
its entire length is about 445 feet ' 
breadth, 200 ft.; height to ridge of roof, 
202 ft., height of the two western towers, 
between which is a grand portal, 520 
feet, being thus among the highest 
edifices in the world. The council- 
house, museum, and the great St. Martin 
Church with its imposing tower should 
also be mentioned. The manufactures 
embrace sugar, tobacco, glue, carpets, 
leather, machinery, chemicals, pianos, 
and the celebrated eaude Cologne. The 
trade by river and railway is very great. 
—It was annexed to the German Empire 
in 870, and became one of the most 
powerful and wealthy cities of the 
Hanseatic League, but latterly it de¬ 
clined. In 1792 it ceased to be a free 
city. It was taken by the French in 
1794, ceded to them by the Treaty of 
LunSville in 1801, and restored to 
Prussia in 1814. Pop. 372,229. 

COLOM'BIA, Republic of, formerly 
called New Granada, a republic of South 
America, consisting of the eight depart¬ 
ments or states of Antioquia, Bolivar, 
Boyaca, Cauca, Cundinamarca, Mag¬ 
dalena, Santander, and Tolima. The 
population is now about 3,593,600. 
The chief towns are Bogota, the capital, 
Medellin, Barranquilla, Cartagena, and 
Bucaramanga. The area is estimated 
officially at 473,202 sq. miles, but there 
is much disputed boundary territory 
in the inland regions toward the south 
and east. Late in 1903 the department 
of Panama proclaimed itself an inde¬ 
pendent republic, and was at once 
recognized by the U. States, which 
has concluded with it an agreement for 
the construction of a canal across the 
isthmus. The flora is rich and luxuriant. 
A great part of the country is still 
covered with virgin forests, which yield 
excellent building-wood, Peruvian bark, 
caoutchouc, vanilla, etc. The fauna 
includes the jaguar, puma, tapir, arma¬ 


dillo, sloth, various species of deer, and 
the gigantic condor. The mineral wealth 
is various and abundant, though still 
imperfectly explored. It comprises coal, 
gold, silver (both now largely worked 
by foreign companies), emeralds, and 
Salt. Industry is at a very low stage. 
Maize, bananas, and plantains are the 
chief articles of food. Tobacco and 
coffee are cultivated and exported. 
Sugar Is also grown. Manufactures can 
scarcely be said tc exist, Panama hats, 
mats, and coarse cotton cloths being 
almost the only articles that can be 
mentioned in this class. The chief ports 
are Sabanilla, the port of Barranquilla 
and Cartagena. The loss of the Isthmus 
of Panama has deprived Colombia of 
much of its commercial importance 
The foreign trade of the country is 
chiefly with Britain and the United 
States. The exports are chiefly precious 
metals, hides, coffee, tobacco, etc.; the 
imports, manufactured goods.—By the 
constitution, as amended in 1886, the 
executive power is vested in a president 
elected for six years, the legislative 
power in a congress of two houses—the 
Senate and the House of Representa¬ 
tives. The former consists of twenty- 
four representatives, three from each 
department, the latter of representatives 
elected by universal suffrage for four 
years, one for every 50,000 inhabitants. 
The revenue is generally under the ex¬ 
penditure and the finances are in an 
unsatisfactory state. New Granada 
was discovered by Alonso de Ojeda in 
1499; it was visited by Columbus on 
his fourth voyage, in 1502. The first 
Spanish settlement was made in 1510 
at iisanta Maria in the Gulf of Darien, 
and the whole country was formed into 
a province under a captain-general in 
1547. New Granada declared its inde¬ 
pendence of Spain in 1811, and after 
eleven years of warfare succeeded with 
the help of Venezuela in effecting its lib¬ 
eration. Both states then united with 
Ecuador, also freed from the Spanish 
domination, to form the first republic 
of Colombia; but internal dissensions 
arising, the three states again separated 
in 1831, forming three independent 
republics, which have had a very 
troubled existence. In 1861 the states 
forming New Granada by agreement 
adopted a new constitution, the republic 
henceforth to be called the United 
States of Colombia. This title was re¬ 
tained till, by the new constitution 
adopted in 1886, the state ceased to be 
a federal republic and became a unitary 
republic, with the name of Republic of 
Colombia. The secession of Panama in 
1903 was partly brought about by the 
dilatoriness of the central government 
in concluding a satisfactory arrange¬ 
ment with the United States in regard" to 
the construction of an interoceanic 
canal. 

COLOM'BO, a seaport town, the 
capital of Ceylon, on the south west 
coast, and about 70 miles west by south 
of Kandy, with which it is connected by 
railway Pop. 158,093. 

CO'LON, the middle portion of the 
large intestine, or that which lies be¬ 
tween the caecum and the rectum, or 
terminal portion. In man it is about 
4 J feet long, and forms a series of 









COLON 


COLORADO 


pouches in which the digested food is 
for a time detained. It is itself believed 
to have some digestive power. 

CO'LON, a punctuation mark, thus: 
used to mark a pause in the sense that 
might also be indicated by a full stop. 

COLON', or ASPINWALL (the former 
is the official name), a free port of 
Panama, on Manzanillo Island, on the 
north side of the Isthmus of Panama, at 
the Atlantic extremity of the inter- 
oceanic railway, and near that of the 
Panama Canal. Established in con¬ 
nection with the railway, it had an im¬ 
portant transit trade before the canal 
was begun, and since then the place has 
been entirely transformed, a new town 
with wide and regular streets having 
been built on a tract of land reclaimed by 
the builders of the canal. There is 
extensive harbor accommodation. Pop. 
estimated at 8,000 to 10,000. 

COLONEL (ker'nel), a military title 
indicative of a rank under that of briga¬ 
dier general. In the United States army 
a colonel commands a regiment. In 
England and Europe generally the title 
has more an honorary than an actual 
value. 

COLONIAL DAMES OF AMERICA, 

national society of, an organization of 
women patriots, founded in 1890, mem¬ 
bership in which is limited to women 
lineally descended from an ancestor of 
distinction who resided in the colonies 
previously to 1776. Its purpose is the 
collection of interesting documents 
relative to colonial and revolutionary 
&.ff fiirs. 

COLONIAL DAMES OF AMERICA, a 

patriotic society of women organized 
in 1892 for the purpose of preserving 
records, manuscripts, etc., pertaining to 
the colonies. Membership is conditioned 
on being descended from a worthy 
ancestor settling in the colonies pre¬ 
viously to 1750. It has a membership 
of 5,000 and is distinct from the other 
society of the same name. 

COLON'NA, an Italian family that 
had become important as early as the 
8th century. Its fame during the middle 
ages eclipsed that of every other Roman 
family except the great rival house of 
the Orsini. The Colonna family is at 
present represented by several branches, 
the Colonna-Sciarra, Colonna-Stigliano, 
etc. It played an important part in 
the affairs of Europe, became allied to 
the greatest houses of Italy, Spain, and 
Germany and has furnished many cele¬ 
brated warriors, popes, and cardinals. 

COLON'NA, Vittoria, the most re¬ 
nowned poetess of Italy, was born in 
1490. At the age of seventeen she was 
married to Ferdinand, Marquis of 
Pescara, the companion of her youth, 
who became one of the distinguished 
men of his age. All her poems were 
devoted to the memory of her husband. 
She died at Rome in 1547. Her most 
celebrated work is the Rime Spirituali, 
1538. They are considered among the 
happiest imitations of Petrarca. 

COLONNADE', in architecture, any 
series or range of columns placed at 
certain intervals from each other. When 
surrounding the building on the ex¬ 
terior the colonnade is called a peristyle; 
when projecting beyond the line of the 
building it is called a portico. 


COL'ONY, a settlement formed in one 
country by the inhabitants of another. 
Colonies may either be formed in de¬ 
pendence on the mother country or in 
independence. In the latter case the 
name of colony is retained only in a 
historical sense. Properly, perhaps, 
the term should be limited to a settle¬ 
ment which carries on a direct culti¬ 
vation of the soil, as in the Dominion 
of Canada or Australia; such settle¬ 
ments as those of the British in Hindus¬ 
tan or Malta being the mere super 
position on the natives of a ruling race 
which takes little or no part in the 
general industry of the country. The 
motives which lead to the formation of 
colonies, and the manner of their forma¬ 
tion, are various. Sometimes the am¬ 
bition of extending territory and the 
desire of increasing wealth have been 
the chief impulses in colonization; but 
colonies may now be said to have be¬ 
come a necessity for the redundant 
population of European states. Among 
ancient nations the principal pro¬ 
moters of colonization were the Phoeni¬ 
cians, the Greeks, and the Romans; 
the greatest colonizers in modern times 
have been the English and the Spani¬ 
ards, next to whom may be reckoned 
the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the 
French. 

The Germans have colonized parts of 
South America and Africa, and since 
the war with Spain the United States, 
by the acquisition of Porto Rico and 
the Philippine Islands have become one 
of the colonial powers of the world. 

COLOR, the sensation in the brain 
produced by different rates of vibration 
of light waves which stimulate the 
retina and give rise to chemical changes 
therein which when reaching the brain 
are interpreted in a change of conscious¬ 
ness; also the pigment used in art to 
produce the sensation. Different 
lengths in the light waves produce 
different colors. For example, when 
the light-wave is tstthf of an inch long, 
red is the color produced, and as the 
waves decrease in force, we see yellow, 
green, blue, and so on, through the 
spectrum. According to the theory of 
Chevreuil, now generally accepted, 
white light is the union of all colors, 
and its decomposition by an object re¬ 
veals the color separated from the rest. 
Thus, a rose absorbs all colors but red, 
which it reflects; while a white sub¬ 
stance, rejecting all colors, is therefore 
colorless. Correctly speaking, there are 
but six colors—three primary (red, blue, 
and yellow), and three secondary 
(orange, violet, and green). Orange is 
composed of purple and yellow, violet 
of red and blue, green of yellow and 
blue. All other colors are compounds 
of these. 

Complementary Colors are those 
which, combined with another color 
or colors, make up the three primary 
colors constituting white light. If the 
given color be primitive, its comple¬ 
ment is composed of the other two 
primitive colors. For example, the 
complementary color of blue is orange 
—that is to say, red and yellow. If the 
given color be a secondary, its comple¬ 
mentary is the remaining primitive 
i color—as, for instance, the comple¬ 


mentary color of green (blue and yel¬ 
low) is red. In painting, brilliancy of 
coloring may be obtained by placing 
complementary colors side by side, 
because each lends to the other a favor¬ 
able halo, while the juxtaposition of 
non-complementary colors has the op¬ 
posite effect of dullness. This method 
of heightening and softening colors was 
used with great effect by Delacroix, and 
is today much practiced by French and 
Spanish painters. 

The fact that color is really a sensa¬ 
tion in the brain, rather than a quality 
of the thing that is colored, is proved 
by the strange power which many peo¬ 
ple have of being able to hear colors. 
Statistics go to show that one person 
in every eight can hear colors; that is 
to say, one person in every eight, when 
looking at certain vivid colors, can hear 
peculiar sounds. On the other hand 
many persons, on hearing certain 
musical sounds, can see certain colors; 
sound on the one hand, producing color 
sensations, color on the other, produ¬ 
cing sound sensations. These interest¬ 
ing facts are easily understood when we 
remember that in the brain there are 
different receiving centers for the 
various senses—sight, hearing, taste, 
smell—and a vast area of the brain 
used in the coordination of these sensa¬ 
tions. Slight derangements of the 
cerebral machinery might well be 
imagined to cause a mixing of the 
functions of these coordinating parts 
and thus produce the phenomena men¬ 
tioned. A Swiss boy was discovered 
recently who could taste, see, and smell 
sounds, see and hear odors, and so on. 
The problem is one of the most inter¬ 
esting in the physiology of the brain. 

COLORADO, (kol-o-ra'do) one of the 
United States of America, situated in 
the central belt of states in the Rocky 
Mountains, between lat. 37° and 41° n., 
and Ion. 102° and 109° w., and containing 



an area of 103,645 sq. miles, being sixth 
in size among the states. It is 
bounded on the north by Wyoming and 
Nebraska; east by Nebraska and Kan¬ 
sas; south by Oklahoma and New Mex¬ 
ico, and west by Utah. Its form is that 
of a perfect parallelogram, and it is the 
only state whose lines are so defined. 
It is traversed from north to south _ by 
the main range of the Rocky Mountains. 
The plains of Kansas, Nebraska and 
Colorado were, in passed ages, covered 
















COLORADO 


COLOR-BLINDNESS 


by a great paleozoic ocean, and are now 
filled with fossil remains of fishes, rep¬ 
tiles and animals. They rise gradually 
from the Missouri river to the base of 
the great Rocky chain. This broad and 
comparatively level expanse is destitute 
of timber, excepting a fringe of cotton¬ 
woods on the borders of the streams, 
but is covered with short nutritious 
grasses. 

The plains east of the mountains con¬ 
stitute about one-third of the total area. 
Among the elevated ranges are four 
large natural parks—the North, South, 
Middle,and San Luis,which form distinct, 
picturesque and beautiful features of 
the mountain system and are watered 
by numerous streams and covered with 
verdure. Thousands of square miles 
are covered by forests, chiefly yellow 
and white pine and spruce. None of 
the harder woods, except a few clusters 
of scrub oaks, worthless for anything but 
fuel, exist in Colorado. Four-fifths of 
the state has an elevation of 4,000 to 
10,000 feet above the sea. The lowest 
on the eastern border is 3,703 feet, and 
on the western, 4,435. The mountain 
parks are 8,000 to 9,500 feet above 
tide water. The summit of the main 
range averages 11,000 feet. Seventy-two 
peaks from which the snow never disap¬ 
pears, rise to heights between 13,500 and 
14,500 feet. The loftiest of these is the 
Sierra Blanca, a part of the chain en¬ 
closing the San Luis park, 14,483 feet 
high: Among the others being Pikes 
Peak and Longs Peak. 

The geographical center of Colorado 
is at a point three miles north-northeast 
of Spinney Station, on the Colorado 
Midland railway, in Park county. 

The climate of Colorado is remarka¬ 
bly healthful. The air is dry, clear, 
and well adapted to the cure of diseases 
of the lungs and throat. The annual 
range of temperature is much less than 
in other sections of the country. In 
the various parts it is about 60° F., and 
the highest temperature does not ex¬ 
ceed 80° nor the lowest 20° below. 
Health resorts are numerous in the 
mountain regions and there are also 
mineral and thermal springs. The mean 
temperature at Denver is 50°. 

The soil is fruitful and the climate is 
well adapted to the growth of cereals. 
There is a large supply of native grass 
in Colorado, and this furnishes pasture 
for the large herds of cattle and sheep. 
Vegetables of all kinds and many fruits 
are successfully grown. The soil of the 
greater part of the state is very fruitful 
where it can have sufficient moisture. 
Irrigation is used to a great extent, and 
in such regions, wheat, corn, barley, 
oats, hay, and potatoes are staple 
products. Cattle and sheep raising are 
important industries. 

The chief industry of the state is min¬ 
ing, and in its yield of gold and silver it 
is the leading state of the Union. 
Nearly every known mineral is found 
within the state. There are thousands 
of mines which produce lodes of silver 
and gold. There are also large deposits 
of lead ores, and the state produces 
about 45 per cent of the entire lead out¬ 
put of the whole country. One of the 
richest gold fields in the world was 
opened up in the Cripple Creek district 


in 1896. In various parts of the state 
are iron mines. There are large sup¬ 
plies of copper, zinc, cement, silica, 
gypsum, onyx, and several valuable 
clays. There are many veins of anthra¬ 
cite and bituminous coal. 

The principal manufacturing indus¬ 
tries are in connection with the mineral 
products of the state; they are brass 
works, lead works, machine shops, 
foundries, iron works,building materials, 
tin, copper works, flouring mills, and 
furniture. 

Colorado has a state university, agri¬ 
cultural college, school of mines, state 
normal school, all of which are sustained 
by legislative appropriations. Other 
institutions of learning are Colorado Col¬ 
lege, University of Denver, Westminster 
University of Colorado, Presbyterian 
College of the Southwest. 

Colorado was a part of the immense 
Territory of Louisiana ceded to the 
United States by Napoleon Bonaparte 
in 1803. The first explorations were 
made by Spaniards from Mexico in 1540- 
42, the first of which, under Francisco 
Vasquiz di Coronado, found in New Mex¬ 
ico near the southern border of Colorado a 
peculiar race of people dwelling in towns 
built of stone and adobe, and far super¬ 
ior in intelligence to the savage tribes of 
nomads. The southwestern part of the 
state is strewn with the ruins of these 
people, who were of Aztec or Toltec 
origin, probably the former, ancestors 
or contemporaries of the vast horde 
which swept down into Anahuac, over¬ 
threw the Toltecs and occupied their 
lands. Several other expeditions came 
up from the south in later times, and 
some of them penetrated the plains as 
far east as the Missouri river. The 
remnant of Hernando De Soto’s army, 
after the death of the conqueror of 
Florida, came west to the Rocky moun¬ 
tains, but did not explore them. A 
Spanish cavalier, Don Juan de Onato, 
passed up the Rio Grande river into the 
San Luis park in 1595, and discovered 
gold and silver there. Several French 
expeditions from New Orleans pene¬ 
trated far out upon the plains toward 
the mountains, the first in 1712, others 
from the same source occurred in 
1741. 

The first regularly organized Ameri¬ 
can exploration of the Rocky moun¬ 
tains occurred in 1806. It was 
conducted by Lieut. Zebulon M. Pike, 
whose report contained the first authen¬ 
tic record of the extent and value of the 
region. The second was by Maj. Stephen 
S. Long in 1820. In 1842 John C. Fre¬ 
mont began a series of five explorations, 
which developed practicable routes for 
the Pacific railways, and led ultimately to 
the construction of the Union Pacific 
railway from the Missouri river to San 
Francisco. The Territory of Colorado 
was organized by act of congress ap¬ 
proved February 28, 1861, and Maj. 
William Gilpin was appointed governor. 
It was admitted into the Union as a 
State, August 1, 1876. From 1876 to 
1888 Colorado was republican in national 
politics, but in the three presidential 
elections after 1888 the silver interests of 
the State made it decidedly democratic. 
In 1896 and 1900 especially, the demo¬ 
crats, populists, and Silver republicans, 


in fusion, controlled a large proportion 
of votes in the State. In 1904 and 1908 
the state was carried by the republic¬ 
ans. 

Colorado is the most populous of the 
Rocky Mountain States. The following 
gives the population by decades: 1860, 
34,277; 1870, 39.864: 1880, 194,327; 

1890, 412,198; 1900, 539,700, of which 
only 10,654 were colored; 1908, 800,- 
000 . 

COLORADO, a name of two rivers of 
the United States.—(1) The Western Col¬ 
orado, or Rio Colorado, formed by the 
junction of the Green and Grand Rivers, 
at about lat. 38° n.; Ion. 110° w., in 
Utah. It flows southwest and south 
through Arizona, and between Arizona 
and Nevada and California, and after a 
total course, including Green River, of 
about 1200 miles, falls into the Gulf of 
California. Among the most wonderful 
natural objects in North America is the 
Big Canon of the Colorado, between Ion. 
112° and 115° w. Here the river flows 
between walls of rock which are nearly 
vertical, and are in some places 6000 
feet high. This cafion is more than 300 
miles long. (2) A river in Texas which 
rises in the northwest part of the State, 
flows generally southeast, and after a 
course of about 900 miles falls into the 
Gulf of Mexico at the town of Mata- 
gordo. 

COLORADO BEETLE, an American 

species of beetle, nearly half an inch in 
length, almost oval, of a yellowish color 
marked with black spots and blotches, 
and on the elytra with ten black longi¬ 
tudinal stripes. The wings, which are 
folded under the elytra, are of a blood- 
red color. It is a native of the eastern 
slopes of the Rocky Mountains, and 
works great havoc among the potato 
crops. 

COLORADO COLLEGE, an endowed 

institution at Colorado Springs, founded 
in 1874. It has a library of 35,000 
volumes, has about 700 students and 
$450,000 productive funds. 

COLORADO DESERT, a region in 
southern California, considerably below 
the level of the sea, and consisting of 
arid, sandy wastes. 

COLORADO SPRINGS, a thriving 
town of El Paso County, Colo., noted 
for the salubrity of its climate and its 
fine mineral springs. Pop. 25,000. 

COLORADO STATE AGRICULTUR¬ 
AL COLLEGE, a school of agriculture at 
Fort Collins, Colo., founded in 1876. 
It has an attendance of 400 and a 
library of 15,000 volumes. 

COLORADO, UNIVERSITY OF, the 
state university of Colorado at Boulder, 
Colo., founded in 1861 and opened in 
1877. It is a complete university with 
medical and law schools, and offers full 
courses in the arts and the sciences. 
It has a library of 25,000 volumes, and 
a registration of above 500 students. 

COLOR-BLINDNESS, total or partial 
incapability of distinguishing colors. 
Color-blindness has been divided into 
three grades: (a) Inability to discern 
any color, so that light and shade, or 
black and white, are the only variations 
perceived, (b) Inability to distinguish 
the nicer shades of the more composite 
colors, as browns, grays, and neutral 
tints, (c) Inability to distinguish be- 






COLORIMETER 


COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 


tween the primary colors, red, blue, and 
yellow, or between them and their 
secondaries, green, purple, orange, and 
brown. Red is the color which the 
color-blind are most commonly unable 
to distinguish, while yellow is the most 
easily recognized. Color-blindness 
occurs in eyes whose power of vision, 
as to form and distance, is quite per¬ 
fect, and may exist unknown to the 
person affected by it. This defect is 
common especially among men. The 
cause of it in almost every case which 
has been carefully investigated has 
been found to be seated in the sen- 
sorium, not in the visual apparatus. 
It will be easily understood that those 
whose eyesight is thus defective are 
disqualified for holding various posi¬ 
tions. 

COLORIM'ETER, an instrument for 
measuring the depth of color in a liquid 
by comparison with a standard liquid 
of the same tint. 

COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY, photog¬ 
raphy which will reproduce the colors 
of the thing, scene, or person photo¬ 
graphed. Experiments have been made 
for years to succeed in accomplishing 
this much-to-be desired purpose, but 
thus far without avail. Experiments 
have been made upon a suggestion of 
J. Clark Maxwell concerning the physiol¬ 
ogy of color but the problem is as yet 
unsolved. 

COLOR PRINTING, the art of produ¬ 
cing pictures, designs, cards, etc., in vari¬ 
ous colors by means of lithography, 
printing from metal blocks, etc. The or¬ 
dinary methods are: (1) the chromo- 
lithographic, in which a tracing of the 
original picture, or the like, is first 
made, and a copy transferred to as 
many stones as there are colors in the 
original, every color requiring a fresh 
stone. The drawing on each stone is 
made to fit in, or register, with the 
preceding one, and as the paper passes 
through the machine an additional 
color is added each time, and thus the 
picture is built up color upon color 
(each being allowed to dry before the 
next is put on) until it is completed. 
Some chromos or oleographs may have 
as many as 25 or 30 printings or colors. 
(2) Block or surface color printing is 
specially adapted for book illustrations 
or similar work where nicety of detail 
or rapidity of production is required. 
As in chromo-lithography various print¬ 
ings are necessary ; but these, while 
producing similar effects, are reduced in 
number by a method of printing several 
tints of the same color at one operation. 
Each block, which is usually of zinc and 
prepared in the usual way, is capable of 
producing three or more gradations of 
the same color; the darkest shade from 
the normal surface, lighter shades being 
got from parts which have been bitten 
or corroded in an almost inperceptible 
degree—the deeper corrosions giving, 
of course, the lightest shade. When all 
the tints of one color are thus printed 
from one block and at one operation, a 
second block with gradations, in the 
same way, is used, registering as in 
chromo-lithography, and so on until the 
picture is finished. 

COLORS, a term used to indicate the 
flag or standard, of a people or a party j 


hence, in popular speech, anything 
which shows the true state of affairs. 

The colors carried in the United States 
Army by the various regiments and 
battalions are two in number, the na¬ 
tional flag (see Flag) and the regimental 
color, both of which are of prescribed 
size and form for the various arms of 
the service. The battalions of engineers 
carry the national flag, with the title of 
the battalion embroidered in silver on 
the center stripe; and the battalion 
color, of scarlet silk having in the center 
a castle, with the number of the bat¬ 
talion placed above the castle, and the 
words “U. S. Engineers” below. The 
artillery corps have similar colors, on 
which the corps device of two crossed 
cannon are emblazoned. Infantry regi¬ 
ments have the same national color as 
artillery and engineers; the regimental 
color being of blue silk, the coat of arms 
of the United States embroidered in silk 
on the center, beneath the eagle, a red 
scroll with number and name of regi¬ 
ment embroidered in white; cavalry 
standards in size are somewhat smaller 
than those carried by the infantry and 
consist of a national flag made of silk. 
The regimental standard is of yellow 
silk, with the coat of arms of the United 
States embroidered in silk on the center, 
beneath the eagle a red scroll, with 
number and name of regiment em¬ 
broidered in yellow, fringe yellow. 

COLOSSE'UM, a name given to the 
Flavian Amphitheatre in Rome, a large 
edifice for gladiatorial combats, fights 
of wild beasts, and similar sports. It 
was begun by Vespasian, and finished 
by Titus 80 a.d. The outline of the 
Colosseum is elliptic, the exterior length 
of the building being 620 and its breadth 
513 feet; it is pierced with eighty open¬ 
ings or vomitoria in the ground story, 
over which are superimposed three other 
stories, the whole rising perpendicularly 
to the height of 160 feet. Although two- 
thirds of the original building have dis¬ 
appeared it is still a wonderful structure. 

COLOS'SIANS, Epistle to the. was 
written to the Colossians by the Apostle 
Paul either from Rome or Caesarea, at 
the same time that he wrote the Epistles 
to the Ephesians and to Philemon. The 
epistle contains a summary of Christian 
doctrine, especially dwelling on the di¬ 
vine power and majesty of Christ, and 
a series of practical exhortations to 
specific duties of Christian morality. 

COLOS'SUS, in sculpture, a statue of 
enormous magnitude. The Asiatics, the 
Egyptians, and in particular the Greeks, 
have excelled in' these works. Among 
the colossi of Greece the most celebrated 
was the Colossus of Rhodes, a brass 
statue of Apollo 70 cubits high, esteemed 
one of the wonders of the world, erected 
at the port of Rhodes by Chares, 290 or 
288 b.c. It was thrown down by an 
earthquake about 224 b.c. There is no 
authority for the popularly-received 
statement that it bestrode the harbor 
mouth, and that the Rhodian vessels 
could pass under its legs; and Bar¬ 
tholdi’s statue of Liberty presented to 
the U. States by the French nation, and 
which measures 104 feet, or to the ex¬ 
tremity of the torch in the hand of the 
figure 138 feet. It is erected at New 
York harbor on a pedestal 114 feet, is 


constructed for a lighthouse with one of 
the most powerful fixed lights in the 
world, and stands 317 feet above mean 
tide. 

COLQUITT, Alfred Holt, an Ameri¬ 
can senator, governor, and soldier, born 
in Georgia in 1824, died in 1894. He 
served in the Mexican war, was a mem¬ 
ber of congress from 1853-5, and rose to 
the rank of major-general in the Con¬ 
federate army. He was governor of 
Georgia from 1876 to 1882 and from 
that year to his death United States 
Senator from Georgia. 

COLT, Samuel, an American in¬ 
ventor, born in 1814, died in 1862. 
Colt invented the revolver and his 
name is a synonym for the weapon. 
He got the idea while working in his 
father’s factory at Hartford, Conn., and 
made frequent improvements on his 
original patent. He laid the first sub¬ 
marine cable in New York harbor and 
was the first to construct a rational 
protective armor for water cables of any 
kind. 

COLTON, Walter, an American pio¬ 
neer and author, born in Vermont in 
1797, died in 1851. He was early a 
teacher and having gone to California 
in the early forties he founded The 
Californian, the first newspaper pub¬ 
lished in the state. His newspaper 
was the first to announce the discovery 
of gold on the Pacific coast. 

COLT’S REVOLVER. See Revolver. 

COLUM'BIA, the capital of South 
Carolina, situated on an elevated plain 
on the left bank of the Congaree. It is 
regularly laid out, and contains some fine 
ublic buildings, including the state- 
ouse. Among the educational institu¬ 
tions are the South Carolina University, 
founded in 1804, and a Presbyterian 
theological college. Pop. 25,100. 

COLUMBIA, a city in Pennsylvania, 
on the Susquehanna, a great mart for 
lumber. Pop. 14,116. 

COLUMBIA, British. See British 
Columbia. 

COLUMBIA, District of, a small tract 
of country in the U. States, on the 
Potomac, about 120 miles from its 
mouth, surrounded on three sides by 
Maryland, forming a neutral district 
for the seat of the national government. 
It has an area of 64 sq. miles; was 
formed into a territory in 1871; and 
contains the city of Washington, which 
has been the national capital since 1800 
(and now includes also Georgetown). 
The affairs of the district and of Wash¬ 
ington are administered by three com¬ 
missioners directly under Congress. 
Pop. 298,718. 

COLUMBIA RIVER, or OREGON, a 

river in N. America, flowing into the 
Pacific Ocean, and rising at the base of 
the Rocky Mountains in British Colum¬ 
bia. It has a very winding course partly 
in British Columbia but mainly in the 
U. States, where it receives two large 
tributaries, Clark’s River and Snake 
River. Latterly it turns abruptly to 
the west and forms the. boundary be¬ 
tween Washington Territory and Ore¬ 
gon. It drains an area of 298,000 sq. 
miles, and has a length of about 1400 
miles. 

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, a large 
institution in New York City, founded 




COLUMBIAN UNIVERSITY 


COLUMN 


in 1746. It has an endowment of 
$20,000,000, an income of nearly 
$1,000,000, a library of 315,000 volumes, 
and a total attendance of 3632 students. 
The university is made up of an under¬ 
graduate department and graduate 
schools of science, medicine and law, 
while its affiliations with various theo¬ 
logical schools in New York enable 
it to offer education in theology also. 
For many years it has been slowly 
adding institution after institution to 
its body until now it is virtually 
equipped as a complete university. It 
confers all degrees, including engineer¬ 
ing (mechanical and mining) and re¬ 
cently it absorbed Barnard College and 
Teachers’ College, thus providing peda¬ 
gogy to its curricula. It is governed by 
a board of 24 trustees. 

COLUMBIAN UNIVERSITY, an in¬ 
stitution at Washington, D. C., founded 
in 1821 by members of the Baptist 
church. It offers courses in the arts and 
sciences, in medicine, law, dentistry, 
theology, and in electrical, mining, and 
mechanical engineering. The univer¬ 
sity has an endowment of $1,000,000, a 
library of 20,000 volumes, and a regis¬ 
tration of 1420 students. 

COL'UMBINE, the popular name of 
plants with five colored sepals and five 
spurred petals. The common columbine 
is a favorite flower, and owes its name 
to the fancied resemblance of the petals 
to the form of pigeons. 

COL'UMBINE, in the older pan¬ 
tomimes, a female mask with whom 
Harlequin was in love; their marriage 
formed the denouement. In modern 
pantomime the chief female dancer in 
the harlequinade. 

COLUM'BIUM. See Niobium. 

COLUMBUS, a town in Georgia, on 
the Chattahoochee River, well built, 
with cotton and other manufactures. 
Pop. 20.000. 

COLUM'BUS, Ohio, the capital of the 
state, in Franklin county, on the east 
bank of the Scioto. It contains some 
notable public buildings. The capitol 
is second in size only to that of Wash- 



State capitol, Columbus, O. 

Ington, and is built of gray limestone in 
the simple Doric style Other buildings 
are the deaf and dumb institution, in¬ 
stitution for the blind, lunatic asylum, 
penitentiary, R. Catholic cathedral, etc. 
Educational institutions include the 
state university, Columbus medical 
college, Starling medical college, etc. 
There is a very extensive trade, and the 
manufactures are important and varied. 
Pop. 179,370. 

COLUM'BUS, Christopher, was born 
In Genoese territory in 1435 or 1436, 
died at Valladolid, Spain, 1506. His 


father, Dcmenico Colombo, a poor wool- 
comber, gave him a careful education. 
He appears to have gone to sea at an 
early age and to have navigated all 
parts of the Mediterranean and some of 
the coasts beyond the Straits of Gibral¬ 
tar. In 1470 we find him at Lisbon, 
where he married the daughter of Bar¬ 
tolommeo de Palestrello, a distinguished 
navigator. He had gradually come to 
the conclusion that there were unknown 



Columbus. 

lands belonging to Eastern Asia sepa¬ 
rated from Europe by the Atlantic: 
while the Portuguese were seeking to 
reach India by a southeast course round 
Africa he was convinced that there must 
be a shorter way by the west. He 
applied in vain to Genoa for assistance, 
and equally fruitless were his endeavors 
to interest John II. of Portugal in the 
enterprise. He then determined to 
apply to the Spanish court; and after 
many disappointments he induced Fer¬ 
dinand and Isabella to equip and man 
three vessels for a voyage of discovery. 
It was early in the morning of Friday, 
on the 3d of August, 1492, that Colum¬ 
bus set sail from the port of Palos, and 
after sailing for two months the expe¬ 
dition narrowly escaped failure. The 
variation of the needle so alarmed the 
crews that they were on the point of 
breaking out into open mutiny, and he 
was obliged to promise that he would 
turn back if three more days brought 
no discovery. On the third day (12th 
Oct. 1492) the island of Guanahani or 
San Salvador was sighted, which Colum¬ 
bus believed to belong to Eastern Asia 
and to be connected with India—a 
belief which he carried with him to his 
grave. Hence the mistaken name of 
Indians applied to the natives of Ameri¬ 
ca, and that of West Indies applied to 
the group of islands. Columbus, planted 
the royal standard, and in the name of 
his sovereigns took possession of the 
country, which, in memory of his reser¬ 
vation he called San Salvador. He 
then sailed in search of other lands, and 
discovered Cuba, St. Domingo, and 
some other of the West India Islands. 
Being so far successful, he built a fort 
at Hispaniola, Hayti, left some of his 
men there, and set out on his return to 
Europe, where he was received with 


almost royal honors. In 1493 he set out 
on his second great voyage from Cadi*, 
with three large ships of heavy burden 
and fourteen caravels, carrying 1500 
men. He discovered the island of 
Dominica, and afterwards Mariegalante, 
Guadeloupe, and Porto Rico, and at 
length arrived at Hispaniola. Finding 
the colony destroyed, he built a fortified 
town, which he called, in honor of the 
queen, Isabella. He then left the island 
in order to make new discoveries, 
visited Jamaica, and returning after a 
voyage of five months, worn down with 
fatigue, found to his great joy that his 
brother Bartolommeo had arrived at 
Isabella with provisions and other 
supplies for the colony. In May, 1498, 
he sailed with six vessels on his third 
voyage. Three of his vessels he sent 
direct to Hispaniola; with the three 
others he took a more southerly direc¬ 
tion, and having discovered Trinidad 
and the continent of America, returned 
to Hispaniola. His colony had now 
been removed from Isabella, according 
to his orders, to the other side of the 
island, and a new fortress erected called 
St. Domingo. Columbus found the 
colony in a state of confusion, but soon 
restored tranquility. His enemies, in 
the meantime, endeavored to convince 
his sovereigns that his plan was to make 
himself independent, and Columbus was 
not only displaced, but Francisco de 
Bobadilla, a new governor who had 
come from Spain, even sent him to that 
country in chains. On his arrival (in 
1500) orders were sent directing him 
to be set at liberty and inviting him to 
court, but for this injurious treatment he 
never got redress, though great promises 
were made. After some time he was 
able to set out on his fourth and last 
voyage (1502) in four slender vessels 
supplied by the court. In this expedi¬ 
tion he was accompanied by his brother 
Bartolommeo and his son Hernando. 
He encountered every imaginable dis¬ 
aster from storms and shipwreck, and 
returned to Spain, sick and exhausted, 
in 1504. The death of the queen soon 
followed, and he urged in vain on Fer¬ 
dinand the fulfilment of his promises; 
but after two years of illness, humilia¬ 
tions, and despondency, Columbus died 
at Valladolid. His remains were trans¬ 
ported, according to his will, to St. 
Domingo, but on the cession of His¬ 
paniola to France they were removed to 
Havana in Cuba in 1796. In 1899 they 
were carried back to Spain. 

COL'UMN, in architecture, a round 
pillar, a cylindrical solid body set up¬ 
right and primarily intended to support 
some superincumbent weight. A col-, 
umn has as its most essential portion 
a long solid body, called a shaft, set 
vertically on a stylobate, or on a con¬ 
geries of moldings which forms its base, 
the shaft being surmounted by a more or 
less bulky mass which forms its capital. 
In classical architectecture columns 
have commonlj’’ to support an entable- 
ture consisting of three divisions, the 
architrave, frieze, and cornice, adorned 
with moldings, etc. The accompany¬ 
ing cut will illustrate these and other 
terms. Columns are distinguished by 
the names of the styles of architecture 
to which they belong; thus there are 











COLUMN 


COMETS 


Hindu, Egyptian, Grecian, Roman, and 
Gothic columns. In classic architecture 
they are further distinguished by the 
name of the order to which they belong, 
as Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Composite 
or Tuscan columns. They may also be 
characterized by some peculiarity of 
position, of construction, of form, or of 



Column (Tuscan order), Illustrating the terms 
applied to the several parts, 

ornament, as attached, twisted, cabled, 
etc., columns. Columns are chiefly used 
in the construction or adornment of 
buildings. They have also been used, 
however, singly for various purposes, 
especially for monuments. See Corinth¬ 
ian, Doric, Ionic, Gothic, etc. 

COLUMN, in military tactics, a 
formation of troops drawn up in deep 
files, showing a small front; as dis¬ 
tinguished from line, which is extended 
in front and thin in depth. They are 
said to be close or open according to the 
intervals between the battalions, regi¬ 
ments, etc., of which they are composed. 
Sometimes the name column is given to 
a small army, especially when actively 
engaged. 

COMA, in medicine, a state of com¬ 
plete insensibility, resulting from various 
diseases, as apoplexy; from narcotics, 
as opium; from accident or injury to 
the brain; or from excessive cold. 

COMANCHES (ko-man'chez), an 
American Indian tribe formerly roam¬ 
ing through Texas and part of Mexico. 
They were excellent horsemen, and 
extremely warlike, but their numbers 
are now insignificant. Some of them 
have been collected on a reservation in 
the western part of the Indian Territory. 


COMB, an instrument with teeth, 
made of tortoise-shell, ivory, horn, 
wood, bone, metal, or other material, 
used for dressing the hair, and by 
women for keeping the hair in its place 
when dressed. Combs have been used 
from the earliest times by rude as well 
as by civilized races. 

COMBINATION, in the United States, 
a union of persons for the furtherance of 
their business interests. Combination 
is lawful when it is not in restraint of 
trade, nor made with a view of violent¬ 
ly or fraudulently, interfering with 
others in the pursuit of their occupa¬ 
tion. When so, it is called conspiracy 
and is punishable under conspiracy acts. 

COMBUSTION, the operation of fire 
on inflammable substances; or the 
union of an inflammable substance with 
oxygen or some other supporter of com¬ 
bustion, attended with heat and in 
most instances with light. In conse¬ 
quence of the combination of the carbon 
in fuel with the oxygen of the air being 
the universal method of getting heat and 
light, and as when the action takes 
place the fuel is said to burn or undergo 
combustion, the latter term has been 
extended to those cases in which other 
bodies than carbon—for example, phos¬ 
phorus, sulphur, metals, etc.—burn in 
the air or in other substances than air— 
for example, chlorine. Though the 
action between the gas and the more 
solid material, as coal, wood, char¬ 
coal, of whose combination combustion 
is the result, is mutual, the one having 
as much to do with the process as the 
other, yet the former, as oxygen, 
chlorine, iodine, and the compounds 
which they form with each other and 
with nitrogen, have received the name of 
supporters of combustion, while to the 
latter the term combustibles has been 
assigned. 

Spontaneous Combustion is the igni¬ 
tion of a body by the internal develop¬ 
ment of heat without the application 
of fire. It not unfrequently takes place 
among heaps of rags, wool, and cotton 
when lubricated with oil; hay and 
straw when damp or moistened with 
water; and coal in the bunkers, of 
vessels. In the first case the oil rapidly 
combines with the oxygen of the air, 
this being accompanied with great 
heat; in the second case the heat is 
produced by a kind of fermentation; 
in the third by the pyrites of the coal 
rapidly absorbing and combining with 
the oxygen of the air. The term is also 
applied to the extraordinary alleged 
phenomenon of the human body being 
reduced to ashes without the direct 
application of fire. It is said to have 
occurred in the aged and persons that 
were fat and hard drinkers; but most 
chemists reject the theory altogether, 
maintaining that none of the instances 
adduced are well authenticated. 

COMEDIE FRANCAISE, the national 
subsidized theater of France, formed 
in 1680 by the fusion of the two bodies 
into which Moliere’s company of actors 
had split. It is at present managed by 
regulations, made in 1812, modified by 
subsequent resolutions. 

COMEDIETTA, a dramatic com¬ 
position of the comedy class, but not so 
much elaborated as a regular comedy, 


and generally consisting of one or at 
most two acts. 

COM'ETS, certain celestial bodies 
which appear at irregular intervals, 
moving through the heavens in paths 
which seem to correspond with parabolic 
curves, or in a few instances in elliptical 
orbits of great eccentricity. The for¬ 
mer, after being visible from the earth for 
a shorter or longer time, disappear into 
space apparently never to return; the 
latter return to us periodically. Some 
comets are only visible by the aid of the 
telescope, while others can be seen by 
the naked eye. In the latter case they 
usually appear like stars accompanied 
with a train of light, sometimes short 
and sometimes extending over half the 
sky, mostly single and more or less curved 
but sometimes forked. In a comet 
which appeared in 1744 the train was 
divided into several branches, spreading 
out from the head like a fan. The train 
is not stationary relatively to the head, 
but is subject to remarkable move¬ 
ments. The direction in which it points 
is always opposite to the sun. and as the 
comet passes its perihelion the train 
changes its apparent position with ex¬ 
traordinary velocity. The head of the 
comet is itself of different degrees of 
luminosity, there being usually a cen¬ 
tral core, called the nucleus, of greater 
brilliancy than the surrounding envel¬ 
ope, called the coma. 

Comets were long regarded as super¬ 
natural objects, and usually as portents 
of impending calamity. Tycho Brahe 
was the first who expressed a rational 
opinion on the subject, coming to the 
conclusion that the comet of 1577 was a 
heavenly body at a greater distance 
from the earth than that of the moon. 
The general law of the motion of bodies, 
as well as his own observations on the 
comet of 1680, led Newton to conclude 
that the orbits of the comets must, like 
those of the planets, be ellipses, having 



Comet of 1811. 

the sun in one focus, but far more eccen¬ 
tric; and having their aphelions, or 
greater distances from the sun, far re¬ 
mote in the regions of space. This idea 
was taken up by Halley, who collated 
the observations which had been made 
of all the twenty-four comets of which 
notice had been taken previous to 16S0. 
The results were very interesting. W ith 
but few exceptions the comets had 
passed within less than the earth s 
shortest distance from the sun, some .of 
them within less than one-third of it, 
and the average about one-half. Out 
of the number, too, nearly two-thirds 












































COMITY OF NATIONS 


COMMISSION, MILITARY 


had had their motions retrograde, or 
moved in the opposite direction to the 
planets. While Halley was engaged 
on these comparisons and deductions 
the comet of 1682 made its appearance, 
and he found that there was a wonder¬ 
ful resemblance between it and three 
other comets that he found recorded— 
the comets of 1456, of 1531, and of 1607. 
The times of the appearance of these 
comets had been at very nearly regular 
intervals, the average period being be¬ 
tween seventy-five and seventy-six 
years. Their distances from the sun, 
when in perihelion, or when nearest to 
that luminary, had been nearly the 
same, being nearly six-tenths of that 
of the earth, and not varying more 
than one-sixtieth from each other. 
The inclination of their orbits to that of 
the earth had also been nearly the same, 
between 17° and 18°; and their motions 
had all been retrograde. Putting these 
facts together, Halley concluded that 
the comets of 1456,1531,1607, and 1682 
were reappearances of one and the same 
comet, which revolved in an elliptic or¬ 
bit round the sun, performing its circuit 
in a period varying from a little more 
than seventy-six years to a little less 
than seventy-five;; or having, as far as 
the observations had been carried, a 
variation of about fifteen months in 
the absolute duration of its year, meas¬ 
ured according to that of the earth. 

It now became possible to predict the 
reappearance of comets with certainty. 
Sometimes a comet may split up into 
thousands of small pieces and reappear 
as “shooting stars.” Among the famous 
comets are those of Encke (1786 and 



Donati’s comet. 1858. 

1818), Biela’s comet (1826, 1839, 1845), 
which in 1846 split in two and has since 
been entirely dissipated; and Donati’s 
comet (1858). The tails of comets are 
sometimes many millions of miles in 
length. 

That the comets are formed of matter 
of some sort or other we know from the 
dense and opaque appearance of their 
nucleus, as well as from the action of 
the planets upon them; but as their 
action upon the planets has not been 
great, or even perceptible, we are led 
to the conclusion that they are not 
bodies of the same density or magni¬ 
tude as even the smallest and rarest of 
the planets. One modern theory of the 
nature of comets is that these bodies 
were ejected millions of years ago from 
the interior of suns, or planets in a sun¬ 
like state. When a comet is viewed 
through a telescope of considerable 
power there appears a dense nucleus in 
the center of the luminous and appar¬ 
ently vaporous matter of which the 
external parts are composed; and the 
opacity of this nucleus varies in different 


comets. On its first appearance, and 
again when it recedes, the luminous 
part of the comet is faint and does not 
extend far from the nucleus; but as it 
moves on toward the perihelion the 
brightness increases, and the luminous 
matter lengthens into a train, which, in 
some cases, has extended across a fourth 
of the entire circumference of the 
heavens. The most remarkable dis¬ 
covery of recent times regarding comets 
is the identity of the course of some of 
them with the orbit of certain showers 
of shooting-stars. This was first demon¬ 
strated by the Italian astronomer 
Schiaparelli, who proved the agreement 
between the orbit of the great comet of 
1862 and that of the star-shower seen 
annually about August 9, 10. It has 
since been demonstrated that every 
meteoric stream follows in the train of 
some comet large or small, which 
either exists now or has been dissipated, 
as Biela’s comet was, leaving only its 
meteoric trail to show where it once 
traveled; and that every comet is 
followed or preceded by a train of 
meteors, extending over a greater or 
less portion of the comet’s orbit accord¬ 
ing to the length of time during which 
the comet has existed. 

COMITY OF NATIONS, a phrase 
adopted in international law to denote 
that kind of courtesy by which the laws 
and institutions of one state or country 
are recognized and given effect to by 
the government of another. 

COMMA, in punctuation, the point 
[,] denoting the shortest pause in reading, 
and separating a sentence into divisions 
or members according to the construc¬ 
tion.—In music, a comma is the smallest 
enharmonic interval, being the differ¬ 
ence between a maj'or and a minor tone, 
and expressed by the ratio 80:81. 

COMMAN'DER, a chief; the chief 
officer of an army or any division of it. 
The office of commander-in-chief is the 
highest staff appointment in the army. 
The title is sometimes not command¬ 
er-in-chief, but field-marshal command¬ 
ing-in-chief, the difference being that 
the former is appointed by patent for 
life, while the latter is appointed by a 
letter of service, and holds office only 
during the pleasure of the sovereign. 
In the navy, a commander holds a 
definite rank above lieutenant and under 
captain. In matters of etiquette he 
ranks with a lieutenant-colonel in the 
army. In large vessels there is a com¬ 
mander as well as a captain, but in 
sloops and vessels of that class the 
commander is the highest officer. 

COMMAN'DERY, a term used in 
several senses in connection with some 
of the military and religious orders. 
Among several orders of knights as the 
Templars, Hospitallers, etc., it was a 
district under the control of a member 
of the order (called a commander or 
preceptor), who received the income of 
the estates belonging to the knights 
within that district, and expended part 
for his own use and accounted for the 
rest; in England, more especially 
applied to a manor belonging to the 
priory of the Knights Hospitallers or 
Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. In 
certain religious orders, as those of St. 
Bernard and St. Anthony, it was the 


district under the authority of a digni¬ 
tary called a commander. 

COMMENCEMENT, in the universi¬ 
ties of the United States, the day when 
masters of arts and doctors receive 
tb e i r d6gr66s 

COMMEN'SURABLE, an appellation 
given to such quantities or magnitudes 
as can be measured by one and the same 
common measure. Commensurable 
numbers are such as can be measured or 
divided by some other number without 
any remainder; such are 12 and 18, as 
being measured by 6 or 3. 

COMMENTARY, a term used (1) in 
the same sense as memoirs, for a nar¬ 
rative of particular transactions or 
events as the Commentaries of Caesar. 
(2) A series or collection of comments or 
annotations. These may either be in 
the form of detached notes, or may be 
embodied in a series of remarks written 
and printed in a connected form. 

COMMERCE, the interchange of 
goods, merchandise, or property of any 
kind between countries or communities; 

trqfip • trqffip 

COMMERCIAL LAW, the law which 

regulates commercial affairs among the 
merchants of different countries, or 
among merchants generally. It is de¬ 
rived from the different maritime codes 
of mediaeval Europe, the imperial code 
of Rome, international law, and the 
custom of merchants. 

COMMERCIAL TREATIES, treaties 
entered into between two countries for 
the purpose of improving and extending 
their commercial relations; each coun¬ 
try engaging to abolish or to reduce to 
an agreed rate or otherwise modify the 
duties on articles of production and 
manufacture imported from the one 
country into the other. They are usually 
for a limited period, but may be renewed 
and modified according to altering 
conditions. In these treaties the phrase, 
“most favored nations,” implies con¬ 
cessions equal to the most favorable 
granted under any similar treaty. The 
first treaty of commerce made by Eng¬ 
land with any foreign nation was entered 
into with the Flemings in 1272; the 
second was with Portugal and Spain, 
1308. Among modern treaties the most 
famous is that negotiated between 
Richard Cobden, the English free- 
trader, and the ministers of Napoleon 
III. in 1860, and which resulted in 
great benefit to both nations. A second 
one was signed in 1873, but negotiations 
for a third in 1882 fell through chiefly 
owing to French protectionist prej¬ 
udices. Several treaties of reciprocity 
have been made between the United 
States and other countries, notably 
France and Canada. 

COMMISSA'RIAT, the department of 
an army whose duties consist in supply¬ 
ing transport, provisions, forage, camp 
equipage, etc., to the troops, but not 
arms, ammunition, etc.g also the body of 
officers in that department. 

COMMISSION, MILITARY, the au¬ 
thorization of rank or right to command 
in the army, generally in the form of a 
certificate. A commission is issued only 
by the President of the United States. 
In Britain military commissions were 
formerly purchasable but this custom 
was abolished in 1871. 






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SHIPPING OF ALL NATIONS 


PROPORTION OF STEAM TO SAILING VESSELS 
STEAM SHADED 


I860 


1908 




POWER 


1842 




1908 









































































































COMMERCE OF THE NATIONS 

AGGREGATE OF IMPORTS AND EXPORTS OF MERCHANDISE 

4200 ( Millions or dollars) 


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COMMISSIONAIRE 


COMMUNE OF PARIS 


COMMISSIONAIRE, on the continent 
of Europe hotel runners and general 
servants of hotels who look after the 
luggage of guests whom they meet at 
the railway stations or docks. In Ger¬ 
many commissionaires are analogous 
to messenger boys in the United States. 

COMMITMENT, a warrant of a mag¬ 
istrate holding an accused person to 
trial. The word is also used to designate 
an order sending a person to jail for 
contempt of court, or other offense. 

COMMIT'TEE, one or more persons 
elected or appointed to attend to any 
matter or business referred to them 
either by a legislative body, or by a 
court, or by any corporation, or by any 
society or collective body of men acting 
together. In legislative bodies, when 
a committee consists of the whole mem¬ 
bers of the body acting in a different 
capacity from that which usually be¬ 
longs to them it is called a committee of 
the whole house, the business of which 
is conducted under somewhat different 
regulations from those under which 
the business of the house when not in 
committee is carried on.—Standing 
committees are such as continue during 
the existence of legislature, and to 
these are committed all matters that 
fall within the purposes of their appoint¬ 
ment,_ as the committee of elections or 
of privileges, etc.—Select committees 
are appointed to consider and report on 
particular subjects. 

COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY, a 
body elected by the French Convention 
(6th April, 1793) from among its own 
members, at first having very limited 
powers conferred upon it—that of super¬ 
vising the executive and of accelerating 
its actions. Subsequently, however, 
its powers became extended; all the 
executive authority passed into its 
hands, and the ministers became merely 
its scribes. It was at first composed 
of nine, but was increased to twelve 
members viz.: Robespierre, Danton, 
Couthon, St. Just, Prieur, Robert-Lin- 
det, H6rault de S6chelles, Jean-Bon 
St. Andre, Barrere, Carnot, Collot 
d’Herbois, and Billaud Varennes. The 
severe government of this body is 
known as the Reign of Terror, which 
ended with the execution of Robes¬ 
pierre and his associates in July, 1794. 
During the commune (March to May, 
1871) a similar committee was estab¬ 
lished in Paris. 

COMMODORE, in the navy, an 
officer, generally a captain, holding 
a temporary commission with a rank 
between that of captain and admiral, 
who commands a ship or detachment of 
ships in the absence of an admiral. 
They are of two kinds—one having a 
captain under him in the same ship, and 
the other without a captain. They 
both carry distinguishing pennants. 
The title is also given to the senior cap¬ 
tain of a line of merchant vessels, and 
also to the president of a yachting 
club. 

COMMON CARRIERS. See Carriers. 

COMMON COUNCIL, the council of a 
city or corporate town, empowered to 
make by-laws for the government of the 
citizens. The common councils some¬ 
times consist of two houses, chambers, or 
courts, and sometimes form only one. 


Thus the common council of London 
consists of two houses, the upper house, 
composed of the lord-mayor and aider- 
men, and the lower house of the com¬ 
mon council men, who are elected 
annually. In the United States several 
cities have two houses of municipal 
legislature, notably St. Louis. The 
term. common council is not used so 
familiarly in this country as in Eng¬ 
land, the term city council being pre¬ 
ferred. 

COMMONER, IN BRITAIN, a term 
applied to all citizens except the heredi¬ 
tary nobility. 

COMMON LAW, the unwritten law, 
the law that receives its binding force 
from immemorial usage and universal 
reception, in distinction from the writ¬ 
ten or statute law; sometimes from 
the civil or canon law; and occasionally 
from the lex mercatoria, or commercial 
and maritime jurisprudence. It con¬ 
sists of that body of rules, principles, 
and customs which have been received 
from former times, and by which courts 
have, been guided in their judicial 
decisions. The evidence of this law 
is to be found in the reports of those 
decisions and the records of the courts. 
Some of these rules may have originated 
in edicts or statutes which are now lost, 
or in the terms and conditions of par¬ 
ticular grants or charters; but it is 
quite certain that many of them origi¬ 
nated in judicial decisions founded on 
natural justice and equity, or on local 
customs. It is contrasted with (1) the 
statute law contained in acts of parlia¬ 
ment; (2) equity, which is also an 
accretion of judicial decisions, but 
formed by a new tribunal, which first 
appeared when the common law had 
reached its full growth; and (3) the 
civil law inherited by modern Europe 
from the Roman Empire. Wherever 
statute law, however, runs counter to 
common law, the latter is entirely over¬ 
ruled; but common law, on the other 
hand, asserts its pre-eminence where 
equity is opposed to it. 

COMMON PLEAS, Court of, formerly 
one of three superior courts of common 
law in England, presided over by a lord 
chief-justice and five (at an earlier period 
four) puisn6 judges, and having cogni¬ 
zance of all civil causes, real, personal, 
or mixed, as well by original writ as by 
removal from the inferior courts; now 
merged in the High Court of Justice. 

COMMON PRAYER, Book of, the 
liturgy or public form of prayer pre¬ 
scribed by the Church of England to be 
used in all churches and chapels, and 
which the clergy are to use under «, 
certain penalty. The Book of Common 
Prayer is used also by the English- 
speaking Episcopal churches in Scot¬ 
land, Ireland, America, and the colonies, 
as well as by some non-episcopal bodies, 
with or without certain alterations. 
It dates from the reign of Edward VI.; 
was published in 1549, and again with 
some changes in 1552. Some slight alter¬ 
ations were made upon it when it was 
adopted in the reign of Elizabeth. In 
the reign of James I., and finally soon 
after the Restoration, it underwent new 
revisions. 

COMMONS, House of. See Britain 
and Parliament. 


COMMON SCHOOLS, in the United 
States, the public schools, including 
the primary and high schools, and the 
normal schools. The present system of 
graded schools is a vast enlargement 
and improvement of the elementary 
schools of colonial times. To assist 
in the support of the public schools the 
government, and sometimes the several 
states, particularly in the west, have 
iven grants of land the sale of which 
as helped to defray the expenses of 
public education. About 16,000,000 
children are enrolled in the common 
schools of the United States. In the 
instruction of these nearly 500,000 
teachers are engaged, and the total 
expenditures for the support of these 
schools aggregate nearly $220,000,000 
annually. 

COMMON TIME, in music, is that in 
which every bar contains an even num¬ 
ber of subdivisions, such as two minims, 
four quavers, or their equivalents. It 
is. of two kinds, simple and compound. 
Simple common time is that which in¬ 
cludes four beats in a bar, or any division 
of that number, or square of the num¬ 
ber or its divisions. Compound com¬ 
mon time includes two or four beats of 
three crochets or quavers to each beat. 

COM'MONWEALTH, the whole body 
of people in a state; the body politic. 
In Eng. hist, the name given to the 
form of government established after 
the death of Charles I., and which 
lasted until the restoration of Charles 
II. (1649-59). 

COM'MUNALISM, the theory of gov¬ 
ernment by communes or corporations 
of towns and districts, adopted by the 
advanced republicans of France and 
elsewhere. The doctrine is that every 
commune, or at least every important 
city commune, as Paris, Marseilles 
Lyons, etc., should be a kind of inde¬ 
pendent state in itself, and France 
merely a federation of such states. 
This system must not be confounded 
with communism, with which, however, 
it is naturally and historically allied, 
though the two are perfectly dis¬ 
tinct in principle. 

COM'MUNE, a small territorial dis¬ 
trict in France, being one of the sub¬ 
ordinate divisions into which that 
country is parcelled out^ the name 
is also given to similar divisions in 
some other countries, as Belgium. In 
the country a commune sometimes em¬ 
braces a number of villages, while some 
large cities are divided into a number of 
communes. In either case each com¬ 
mune is governed by an officer called 
a mayor. 

COMMUNE OF PARIS.—1. A revolu¬ 
tionary committee which took, the place 
of the municipality of Paris in the 
French revolution of 1789, and soon 
usurped the supreme authority in the 
state. Among its chiefs were some of 
the most violent of the demagogues, such 
as Hubert, Danton, and Robespierre. 
2. The name adopted by the ultra-radical 
party in Paris brought once more into 
prominence by the events of the Franco- 
German war, more immediately by the 
siege of Paris (Oct. 1870 to Jan. 1871). 
They ruled over Paris for a brief period 
after the evacuation of the German 
troops, and had to be suppressed by 




COMMUNION 


COMPOSITE ORDER 


troops collected by the National As¬ 
sembly of France. The rising was 
entirely political and confined to Paris; 
it was based on no well defined dogmas, 
only a fractional part of the communal 
government being communists in the 
economic sense, and these were soon 
thrust aside by their more violent and 
unscrupulous comrades. Much blood¬ 
shed and wanton destruction of property 
took place before the rising was put 
down by M. Thiers’ government. 

COMMU'NION, the act of partaking 
with others of the sacramental symbols 
in the Lord’s Supper. See Lord’s 
Supper. 

COM'MUNISM, the economic system 
or theory which upholds the absorption 
of all proprietary rights in a common 
interest, an equitable division of labor, 
and the formation of a common fund 
for the supply of all the wants of the 
community; the doctrine of a com¬ 
munity of property, or the negation of 
individual rights in property. No com¬ 
munistic society has as yet been suc¬ 
cessful. Robert Owen made several 
experiments in modified communism, 
but they failed. St. Simon, Fourier, and 
Proudhon have been the chief exponents 
of the system in Francej and under the 
names of socialism, nihilism, etc., it 
seems to be working as a great unseen 
force in several countries. 

COMO, capital of the province of 
Como, in the north of Italy (Lombardy), 
24 miles n.n.w. of Milan. Pop. 25,560.— 
The province of Como has an area of 
1049 sq. miles, and a pop. of 515,134. 

COMPAN'ION, a raised hatch or 
cover to the cabin stair of a merchant 
vessel.—Companion Ladder, the steps 
or ladder by which persons ascend to 
and descend from the quarter-deck. 

COM'PANY, in military language, a 
subdivision of an infantry regiment or 
battalion, corresponding to a troop of 
cavalry or a battery of artillery, con¬ 
sisting of from 60 to 100 men and com¬ 
manded by a captain. 

COMPARATIVE ANATOMY. See 
Anatomy. 

COMPARISON, Degrees of, in gram¬ 
mar, inflections of adjectives or adverbs 
to express degrees of the original 
quality, usually divided into positive, 
comparative, and superlative; as strong, 
stronger, strongest, glorious, more glori¬ 
ous, most glorious. 

COMPASS, an instrument used to 
indicate the magnetic meridian or the 
position of objects with respect to that 
meridian, and employed especially on 
ships, and by surveyors and travelers. 
Its origin is unknown, but it is supposed 
to have been brought from China to 
Europe about the middle of the 13th 
century. As now generally used it con¬ 
sists of three parts: namely, the box, 
the card or fly, and the needle—the 
latter being the really essential part, and 
consisting of a small magnet so sus¬ 
pended that it may be able to move 
freely in a horizontal direction. The 
box, which contains the card and needle, 
is, in the case of the common mariner’s 
compass, a circular brass receptacle 
hung within a wooden one by two con¬ 
centric rings called gimbals, so fixed by 
the cross centers to the box that the 
inner one, or compass-box, shall retain 


a horizontal position in all motions of 
the ship. The circular card is divided 
into thirty-two equal parts by lines 
drawn from the center to the circum¬ 
ference, called points or rhumbs; the 
intervals between the points are also 
divided into halves and quarters, and 
the whole circumference into equal 
parts or degrees, 360 of which complete 
the circle; and, consequently, the dis- 


_ ^ 




Ship’s compass. 

aft, Needle, cc, Box. dd, Innergimbal. //, 
Outer gimbal. i, Pivot upon which the card is 
placed, m, Reflector, rr. Card, tt.uu, Sup¬ 
porting pivots. 


tance or angle comprehended between 
any two rhumbs is equal to 11£°. The 
four principal are called cardinal points: 
viz., North, South, East, and West. The 
names of the rest are compounded of 
these. The needle is a small bar of 
magnetized steel. It is fixed on the 
under side of the card, and in the center 
Is placed a conical socket, which is 
poised on an upright pointed pin fixed 
in the bottom of the box; so that the 
card, hanging on the pin, turns freely 
round its center, and one of the points, 
by the property of the needle, will al¬ 



ways be directed toward the north pole. 
The needle, however, is liable to a cer¬ 
tain deviation owing to the magnetism 
of the ship itself, and this is especially 
strong in iron ships. (See Deviation.) 
To obviate this Sir W. Thomson (Lord 
Kelvin) invented a compass, having a 
number of needles arranged in a partic¬ 
ular manner instead of one. In this 
compass quadrantal errors are corrected 


by means of two iron globes fixed on 
opposite sides of the binnacle; while the 
various components of the ship’s mag¬ 
netic force are neutralized by a series of 
bar-magnets so arranged as to act as 
correctors. In the compass used by 
land-surveyors and others the needle 
is not fixed to the card, but plays alone, 
the card being drawn on the bottom of 
the box. 

COMPASSES, or PAIR OF COM¬ 
PASSES, a mathematical instrument 
used for the describing of circles, measur¬ 
ing lines, etc. They consist simply of 
two pointed legs, movable on a joint 
or pivot, and are used for measuring and 
transferring distances. For describing 
circles the lower end of one of the legs is 
removed and its place supplied by a 
holder for a pencil or pen.—Hair Com¬ 
passes are compasses having a spring 
tending to keep the legs apart, and a 
finely-threaded screw by which the 
spring can be compressed or relaxed 
with the utmost nicety, and the distance 
of the legs regulated to a hair’s-breadth. 
—Bow Compasses are compasses having 
the two legs united by a bow passing 
through one of them, the distance be¬ 
tween the legs being adjusted by means 
of a screw and nut.—Proportional Com¬ 
passes are compasses used for reducing 
or enlarging drawings, having the legs 
crossing so as to present a pair on each 
side of a common pivot. By means of a 
slit in the legs, and the movable pivot, 
the relative distances between the 
points at the respective ends may be ad¬ 
justed at pleasure in the required pro¬ 
portion. 

COMPLEXION, the color or hue of 
the skin, particularly of the face. The 
color depends partly on pigment in the 
deep cells of the epidermis and partly 
on the blood supply. The nature and 
color of the hair seems closely con¬ 
nected with the complexion, and these 
combined are important distinguishing 
marks of different races. See Ethnology. 

COMPLUTENSIAN POLYGLOT, a 
celebrated polyglot edition of the Bible 
published at Complutum, the ancient 
name of Alcala de Henares, in Spain, 
1514-17, by Cardinal Ximenes. See 
Polyglot. 

COMPOS'ITjE, the largest known nat. 

order of plants, containing over 12,000 
described species of herbs or shrubs dis¬ 
tributed all over the world. The flowers 
(generally called florets) are numerous 
(with few exceptions) and sessile, form¬ 
ing a close head on the dilated top of the 
receptacle, and surrounded by an in¬ 
volucre of whorled bracts. The head 
of numerous florets was called by the 
older botanists a compound flower, 
hence the name. Many are common 
weeds, like the daisy, dandelion, thistle, 
etc.; many are cultivated in gardens, 
such as the asters, marigold, etc.; others 
have some economic or medicinal value, 
as chicory, artichoke, chamomile, let¬ 
tuce, wormwood, arnica, etc. 

COMPOSITE ORDER, in arch, the 
last of the five orders; so called be¬ 
cause the capital belonging to it is com- 

E osed out of those of the other orders, 
orrowing a quarter-round from the 
Tuscan and Doric, a row of leaves from 
the Corinthian, and volutes from the 
Ionic. Its cornice has simple modil- 

















COMPOSITION OF FORCES AND MOTIONS 


CONCORD 


lions of dentils. It is called also the 
Roman or the Italic order. 

COMPOSITION OF FORCES AND 
MOTIONS, in mechanics, the union or 
assemblage of several forces or motions 
that are oblique to one another, into 
an equivalent force or motion in another 
direction. Thus two forces acting in the 
directions of the adjacent sides of a 
parallelogram, compose one force acting 
in the direction of the diagonal, and if 
the lengths of the adjacent sides repre¬ 
sent also the magnitudes of the forces, 
the diagonal will represent the magni¬ 
tude of the compound force or resultant. 




t 


Composite order. 

COMPOSITION WITH CREDITORS, 

an arrangement whereby a debtor who 
has failed, compromises with all or a 
number of his creditors who agree to 
discharge him from his indebtedness 
for a percentage of their claims. If 
the arrangement be made secretly it 
is held to be void. 

COMPOUND ANIMALS, animals, 
many of which by no means belong to 
the lowest types, in which individuals, 
distinct as regards many of the func¬ 
tions of life, are yet connected by some 
part of their frame so as to form a 
united whole. Such are the polyzoa and 
some of the ascidia. 

COMPOUNDING A FELONY, the act 
of agreeing not to prosecute a person 
accused of a crime for a consideration 
of value. In the United States com¬ 
pounding a felony is punishable by 
imprisonment and a fine. 

COMPRESSED AIR, atmospheric air 
compressed by means of pumps, etc., 
and used in driving stationary and loco¬ 
motive engines, and excavating ma¬ 
chines; as also in working pneumatic 
despatch-tubes, railway-brakes, etc. 

COMPRESSED-AIR ENGINE, an 
engine operated by the escape of air 
from a tank in which atmospheric air 
has been stored under high pressure. 

COMPRESSED-AIR LOCOMOTIVE, 
a locomotive in which the motive power 
is compressed air. Many devices for 
this kind of locomotive have been 
invented but none of them have stood 
the practical tests through which they 
have been put. Compressed air motors 
have been tried on the street car lines of 
New York and other cities with small 


success. 


COMPRESSED-AIR TREATMENT, 

atmospheric pressure brought to bear 
on the body for the purpose of curing 
diseases. It is applied by causing the 
patient to breathe compressed air, or 
to exhaust the air from a cabinet in 
which his body is placed, while he 
breathes the ordinary air through a 
tube communicating with the outside. 
It has not been successful. 

COMPRESSIBILITY, the property of 
bodies in virtue of which they may be 
pressed into smaller bulk. All bodies 
are probably compressible, though the 
liquids are but slightly so. The gases 
are exceedingly compressible, and may 
be liquefied by pressure and cold com¬ 
bined. Those bodies which occupy 
their former space when the pressure is 
removed, are called elastic. 

COMSTOCK, Anthony, an American 
reformer, noted for his detestation of 
improper literature. He was born in 
Connecticut in 1844, and served during 
the civil war on the Union side. Corn- 
stock organized the society for the 
suppression of vice, in 1873, and has 
done much to suppress immoral litera¬ 
ture. 

COMSTOCK LODE, a famous vein of 
gold and silver ore in Nevada (Storey 
county) in the Sierra mountains. It 
was discovered in 1859, is about four 
miles long and 2900 feet at its widest 
part. In 30 years the vein has produced 
$350,000,000. Its greatest production 
in any one year was $38,000,000 in 1877. 

COMTE (kont), Isidore Auguste Marie 
Frangois Xavier, founder of the “posi¬ 
tive” system of philosophy, was born at 
Montpellier on 12th January, 1798, died 
at Paris 1857. In 1826 Comte com¬ 
menced a course of lectures on positive 
philosophy, but only four lectures were 
given when he became deranged in 
mind, and did not recover till the 
end of 1827. In 1830 he commenced 
the publication of his Cours de Phi¬ 
losophic Positive, which was completed 
in six volumes in 1842. In 1845 he 
made the acquaintance of Clotilde de 
Vaux, who seems to have inspired him 
with a depth and tenderness of moral 
and aesthetic feeling before unknown in 
him. This appears in his second great 
work. Positive Polity (1851-54); the 
Positivist Catechism (1852); and his 
last work, Subjective Synthesis (1855). 
In his Religion of Humanity he himself 
assumed the office of high-priest, per¬ 
forming marriage and funeral rites on 
behalf of the disciples who had been 
induced to adopt his system. These, 
however, were never very numerous; 
and as a practical faith his system is 
now stationary, though as a philosophy 
of knowledge it is widely accepted. His 
works have been made known to 
American readers mainly by Mr. G. H. 
Lewes’ Comet’s Philosophy of the Sci¬ 
ences and Miss Martineau’s translation 
above mentioned. 

CONCAN, a maritime subdivision of 
Hindustan, in the presidency of Bom¬ 
bay. Area about 13,500 sq. miles; 
pop. about 3,000,000. 

CONCAVE, hollow and curved or 
rounded, as the inner surface of a 
spherical body. A surface is concave 
when straight lines drawn from point 
to point in it fall between the surface 


and the spectator; and convex when 
the surface comes between him and 
such lines. 

CONCEALMENT, in law the hiding 
of facts bearing upon a crime, or the 
hiding of property in litigation, or of 
persons. 

CONCEPCION', a seaport of Chili, 
capital of a province of the same name. 
Concepcion was founded in 1550, and 
has suffered much from earthquakes 
and attacks by the Araucanians. Pop. 
55,458. 

CONCEP'TION, the act or power of 
conceiving in the mind; in philosophy, 
that mental act or combination of acts 
by which an absent object of perception 
is brought before the mind by the 
imagination. 

CONCEPTION, Immaculate, in the 
Roman Catholic Church, the doctrine 
that the Virgin Mary was born without 
the stain of original sin. This doctrine 
came into favor in the 12th century, 
when, however, it was opposed by St. 
Bernard, and it afterward became a 
subject of vehement controversy be¬ 
tween the Scotists, who supported, 
and the Thomists, who opposed it. In 
1708 Clement XI. appointed a festival 
to be celebrated throughout the church 
in honor of the immaculate conception. 
Since that time it was received in the 
Roman Church as an opinion, but not 
as an article of faith until the year 1854, 
when the pope issued a bull which 
makes the immaculate conception a 
point of faith. 

CON'CERT, a public or private musi¬ 
cal entertainment, at which a number 
of vocalists or instrumentalists, or both, 
perform singly or combined. 

CONCERTI'NA, a musical instrument 
invented by Professor Wheatstone, the 
principle of which is similar to that of 
the accordion. It is composed of a bel¬ 
lows, with two faces or ends, generally 
polygonal in shape, on which are placed 
the various stops or studs, by the action 
of which air is admitted to the free 
metallic reeds which produce the 
sounds. 

CONCERTO (kon-cher'to), in music, 
a kind of composition, usually in a sym¬ 
phonic form, written for one principal 
instrument, with accompaniments for 
a full orchestra. 

CONCERT PITCH. See Pitch. 

CONCH (kongk), a marine shell, 
especially a large'spiral shell of a trum¬ 
pet shape, and which may be blown as 
a trumpet, as is the practice in Hindus¬ 
tan and some of the Pacific Islands. 

CONCHOL'OGY, the science of shells, 
that department of zoology which treats 
of the nature, formation, and classifica¬ 
tion of the shells with which the bodies 
of many mollusca are protected; or the 
word may be used also to include a 
knowledge of the animals themselves, 
in which case it is equivalent to malaco¬ 
logy. In systems of conchology shells 
are usually divided into three oriers. 
Univalves, Bivalves, and Multi valves, 
according to the number of pieces of 
which they are composed. 

CON'CORD, .in music, the combina¬ 
tion of two or more sounds pleasing to 
the ear. Concords are the octave, the 
fifth, third, and sixth. The two first ara 
called perfect, because as concords they 






























CONCORD 


CONDOR 


are not liable to any alteration by 
sharps or flats. The two last are called 
imperfect, as being alterable. 

CONCORD, the capital of New 
Hampshire, on the Merrimac, 60 miles 
n.n.w. Boston, one of the largest rail- 



state capitol, Concord, N. H. 

way centers in New England. It has 
manufactures of carriages, hardware, 
cutlery, woolen fabrics, paper, etc. 
Pop. 21,632. 

CONCOR'DANCE, a book in which 
the principal words used in any work or 
number of works, as the Scriptures, 
Shakespeare, Milton, Tennyson, Homer, 
etc., are arranged alphabetically, and 
the book, chapter, and verse, or act, 
scene, line, or other subdivision in which 
each word occurs, are noted; designed 
to assist an inquirer in finding any 
passage by means of any leading word 
which he can recollect, or to show the 
character of the language and style of 
any writer. 

CON'CRETE, a technical term in 
logic, applied to an object as it exists in 
nature, invested with all its attributes, 
or to the notion of such on object. Con¬ 
crete is opposite to abstract. The 
names of individuals are concrete; those 
of classes, abstract. A concrete name 
is a name which stands for a thing; an 
abstract name is a name which stands 
for the attribute of a thing. 

CON'CRETE, a composition used in 
building, consisting of hydraulic or 
other mortar mixed with gravel or stone 
chippings about the size of a nut. It 
is used extensively in building under 
water, for example, to form the bottom 
of a canal or sluice, or the foundation of 
any structures raised in the sea; and it 
is also frequently used to make a bed 
for asphalt pavements, or to form 
foundations for buildings of any kind. 
It is sometimes even used as the mater¬ 
ial with which the walls of houses are 
built, the concrete being firmly rammed 
into molds of the requisite shape, and 
then allowed to set. 

CONCU'BINAGE, sexual cohabitation 
of a man without legal marriage. It 
was permitted among the ancient 
Hebrews and the Greeks without limita- 
tionj but among the Romans in the 
case of unmarried men concubinage was 
limited to a single concubine of mean 
descent 

CONCURRENT JURISDICTION, the 

jurisdiction of different courts author¬ 


ized to take cognizance of the same kind 
of case. In criminal cases the court 
which first takes up a case has the right 
of prevention, that is, of deciding upon 
that case exclusive of the other courts 
which but for that right would have been 
equally entitled to take cognizance of 
it. In civil cases it lies with the suitor 
to bring his cause before any court he 
pleases, which is competent to take it up. 

CONCUSSION OF THE BRAIN, a 
term applied to certain injuries of the 
brain resulting from blows and falls, 
though unattended with fracture of the 
skull. Stupor or insensibility, sickness, 
impeded respiration, and irregular pulse 
are the first symptoms, and though 
these may subside there is always for a 
time more or less risk of serious inflam¬ 
mation of the brain setting in. 

CONDE, Louis de Bourbon, founder of 
the house of, born 1530; killed after 
battle of Jarmac, 1569. See Bourbon. 

CONDE, Louis de Bourbon, Prince of 
(the Great Cond6), a famous general, 
born in 1621. In 1641 he married a 
niece of Cardinal Richelieu. His defeat 
of the Spanish at Rocroi, in 1643, was 
followed, in 1645, by his defeat of Mercy 
at Nordlingen, and by his capture of 
Dunkirk in 1646, the year in which he 
inherited his father’s title. During the 
troubles of the Fronde he at first took 
the side of the court; but believing 
himself to be ill requited by Mazarin, 
he put himself at the head of the faction 
of the Petits Maltres, and was imprison¬ 
ed for a year by Mazarin (1650). On 
his release he at once put himself at the 
head of a new Fronde, entered upon 
negotiations with Spain, and, his at¬ 
tack on Paris being indecisive, retired 
to the Netherlands, where he was ap¬ 
pointed generalissimo of the Spanish 
armies. In this capacity he unsuccess¬ 
fully besieged Arras in 1654; but he 
was more fortunate at Valenciennes in 
1656, and at Cambrai in 1657. In 1658 
he was defeated before Dunkirk by 
Turenne, but was restored to his rank 
in France after the peace of 1659. In 
1668 he accomplished the reduction of 
Franche Comte in three weeks; and 
in 1674 he defeated the Prince of Orange 
at Senef. His successes over Montecu- 
culi in Alsace in 1675 closed his military 
career. Four years later he retired 
to Chantilly, near Paris, and died at 
Fontainebleau in 1687. 

CONDENSATION, in chemistry and 
physics, the act of reducing a gas or 
vapor to a liquid or solid form. Sur¬ 
face condensation, a mode of condensing 
steam by bringing it in contact with 
cold metallic surfaces in place of by 
injecting cold water. 

CONDENSED MILK, milk preserved 
by evaporating part of its moisture, 
mixing with refined powdered sugar, 
and packing in air-tight cans hermetic¬ 
ally sealed: the sugar may also be 
omitted. 

CONDENSER, an apparatus for re¬ 
ducing the volume of a gas, or for 
reducing a gas to a liquid, or a liquid to 
a solid. Condensers are used in steam 
engines to condense the exhaust, and 
on shipboard for the purpose of supply¬ 
ing the boilers. 

CONDENSER, an electric apparatus 
used to collect electricity and to store 


it. The Leyden jar is a classic example 
of a condenser. The electricity is col¬ 
lected by brushes and passed into the 
jar. Another form of condenser is the 
Franklin plate, consisting of a glass 
plate with strips of tin foil on the sides. 

CONDENSING STEAM-ENGINE. See 
Steam-engine. 

CONDILLAC (kon-de-yak), Etienne 
Bonnot de, French philosopher, born 
in 1715. His essay on the Origin of 
Human Knowledge (1746), in large 
part a polemic against abstract methods 
of philosophizing, struck the key-note of 
his system, and his Treatise on Systems, 
(1749) continued the condemnation of 
all systems not evolved from experience, 
from sensation. In 1754 appeared his 
Treatise on Sensation, and in 1755 his 
Treatise on Animals, a criticism on 
Buffon. The sagacity and clearness of 
his writings led to his appointment as 
tutor to the nephew of Louis XV., the 
infant Duke of Parma, for whom he 
wrote in 1755 his Cours d’Etudes, in¬ 
cluding a grammar, The Art of Writing, 
The Art of Reasoning, The Art of 
Thinking, and a general history. His 
work Commerce and Government ap¬ 
peared in the same year as the Wealth 
of Nations (1776), and was no un¬ 
worthy companion to it. In 1768 he 
was elected to the Academy. He died 
shortly after the publication of his 
Logic in 1780, his work on Calculus 
being published posthumously in 1798. 

CONDONATION, in law, forgiveness 
of injury. In an action for divorce on 
the ground of adultery it is a legal plea 
in defense. 

CON'DOR, a South American bird, 
one of the largest of the Vulturidae or 
vulturine birds. In its essential features 
it resembles the common vultures, dif¬ 
fering from them mainly in the large 



Condor. 


cartilaginous caruncle which surmcmnts 
its beak, and in the large size of its oval 
and longitudinal nostrils placed almost 
at the extremity of the cere. Despite 
the many stories of its gigantic pro¬ 
portions, Humboldt met with no speci¬ 
mens whose wings exceeded 9 feet in 
expanse, though it has occasionally been 
known to attain an expanse of 14 feet. 
It is found in greatest numbers in the 
Andes chain, frequenting regions from 
10,000 to 15,000 feet above the level of 
the sea, where they breed, depositing 
their two white eggs on the bare rock. 
They are generally to be seen in groups 
of three or four, and only descend to 
the plains under stress of hunger, when 
they will successfully attack sheep, 
goats, deer, and bullocks. They prefer 
carrion, however, and, when they have 
opportunity gorge themselves until they 




















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VIEW OP WOOD CENTERING—SECOND FLOOR SITE WITH PORTIONS OP COLUMNS ERECTED 



METHOD OF FLOOR CONSTRUCTION 



FIRST FLOOR SHOWING COMPLETED COLUMN 
AND GIRDER CONSTRUCTION 



THE COMPLETED BUILDING 


EXTERIOR VIEW OF INCOMPLETED BUILDING 


REINFORCED CONCRETE CONSTRUCTION 











































































































I 








4 










* • 


* 
















































CONDORCET 


CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNICATION 


become incapable of rising from the 
ground. 

CONDORCET (kon-dor-sa), Marie 
Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, Mar¬ 
quis de, an eminent French writer, born 
in 1743. At the age of twenty-one he 
presented to the Academy of Sciences an 
Essai Sur le Calcul Integral, and in 1767 
his Memoire on The Problem of Three 
Points appeared, both being afterward 
united under the title of Essays on 
Analysis. The merit of this work gained 
for him in 1769 a seat in the Academy 
of Sciences, of which, after the pub¬ 
lication of his Eulogies of Academicians, 
who died previously to 1699, (1773), he 
was appointed perpetual secretary 
(1777). In 1777 his Theory of Comets 
gained the prize offered by the Academy 
of Berlin; he enriched the transactions 
of many learned societies; and took 
an active part in the Encyclop4die. 
During the troubles of the first French 
revolution his sympathies were strongly 
engaged on the side of the people. The 
fall of the Girondist party, May 31,1793, 
prevented the constitution which Con- 
aorcet had drawn up from being ac¬ 
cepted, and as he freely criticised the 
constitution which took its place he 
was denounced as being an accomplice 
of Brissot. Madame Verney, a woman 
of noble feelings, secreted him for eight 
months, during which he wrote his 
Sketch of an Historic Picture of the 
Progress of the Human Spirit. Lest he 
should endanger her safety, however, 
he left the house secretly in opposition 
to her wishes, fled from Paris, and 
wandered about till arrested and throwm 
into prison, where, March 2S, 1794, he 
was found dead on the floor, having 
apparently swallowed poison. 

CONDUCTION. See Heat. 

CONDUCTOR, or LIGHTNING CON¬ 
DUCTOR, an instrument by means of 
which either the electricity of the clouds, 
the cause of lightning, is conducted 
without explosion into the earth, or the 
lightning itself is received and con¬ 
ducted quietly into the earth or water 
without injuring buildings, ships, etc. 
It was invented by Benjamin Franklin 


Lightning-cond uctor. 
abe, Various forms of rods, cdf. Various 
forms of tips, ghi, Various forms 
of attachments. 

about 1752, and met with speedy 
general adoption, the first conductor in 
England being erected in 1762. It 
usually consists of a stout iron rod with 
one or more points at the top, the lower 
end being metallically connected with 
thick strips of copper which are carried 
into the ground to a considerable depth 
and terminated, if possible, in water 
or in wet earth. Various other forms of 
conductors have been introduced, such 
as are shown in the accompanying cut, 
where a is a conductor consisting of 


metallic strips joined together, b a con¬ 
ductor of copper wires intertwined with 
iron rods, e a conductor consisting of a 
metallic strip forming a tube with spiral 
flanges. Various kinds of tips are also 
in use, as will be seen in the cut, d being 
formed of several metals inclosed the one 
within the other, the most fusible being 
outside; g, h, i show how in some cases 
successive sections of rods are connected. 

CONDUIT (kun'dit), a line of pipes or 
an underground channel of some kind 
for the conveyance of water. 

CONE, as used in geometry, generally 
means a right circular cone, which may 
be defined as the solid figure traced out 
when a right-angled triangle is made to 
revolve round one of the sides that con¬ 
tain the right angle. A more compre¬ 
hensive definition may be given as 
follows:—Let a straight line he held 
fixed at one point, and let any other 
point of the line be made to describe 
any closed curve which does not cut 
itself; the solid figure traced out is a 
cone. When the curve which the second 
point describes is a circle, the cone is a 
right circular cone. The cubical con¬ 
tent of a right circular cone is one-third 
of that of a cylinder on the same base 
and of the same altitude, and is there¬ 
fore found by multiplying the area of 
the base by the altitude, and taking one- 
third of the product. See also Conic 
Sections. 

CONE, in botany, a dry compound 
fruit, consisting of many open scales, 
each with two seeds at the base, as in 
the conifers; a strobilus. 

CONEY ISLAND, a small island 9 
miles southeast of New York, at the 
west end of Long Island, a favorite 
summer bathing resort, having a fine 
beach, splendid hotels, and numerous 
other attractions and accommodations 
for visitors. 

CONFECTIONERY, an edible sub¬ 
stance made principally from sugar and 
including what is generally called candy. 
Confections were formerly used chiefly 
as vehicles for medicine and were made 
by druggists or medicine venders. 
Since their manufacture on a large 
scale began in the last century they 
have been adulterated with various 
substances injurious to health, such 
as coal tar colors, clay, etc. The value 
of confectionery products in the United 
States amounts to $70,000,000 or more 
annually. 

CONFEDERACY, United Daughters 
of the, a society of women patriots 
formed in 1894 at Nashville, Tenn., 
for the perpetuation of the memory of 
the part which the women of the South 
took in the civil war. It is organized 
into state divisions and has a member¬ 
ship of over 30,000. 

CONFEDERATE STATES, the name 
given to eleven of the Southern States of 
America, which attempted to secede 
from the Union on the election of Abra¬ 
ham Lincoln, the abolitionist candidate, 
to the presidency in November, 1860, 
thus leading to the great civil war 
which lasted till 1865. See United 
States. 

CONFEDERATE VETERANS, United, 
an organization of former soldiers of 
the Confederate army, founded at New 
Orleans in 1889, for social, patriotic, 




and historical purposes. It has a mem¬ 
bership of nearly 70,000 and publishes 
a periodical, The Confederate Veteran, 
which is the official organ of the society. 

CON'FERENCE, (1) a meeting of the 
representatives of different foreign coun¬ 
tries for the discussion of some question. 
(2) A meeting between delegates of the 
two houses of parliament called to dis¬ 
cuss the provisions of a bill with regard 
to which they are disagreed, with the 
object of effecting an agreement between 
them. (3) The annual meetings of 
Wesleyan preachers for deliberation on 
the affairs of the body. 

CONFESSION, Auricular, in the strict¬ 
est sense, the disclosure of sins to the 
priest at the confessional, with a view 
to obtain absolution for them. The 
person confessing is allowed to conceal 
no sin of consequence which he remem¬ 
bers to have committed, and the father 
confessor is bound to perpetual secrecy. 
The practice of a public acknowledg¬ 
ment of great sins was altered by Pope 
Leo the Great, in 450, into a secret one 
before the priest, and the Fourth General 
Lateran council (1215) ordained that 
every one of the faithful, of both sexes, 
come to years of discretion, should 
privately confess all their sins at least 
once a year to their own pastor, an 
ordination still binding on members of 
the R. Catholic Church. Confession is 
a part of the sacrament of penance. 

CONFESSIONAL, in Roman Catholic 
churches and chapels, a kind of inclosed 
seat in which the priest sits to hear 
persons confess their sins. The con¬ 
fessional is often not unlike a sentry- 
box, the priest sitting within and the 



Confessional, cathedral of St. Gudule, 
Brussels. 


penitent kneeling without and speak¬ 
ing through an aperture. Many con¬ 
fessionals are in three divisions or com¬ 
partments, the center, which is for the 
reception of the priest, being closed 
half-way up by a dwarf door, and hav¬ 
ing a seat within it. The side compart¬ 
ments, which communicate with the 
center by grated apertures, are for the 
penitents. 

CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNICATION, 

in law, a communication made by one 
person to another which the latter can¬ 
not be compelled to give in evidence as a 
witness. Generally all communications 
made between a client and his agent, 
between the agent and the counsel in a 
suit, or between the several parties to a 
suit, are treated as confidential. The 
privilege of confidentiality does not ex¬ 
tend to disclosures made to a medical 
adviser, and in England it has been 























CONFIRMATION 


CONIFERjE 


decided also that confessions made to 
a priest are not to be treated as con¬ 
fidential. 

CONFIRMATION, the ceremony of 
laying on of hands by a bishop in the 
admission of baptized persons to the 
enjoyment of Christian privileges, the 
person confirmed then taking upon him¬ 
self the baptismal vows made in his 
name. In tne Roman Catholic churches 
a delay of 7 years is interposed after 
baptism, in the Lutheran from 13 to 16, 
and in the English Church from 14 to 
18, though in the latter there is no fixed 
period. The Lord’s Supper is not taken 
by these sects until after confirmation. 

CONFISCATION, the act of condemn¬ 
ing as forfeited, and adjudging to the 
public treasury, the goods of a criminal 
in part punishment of a crime. 

CONFOR'MABLE, in geol., lying in 
parallel or nearly parallel planes, and 



b c « 

Conformable strata a and J.vmconformable at c 

having the same dip and changes of dip; 
said of strata, the opposite term being 
unconformable. 

CONFU'CIUS, or KONG-FU-TSE, that 
is, “the teacher, Kong,” the famous 
Chinese sage, born about 550 b.c. in the 
province of Shantung. The deaths of 
hi3 favorite disciples Yen Hwin and 
Tze-lu in 481 and 478 did much to further 
his own, which took place in the latter 
year. Confucius left no work detailing 
his moral and social system, but the five 
canonical books of Confucianism are the 
Yih-king, the Shu-king, the Shi-king, 
the Le-king, and the Chun-tsien, with 
which are grouped the “Four Books,” by 
disciples of Confucius, the Ta-heo or 
Great Study, the Chung-Yung or In¬ 
variable Mean, the Tun-yu or “Philos¬ 
ophical Dialogues,” and the Hi-tse, 
written by Meng-tse or Mencius. The 
teaching of Confucius has had ; and still 
has, an immense influence in China, 
though he can hardly be said to have 
founded either a religion or a philosophy. 
All his teaching was devoted to prac¬ 
tical morality and to the duties of man 
in this world in relation to his fellow- 
men ; in it was summed up the wisdom 
acquired by his own insight and ex¬ 
perience, and that derived from the 
teaching of the sages of antiquity. It 
is doubtful if he had any real belief in a 
personal god. 

CONGENITAL DISEASE, a disease 
with which one is afflicted at the time of 
birth, not necessarily an inherited 
disease, although most inherited dis¬ 
eases are congenital. Many congenital 
diseases are due to defects of the 
mothei or to accidental causes during 
the term of pregnancy. 

CONGER-EEL (kong'ger), a genus 
of marine eels characterized by a long 
dorsal fin beginning near the nape of the 
neck, immediately above the origin of 
the pectoral fins, and by having the 
upper jaw longer than the lower. 

CONGESTION, in medicine, an ex- 
oessive accumulation of blood in an 


organ, which thereby becomes disorder¬ 
ed. Among the causes of congestion are 
the different periods of development of 
the human body, each of which renders 
some particular organ unusually active; 
diseased conditions; and the accidental 
exertions of certain organs. Again, if 
the current of blood to one organ is 
checked the blood tends to accumulate 
in another; and the vessels which bring 
back the blood to the heart—that is the 
veins—are sometimes obstructed, as 
by external pressure, by tumors, etc. 
Congestion sometimes lasts a short time 
only; but if not early cured, and its 
return, which would otherwise be fre¬ 
quent, prevented, it is only the begin¬ 
ning of other diseases. Sometimes it 
terminates in bleeding, which is a 
remedy for it; sometimes it increases 
into inflammation; sometimes it be¬ 
comes a chronic disease, that is, the 
blood accumulates for a long time and 
expands the veins, the expansion be¬ 
comes permanent, and dropsy may re¬ 
sult. 

CONGLOM'ERATE, a term applied 
by geologists to rocks consisting mostly 
of water-worn pebbles cemented to¬ 
gether by a matrix of siliceous, calcare¬ 
ous, or other cement. 

CONGO, or ZAIRE, one of the great 
rivers of the world, in Southern Africa, 
having its embouchure in the South 
Atlantic. It carries more water to the 
ocean than the Mississippi, its volume 
being next to that of the Amazon. Its 
total length is perhaps 3000 miles. Its 
chief tributaries are the Aruwimi and 
the Mobangi from the right, and the 
Ikelemba and Kwa from the left, which 
latter represents the collected waters of 
immense rivers from the south, such as 
the Kassai, the Kwango, etc. It is 
navigable for about 110 miles from its 
mouth, after which the navigation is 
interrupted by cataracts. 

CONGO FREE STATE, a state re¬ 
cently founded on the river Congo, in 
Central South Africa, stretching by a 
kind of narrow neck of territory to the 
river’s mouth, but expanding inland so 
as to cover an immense area, mainly 
lying south of the river. The central 
government is at Brussels, consisting 
of the King of Belgium as sovereign, and 
three departmental chiefs. In Africa 
there is a governor-general with many 
officials, and an armed force. The 
revenue is partly from funds provided 
by King Leopold. A number of stations 
have been formed on the river, the 
chief of which is Boma, 70 miles from 
its mouth. The chief exports are palm 
oil and kernels, caoutchouc, ivory, copal, 
ground-nuts, _ wax, etc. From Matadi, 
opposite Vivi, a railway has been laid 
to Stanley Pool, and steamers have 
been placed on the river. Area esti¬ 
mated at 900,000 sq. miles; pop. at 
8,000,000 to 40,000,000. 

CONGO PEA. See Pigeon Pea. 

CONGREGA'TIONALISTS, a Chris¬ 
tian sect claiming to continue the primi¬ 
tive form of church government. Each 
congregation is autonomous and wholly 
independent of extraneous jurisdiction, 
the union of Congregational churches 
having only such indirect authority 
as attends the cumulative expression 
of opinion. In doctrine the majority I 


are evangelical, though in individual 
churches considerable latitude is shown. 

CONGRESS, generally speaking a 
meeting of international representatives 
for the purpose of considering particular 
or general questions concerning inter¬ 
national politics, art, science, economy, 
or religion. A series of world’s con¬ 
gresses were held at the Chicago World’s 
Fair in 1893. International treaty 
congresses will be found described under 
their separate heads. 

CONGRESS, the name given to the 
legislative assembly of the U. States, 
consisting of two houses—a senate and 
a house of representatives. The sen¬ 
ate consists of two members elected by 
each state for a period of six years, one- 
third of whom are elected every two 
years. The representatives in the lower 
house are elected by the several states 
every two years, and their number 
varies in each state in proportion to the 
population as determined by the de¬ 
cennial census. The united body of 
senators and representatives for the two 
years during which the representatives 
hold their seats is called one congress. 
See United States. 

CONGRESSMAN AT LARGE, a mem¬ 
ber of the U. States house of represen¬ 
tatives who is elected by the votes of all 
of the people of a state and not by a 
single district. They are elected to 
provide for the excess of population 
until the state can be regularly redis¬ 
tricted. 

CONIC SECTIONS, three curves, the 
hyperbola, the parabola, and the eclipse, 
so called because they are formed by 
the intersection of the surface of a cone 
with planes that cut the cone in various 





directions. If the cutting-plane be 
parallel to the axis the curve formed is 
the hyperbola (1); if parallel to the slope 
of the cone the curve is a parabola (2); 
if passing through both sides of the cone 
obliquely the section is an ellipse (3). 
A section perpendicular to the axis of 
the cone forms a circle (4), which may 
also be considered one of the conic sec¬ 
tions. A perpendicular plane through 
the apex gives a triangle (5). 

CONIF'ERAJ, the pines, firs, and their 
allies, the essential character of which 
consists in the manner in which the 
ovules, not inclosed in an ovary, receive 
directly the action of the pollen without 
the intervention of a stigma. The 
ovules in these plants are borne on scales 
or modified leaves, which are spread out, 
not folded, and generally grouped in 
sueh a manner as to form a cone com¬ 
posed of a greater or smaller number of 
these leaves, of which only a portion 
may be fertile and bear ovules. 












CONJUGAL RIGHTS 


CONNEMARA 


CON'TUGAL RIGHTS, in law, the 
right which husband and wife have to 
each other’s society, comfort, and affec¬ 
tion. A suit for restitution of conjugal 
rights is competent by either party. 

CONJUGATION. See Verb. 

CONJUNCTION, in grammar, a con¬ 
nective indeclinable particle serving to 
unite words, sentences, or clauses of a 
sentence, and indicating their relation 
to one another. They are classifiable 
into two main groups: (1) Coordi¬ 
nating conjunctions, joining independent 
propositionsj and subdivisible into cop¬ 
ulative, disjunctive, adversative, and 
illative conjunctions; (2) Subordinating 
conjunctions, linking a dependent or 
modifying clause to the principal sen¬ 
tence. The only active influence which 
the conjunction can be said to exercise 
grammatically in a sentence is in respect 
of the mood of the verb following it in 
dependent sentences, the rule being to 
employ the subjunctive where futurity 
and contingency are implied, the in¬ 
dicative where they are not; as “I will 
do it, though he be there” (which he may 
or may not be); or “I will do it, though 
he is there” (which he is). 

CONJUNCTION, in astronomy, the 
position of two of the heavenly bodies, 
as two planets, or the sun and a planet, 
when they have the same longitude 
(are in the same direction from the 
earth). When it is simply said that a 
planet is in conjunction, conjunction 
with the sun is to be understood. 
Superior conjunction and inferior con¬ 
junction are terms used of the planets 
whose orbits are nearer to the sun than 
that of the earth, according as the sun 
is between us and them, or they between 
us and the sun. 

CON'JURING. See Legerdemain. 

CONKLING, Roscoe, an American 
senator and orator, born in Albany, N.Y., 
in 1829, died in 1888. He was admitted 
to the bar in 1850 and was early in the 
political field as a stump-speaker. He 
was several times elected congressman, 
up to 1867, and his ability as a debater 
and orator won him great fame. At 
38 he was elected U. States senator and 
soon became one of the foremost leaders 
of the republican party. In 1876 he 
appeared as a presidential candidate, 
opposed civil service reform, and in 
1880 led the movement to nominate 
Grant for a third time. He quarreled 
with Garfield for appointing anti- 
Conkling men to federal offices and soon 
afterward retired from active politics 
to the practice of law. Conkling was a 
very positive man, strong in his friend¬ 
ships and enmities and his work was for 
the most part ephemeral. 

CONNAUGHT (kon'nat), the smallest 
of the four provinces of Ireland, situated 
between Leinster and the Atlantic; area, 
4.392,086 acres. A large proportion of 
the province is bog, and, generally it is 
the least fertile of all of the provinces. 
It is divided into five counties—Galway, 
Mayo, Roscommon, Leitrim, and Sligo. 
Pop. 649,635. 

CONNECTICUT (kon-net'i-kut), a 
river. U. States, the west branch of 
which forms by treaty the boundary 
between the U. States and Canada to 
lat. 45° n. It rises on the north border 
of New Hampshire; forms the boundary 


between Vermont and New Hampshire 
passes through the west part of Massa¬ 
chusetts and the central part of Con¬ 
necticut, and falls into Long Island 
Sound. It is navigable for vessels 
drawing from 8 to 10 feet for about 300 
miles from its mouth, subsidiary canals, 
however, being required above Hart¬ 
ford; total length, 450 miles. It is 
famed for its shad fisheries. 

CONNECTICUT, one of the original 
thirteen states of the American Union, 
bounded by New York, Massachusetts, 
Rhode Island, and Long Island Sound; 
length, east to west, about 95 miles; 
greatest breadth, north to south, about 
72. miles; area, 4845 sq. miles. It con¬ 
tains several distinct ranges of hills, but 
none of them have any great elevation. 
Its principal river is the Connecticut, 
which divides it into two nearly equal 
parts. The coast is indented with 
numerous bays and creeks which fur¬ 
nish many harbors. In former geologic 
times the area of Connecticut is believed 
to have formed a part of the southern 
slope of a great mountain mass, whose 
summits are perhaps indicated by the 
present White, Green, and Adirondack 
mountains. Long-continued erosion of 



Connecticut seal. 


streams and perhaps of ice reduced this 
region to a plain, with low relief and 
shallow stream valleys. A compara¬ 
tively recent tilting of the land has 
slightly depressed the coast and elevated 
the interior. This has revived the cut¬ 
ting power of the streams, which are now 
actively eroding their valleys, most of 
them in hard rocks, in which slow prog¬ 
ress is made. The Connecticut Valley 
is, however, largely of relatively softer 
rocks, which have been eroded away 
with greater rapidity. In recent geo¬ 
logic times the area of the state was 
covered by the Laurentian glacier, 
which did much erusion and deposition, 
scouring out lake basins, and thus form¬ 
ing the multitude of little lakes and 
ponds which diversify the surface, and 
modifying the streams’ courses,. pro¬ 
ducing rapids and falls, now utilized 
for water-power. 

Among the highest points in Connecti¬ 
cut are Bear Mountain, 2355 feet; 
Gridley Mountain, 2200 feet; Riga 
Mountain, all in Salisbury; Bradford 
Mountain, in Canaan, 1927; Dutton 
Mountain, 1620 feet, and Mount Bail, 


1760, in Norfolk; Above All Mountain, 
1456, in Warren; Ivy Mountain, in 
Goshen, 1640 feet; and Ellsworth Hill, 
1580 feet, in Sharon. Its minerals corn- 
rise iron, copper, lead, cobalt, plum- 
ago, marine, free-stone, porcelain-clay, 
and coal. Lime is produced in large 
quantities, and there is abundance of 
building stone. The soil is in general 
better suited for grazing than tillage, 
abounding in fine meadows. But where 
agriculture is practiced there are ample 
crops of Indian corn, rye, wheat, oats, 
barley, buckwheat, potatoes, hay, to¬ 
bacco, etc.; and fruits, particularly 
apples, flourish. Connecticut is nota¬ 
bly a manufacturing state, 19.5 per 
cent of the total population being en¬ 
gaged in that industry. Though one 
of the smallest states of the Union, 
it ranks eleventh in the importance of 
its manufactures. Influential among the 
factors which have developed these in¬ 
terests have been the favorable geo¬ 
graphical location and the excellence of 
the land and water communication of 
the state, the water power afforded by 
its streams, and especially the inventive 
talents and industrious habits of its 
people. 

By the twelfth census the state sur¬ 
passed any other state in 11 important 
industries, producing 75 per cent in 
value of the total ammunition output 
of the country; 56 per cent of the brass 
manufactures; 63 per cent of the clocks; 
47 per cent of the hardware; 76 per cent 
of the plated and britannia ware; 64 
per cent of the needles and pins. The 
development of its manufactures has 
been consistent. The cotton -mills of the 
state are clustered on the streams that 
flow into the Thames at Norwich. The 
principal exports consist of agricultural 
produce and manufactures. The foreign 
commerce is nearly all carried on through 
New York and Boston, but there is a 
considerable coasting trade, and a large 
amount of tonnage engaged in the coa- 
fisheries. Fish-culture has received 
special attention, many millions of shad 
ova and young salmon having been 
introduced into the rivers. The state is 
intersected in various directions by 
railways. The chief educational insti¬ 
tution is Yale University, one of the 
most celebrated in the world. Connecti¬ 
cut is divided into eight counties; Hart¬ 
ford is the capital. The state at first 
consisted of two colonies—Connecticut, 
with its seat of government atHartford; 
and New Haven, at New Haven. Con¬ 
necticut was settled in 1633 by emi¬ 
grants from Massachusetts. Hartford 
was settled by English in 1635, the 
Dutch having previously built a fort 
there. The colony of New Haven was 
settled by English in 1638, and the two 
colonies were united in 1665 by a charter 
granted by Charles II. In national 
elections the state went Democratic in 
1888 and 1892: in 1896, 1900,1904, 1908, 
Republican. Pop. 1,000,000. 

CONNECTIVE TISSUE. See Areolar 
Tissue. 

CONNEMARA (“the Bays of the 
Ocean”), a boggy and mountainous dis¬ 
trict occupying the west portion of 
county Galway, Ireland; about 30 miles 
in length and 15 to 20 miles in breadth. 
Its coasts are broken, and there are nu- 








CONRAD II. 


CONSTANTINE 


merous small lakes. It is subdivided 
into Connemara Proper in the west, Jar- 
Connaught in the south, and Joyce 
Country in the north. 

CON'RAD II., king of Germany and 
emperor of the Romans, reigned from 
1024 to 1039, and is regarded as the true 
founder of the Franconian or Salic line. 

CONRAD III., king of Germany, and 
emperor of the Romans from 1138 to 


and is performed by a bishop; (3) the 
act of the priest in celebrating the 
eucharist by which the elements are 
solemnly dedicated to their sacred 
purpose. 

CONSENT', in law, is understood to be 
a free and deliberate act of a rational 
being. It is invalidated by any undue 
means—intimidation, improper influ¬ 
ence, or imposition—used to obtain it. 



Scene In Connemara—Going to market. 


1152, was the founder of the Suabian 
dynasty of Hohenstaufen. His marriage 
with a Greek princess led to his adoption 
of the double-headed eagle now appear¬ 
ing on the Austrian arms. He was 
succeeded by his nephew Frederick 
Barbarossa. 

CONSANGUINITY, the relation of 
persons descended from the same ances¬ 
tor. It is either lineal or collateral— 
lineal between father and son, grand¬ 
father and grandson, and all persons in 
the direct line of ancestry and descent, 
from one another; collateral between 
brothers, cousins, and other kinsmen 
descended from a common ancestor, 
but not from one another. 

CONSCIENCE, that power or faculty, 
or combination of faculties, which de¬ 
cides on the rightness and wrongness of 
actions; otherwise called the Moral 
Sense. 

CONSCIOUSNESS, a term used in 
various senses, most commonly perhaps 
to denote the mind’s knowledge or 
cognizance of its own action. 

CONSCRIPTION, the enlisting of the 
Inhabitants of a country capable of 
bearing arms, by a compulsory levy, at 
the pleasure of the government, being 
thus distinguished from recruiting, or 
voluntary enlistment. In Great Brit¬ 
ain and the U. States a small militia 
obtained, if necessary, by conscription 
is usually kept up in time of peace, but 
the rule is voluntary enlistment. 

CONSECRATION, the dedication 
with certain rites or ceremonies of a 
person or thing to the service of God; 
especially (1) the ordination of a bishop 
or archbishop, which requires the co¬ 
operation of at least three bishops; 
(2) the dedication of a church to God’s 
service, which is practiced in the An¬ 
glican and Roman Catholic churches 


Idiots, pupils, etc., cannot give legal 
consent; neither can persons in a state 
of absolute drunkenness, though partial 
intoxication will not afford legal ground 
for annulling a contract. 

CONSERVATION OF ENERGY. See 
Energy, Conservation of. 

CONSER'VATORY, a name given to a 
systematic school of musical instruction. 

CONSER'VATORY, in gardening, a 
term generally applied by gardeners to 
plant-houses, in which the plants are 
raised in a bed or border without the use 
of pots, the building being frequently 
attached to a dwelling-house. 

CON'SERVE, a form of medicine in 
which flowers, herbs, fruits, roots, are 
preserved as nearly as possible in their 
natural fresh state. 

CONSIGN'MENT, a mercantile term 
which means either the sending of goods 
to a factor or agent for sale, or the goods 
so sent. 

CON'SISTORY, the highest council of 
state in the Papal government. The 
name is also applied to the court of 
every diocesan bishop, held in their 
cathedral churches for the trial of 
ecclesiastical causes arising within the 
diocese. In the English Church the con¬ 
sistory is held by the bishop’s chancellor 
or commissary and by archdeacons and 
their officials either in the cathedral 
church or other convenient place in the 
diocese. 

CON'SOLE, in architecture, a project¬ 
ing ornament or bracket having for its 
contour generally a curve of contrary 
flexure. It is employed to support a 
cornice, bust, vase, or the like, but is 
frequently used merely as an ornament. 

CON'SOLS, or CONSOLIDATED AN¬ 
NUITIES, a public stock forming the 

g eater portion of the national debt of 
reat Britain. It was formed in 1751 


by an act consolidating several separate 
stocks bearing interest at 3 per cent 
into one general stock. At the period 
when the consolidation took place the 
principal of the funds united amounted 
to $45,000,000; but through the addi¬ 
tion of other loans it has increased so 
much that now, after considerable re¬ 
ductions. it still amounts to more than 
half of tne national debt. The interest 
of about five million pounds is payable 
in Dublin, that of the remainder in 
London. 

CON'SONANCE, in music, an agree¬ 
able accord of sounds, such as the third, 
fifth, and octave. See Concord. 

CON'SONANT, a letter so named as 
being sounded only in connection with a 
vowel, though some consonants have 
hardly any sound even when united 
with a vowel, serving merely to de¬ 
termine the manner of beginning or 
ending the vowel sounds; as in ap, pa, 
at, ta. In uttering a consonant there is 
greater or less contact of some parts of 
the organs of speech; in uttering a 
vowel there is a want of such contact, 
the vocal passage being open though 
variously modified. They are classed 
as liquids, mutes, sibilants, labials, 
dentals, palatals, gutturals, etc. 

CONSPIR'ACY, in law, an offense 
ranked as a misdemeanor, and punish¬ 
able by imprisonment and hard labor. 
It is constituted by a combination be¬ 
tween several persons to carry into 
effect any purpose injurious either to 
individuals, particular classes, or the 
community at large. When the con¬ 
spiracy leads to any overt act of an un¬ 
lawful kind, the offense becomes felony. 



Cornice supported by Consoles, a a-. 


CONSTABLE, in the common modern 
acceptation of the term constables are 
police officers in towns, counties, etc., 
having as their duties the repression of 
felonies, the keeping of the peace, the 
execution of legal warrants, etc. In 
case of special disturbance a certain 
number of private citizens may be sworn 
in as special constables. 

CON'STANTINE, Caius Flavius Val¬ 
erius Aurelius Claudius, Roman em¬ 
peror, surnamed the Great, son of the 
Emperor Constantius Chlorus, was born 
a.d.274. After the death of his father 
he was chosen emperor by the soldiery, 
in the year 306, and took possession of 
the countries which had been subject to 
his father, namely, Gaul, Spain, and 
Britain. In the campaign in Italy he 
saw, it is said, the vision of a flaming 
cross in the heavens, beneath the sun, 
bearing the inscription, “In hoc signo 
vinces.” Under the standard of the 
cross, therefore, he vanquished the 
army of Maxentius under the walls of 
Rome, and entered the city in triumph. 



















CONSTANTINOPLE 


CONSTITUTION 


In 313, together with his son-in-law, 
the eastern emperor, Licinius, he pub¬ 
lished the memorable edict of toleration 
in favor of the Christians, and subse¬ 
quently declared Christianity the re¬ 
ligion of the state. Licinius, becoming 
jealous of his fame, twice took up arms 
against him, but was on each occasion 
defeated, and finally put to death. Thus 



in 325 Constantine became the sole 
head of the Roman Empire. His in¬ 
ternal administration was marked by a 
wise spirit of reform, and by many hu¬ 
mane concessions with regard to slaves, 
accused persons, widows, etc. In 329 
he laid the foundation of a new capital of 
the empire, at Byzantium, which was 
called after him Constantinople, and 
soon rivalled Rome herself. In 337 he 
was taken ill near Nicomedia, was 
baptized, and died after a reign of 
thirty-one years, leaving his empire be¬ 
tween his three sons, Constantine, Con- 
etantius, and Constans. 

CONSTANTINOPLE, a celebrated city 
of Turkey in Europe, capital of the 
Turkish Empire, situated on a pro¬ 
montory jutting into the Sea of Mar- 



of the latter, on the north and the Bos¬ 
porus on the east. The city proper 
is thus surrounded by water on all 
sides excepting the west, where is an 
ancient and lofty double wall of 4 miles 
in length, stretching across the promon¬ 
tory. On the opposite side of the Golden 
Horn are Galata, Pera, and other 
P. E.—20 


suburbs, while on the Asiatic side of 
the Bosporus entrance is Skutari. 
Occupying the extreme point of the 
promontory on which the city stands is 
the seraglio or palace of the sultan, 
which, with its buildings, pavilions, 
gardens, and groves, includes a large 
space At the principal entrance is a 
large and lofty gate, called Bab Humay- 
um, “the. high door” or “sublime porte,” 
from which has been derived the well- 
known diplomatic phrase. Of the 300 
mosques, the most remarkable are the 
royal mosques, of which there are about 
fifteen, esteemed the finest in the world. 
First among these is the mosque of 
bt. Sophia, the most ancient existing 
Christian church, converted into a 
mosque in 1453 on the capture of the 
city by the Turks. Another magnificent 
mosque is that of Soliman; after which 
are those of the Sultana Valide, built by 
the mother of Mohammed IV., and of 
Sultan .Achmet, the most conspicuous 
object in the city when viewed from 
the Sea of Marmora. The harbor, the 
Golden Horn, which more resembles a 
large river than a harbor, is deep, well- 
sheltered, and capable of containing 
1200 large ships, which may load and 
unload alongside the quays. It is about 
6 miles long, and a little more than half 
a mile broad at the widest part. Among 
the imports are corn, timber, cotton 
stuffs, and other manufactured goods. 
The exports consist of silk, carpets, 
hides, wool, goats’-hair, valonia, etc. 
—Constantinople occupies the site of 
the ancient Byzantium, and was named 
after Constantine the Great, who re¬ 
built it about a.d. 330. It was taken in 
1204 by the Crusaders, who retained it 
till 1261; and by the Turks under 
Mohammed II., May 29, 1453—an event 
which completed the extinction of the 
Byzantine Empire. See Byzantine 
Empire and Byzantium. Pop. 1,125,- 
000 . 

CONSTELLATIONS are the groups 
into which astronomers have divided 
the fixed stars, and which have received 
names for the convenience of description 
and reference. It is plain that the union 
of several stars into a constellation, to 
which the name of some animal, person 
or inanimate object is given must be 
entirely arbitrary, since the several 
oints (the stars) may be united in a 
undred different ways, just as imagi¬ 
nation directs. The grouping adopted 
by the Egyptians was accordingly 
modified by the Greeks, though they 
retained the Ram, the Bull, the Dog, 
etc.; and the Greek constellations were 
again modified by the Romans and 
again by the Arabians. Ptolemy 
enumerated forty-eight constellations, 
which are still called the Ptolemaean. 
They are the following:—1. The twelve 
signs of the zodiac (see Zodiac). 2. 
Twenty-one constellations found in the 
northern hemisphere—the Great Bear 
(Ursa Major), the Little Bear (Ursa Mi¬ 
nor), Perseus, the Dragon, Cepheus, 
Cassiopeia, Andromeda, Pegasus, Equu- 
lus (Horse’s Head), the Triangle, the 
Wagoner (Auriga), Bootes, the North¬ 
ern Crown (Corona Borealis), Ophiu- 
chus, the Serpent (Serpentarius), Hercu¬ 
les, the Arrow (Sagitta), the Lyre, the 
Swan (Cygnus), the Dolphin, the Eagle 


(Aqufla). 3. Fifteen constellations in 
the southern hemisphere—Orion, the 
Whale (Cetus), Eridanus, the Hare 
(Lepus), the Great Dog (Canis Major), 
the Little Dog (Canis Minor), Hydra, 
the Cup (Crater), the Crow (Corvus), 
the Centaur, the Wolf (Lupus), the 
Altar (Ara), the Southern Fish (Piscis 
Australis), the Argo, the Southern 
Crown (Corona Australis). Others were 
subsequently added, this being especi¬ 
ally rendered necessary by the increased 
navigation of the southern hemisphere, 
and now the different groups of stars 
have come to be associated with all 
sorts of animals and objects, including 
the Camelopard, the Fly, the Air-pump, 
the Compasses, etc. The different stars 
of a constellation are marked by Greek 
letters, a denoting those of the first 
magnitude, /3 those of the second, and 
so on. Stars of the sixth magnitude are 
the smallest visible to the naked eye. 
Several stars have also particular names. 

CONSTIPATION, the undue retention 
of feces. Its immediate effects are 
disordered appetite, a dry coated or 
clammy tongue, thirst, or a disagreeable 
taste in the mouth, dullnesSj giddiness, 
or pain in the head, torpor, irritability, 
and despondency. Its less immediate 
effects are cutaneous affections, dyspep¬ 
sia, colic, hysteria, hemorrhoids, etc. 
In most cases it is produced by indi¬ 
gestible food, astringent and stimu¬ 
lating drinks, sedentary habits, exces¬ 
sive indulgence in sleep, etc. The im¬ 
mediate use of purgatives, followed by 
strict attention to regimen, is in many 
cases all that is necessary. 

CONSTITUTION, the fundamental 
law of a state, whether it be a written 
instrument of a certain date, as that of 
the United States or an aggregate of laws 
and usages which have been formed in 
the course of ages, like the English con¬ 
stitution. The ideal constitution i3 
that established by a free sovereign 
people for their own regulation, though 
the expediency of other forms at various 
stages of national development cannot 
but be recognized. The chief of these 
are:—1. Constitutions granted by the 
plenary power of absolute monarchs, 
or constitutions octroy^es; such as 
Louis XVIII.’s Charte. 2. Those 
formed by contract between a ruler and 
his people, the contract being mutually 
binding—a class under which, in a great 
degree, the British constitution must 
be placed 3 Those formed by a com¬ 
pact between different sovereign powers, 
such as the constitutions of the German 
Empire, of the United Provinces of 
Holland, and of the Swiss Confederation. 

In regard to political principles, con¬ 
stitutions are: 1. Democratic, when the 
fundamental law guarantees to every 
citizen equal rights, protection, and 
participation, direct or indirect, in the 
government, such as the constitutions of 
the United States and of some cantons 
of Switzerland. 2. Aristocratic, when 
the constitution recognizes privileged 
classes, as the nobility and clergy, and 
intrusts the government entirely to 
them, or allows them a very dispropor¬ 
tionate share in it. Such a constitution 
was that of Venice, and such at one time 
those of some Swiss cantons, for in¬ 
stance, Bern. 3. Of a mixed character. 














CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 


CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES 


To this latter division belong some 
monarchical constitutions, which recog¬ 
nize the existence of a king whose power 
is modified by other brancnes of govern¬ 
ment of a more or less popular cast. 
The British constitution belongs to thi6 
division. 

CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, a branch 
of law which has to do with the organi¬ 
zation of government, the soundness of 
etatutory law in relation to the prin¬ 
ciples of a state’s constitution, and 
with the power of a government over its 
citizens or subjects. In the United 
States the interpretation of the con¬ 
stitution is open to all courts but the 
Supreme Court of the United States 
has the final jurisdiction in all ques¬ 
tions of the federal constitution while 
the supreme courts of the several states 
have final jurisdiction over all questions 
concerned with the constitutions of 
the separate states themselves. 

CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED 
STATES, the organic law of the United 
States. The constitution was drawn up 
by a constitutional convention w T hich 
began its work on May 14, 1787, in 
Independence Hall, Philadelphia. The 
work was finished on Sept. 17, 1787, and 
was ratified by all the thirteen states by 
1790. Several amendments have been 
made to the constitution to meet the 
exigencies of national growth. The 
following is a complete transcript of the 
constitution as it exists today: 

CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. 

We, the people of the United States, 
in order to form a more perfect union, 
establish justice, insure domestic tran¬ 
quillity, provide for the common de¬ 
fense, promote the general welfare, and 
secure the blessings of liberty to our¬ 
selves and our posterity, do ordain and 
establish this Constitution for the United 
States of America. 

Article I., Sec. 1. All legislative 
powers herein granted shall be vested 
in a congress of the United States, 
which shall consist of a senate and 
house of representatives. 

Sec. 2. The house of representatives 
shall be composed of members chosen 
every second year by the people of the 
several states, and the electors in each 
state shall have the qualifications 
requisite for electors of the most num¬ 
erous branch of the state legislature. 

No person shall be a representative 
who shall not have attained to the age 
of twenty-five years, and been seven 
years a citizen of the United States, and 
who shall not, when elected, be an 
inhabitant of that state in which he 
shall be chosen. 

Representatives and direct taxes 
shall be apportioned among the several 
states which may be included within 
this Union according to their respective 
numbers, which shall be determined by 
adding to the whole number of free 
persons, including those bound to ser¬ 
vice for a term of years, and excluding 
Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all 
other persons. The actual enumeration 
shall be made within three years after 
the first meeting of the congress of the 
United States, and within every subse¬ 
quent term of ten years, in such man¬ 
ner as they shall by law direct. The 


number of representatives shall not 
exceed one for every thirty thousand, 
but each state shall have at least one 
representative: and until such enu¬ 
meration shall be made, the state of 
New Hampshire shall be entitled to 
choose 3; Massachusetts, 8; Rhode 
Island and Providence Plantations, 1; 
Connecticut, 5; New York, 6: New 
Jersey, 4; Pennsylvania, 8; Delaware, 
1; Maryland, 6; Virginia, 10; North 
Carolina, 5; South Carolina, 5; and 
Georgia, 3. 

When vacancies happen in the repre¬ 
sentation from any state, the executive 
authority thereof shall issue writs of 
election to fill such vacancies. 

The house of representatives shall 
choose their speaker and other officers; 
and shall have the sole power of im¬ 
peachment. 

Sec. 3. The senate of the United 
States shall be composed of two sena¬ 
tors from each state, chosen by the 
legislature thereof, for six years; and 
each senator shall have one vote. 

Immediately after they shall be as¬ 
sembled in consequence of the first elec¬ 
tion, they shall be divided as equally as 
may be into three classes. The seats of 
the senators of the first class shall be va¬ 
cated at the expiration of the second 
year, of the second class at the expira¬ 
tion of the fourth year, and of the third 
class at the expiration of the sixth year, 
so that one-third may be chosen every 
second year; and if vacancies happen by 
resignation, or otherwise, during the 
recess of the legislature of any state, the 
executive thereof may make temporary 
appointments until the next meeting of 
the legislature, which shall then fill such 
vacancies." 

No person shall be a senator who 
shall not have attained to the age of 
thirty years, and been nine years a citi¬ 
zen of the United States, and who shall 
not, when elected, be an inhabitant of 
that state for which he shall be chosen. 

The vice-president of the United 
States shall also be president of the 
senate, but shall have no vote, unless 
they be equally divided. 

The senate shall choose their other 
officers, and also a president pro tem¬ 
pore, in the absence of the vice-president 
or when he shall exercise the office of 
president of the United States. 

The senate shall have the sole power to 
try all impeachments; when sitting for 
that purpose, they shall be on oath or 
affirmation. When the president of the 
United States is tried, the chief justice 
shall preside; and no person shall be 
convicted without the concurrence of 
two-thirds of the members present. 

Judgment in cases of impeachment 
shall not extend further than to removal 
from office, and disqualification to hold 
and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or 
profit under the United States; but the 
party convicted shall nevertheless be 
liable and subject to indictment, trial, 
judgment, and punishment, according 
to law. 

Sec. 4. The times, places, and manner 
of holding elections for senators and 
representatives shall be prescribed in 
each state by the legislature thereof; 
but the congress may at any time, by 
law, make or alter such regulations, ex¬ 


cept as to the places of chosing sena¬ 
tors. 

The congress shall assemble at least 
once in every year, and such meeting 
shall be on the first Monday in December 
unless they shall, by law, appoint a dif¬ 
ferent day. 

Sec. 5. Each house shall be the judge 
of the elections, returns, and qualifica¬ 
tions of its own members, and a majority 
of each shall constitute a quorum to do 
business; but a smaller number may 
adjourn from day to day, and may be 
authorized to compel the attendance of 
absent members, in such manner and 
under such penalties as each house may 
provide. 

Each house may determine the rules 
of its proceedings, punish its members 
for disorderly behavior, and, with the 
concurrence of two-thirds, expel a mem¬ 
ber. 

Each house shall keep a journal of its 
proceedings and from time to time pub¬ 
lish the same, excepting such parts as 
may in their judgment require secrecy, 
and the yeas and nays of the members of 
either house on any question shall, at the 
desire of one-fifth of those present, be 
entered on the journal. 

Neither house, during the sessions of 
congress, shall, without the consent of 
the other, adjourn for more than three 
days, nor to any other place than that 
in which the two houses shall be sitting. 

Sec. 6. The senators and representa¬ 
tives shall receive a compensation for 
their services, to be ascertained by law, 
and paid out of the treasury of the 
United States. They shall in all cases, 
except treason, felony, and breach of the 
peace, be privileged from arrest during 
their attendance at the sessions of their 
respective houses, and in going to and 
returning from the same; and for any 
speech or debate in either house they 
shall not be questioned in any other 
place. 

No senator or representative shall, 
during the time for which he was elected, 
be appointed to any civil office under the 
authority of the United States, which 
shall have been created, or the emolu¬ 
ments whereof shall have been increased 
during such time; and no person holding 
any office under the United States shall 
be a member of either house during his 
continuance in office. 

Sec. 7. All bills for raising revenue 
shall originate in the house of representa¬ 
tives; but the senate may propose or 
concur with amendments, as on other 
bills. 

Every bill which shall have passed the 
house of representatives and the senate 
shall, before it become a law, be present¬ 
ed to the president of the United States; 
if he approve, he shall sign it; but if not, 
he shall return it, with his objections, 
to that house in which it shall have 
originated, who shall enter the objec¬ 
tions at large on their journal, and pro¬ 
ceed to reconsider it. If after such re¬ 
consideration two-thirds of that house 
shall agree to pass the bill, it shall be 
sent, together with the objections to 
the other house, by which it shall like¬ 
wise be reconsidered; and if approved by 
two-thirds of that house, it shall become 
a law. But in all such cases the votes of 
both houses shall be determined by yeas 




CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES 


CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES 


and nays, and the names of the persons 
voting for and against the bill shall be 
entered on the journal of each house 
respectively. If any bill shall not be 
returned by the president within ten 
days (Sunday excepted) after it shall 
have been presented to him, the same 
shall be a law in like manner as if he 
had signed it, unless the congress by 
their adjournment prevent its return; in 
which case it shall not be a law. 

Every order, resolution, or vote to 
which the concurrence of the senate and 
the house of representatives may be 
necessary (except on a question of ad¬ 
journment) shall be presented to the 
president of the United States; and be¬ 
fore the same shall take effect, shall be 
approved by him, or, being disapproved 
by him, shall be repassed by two-thirds 
of the senate and house of representa¬ 
tives, according to the rules and limita¬ 
tions prescribed in the case of a bill. 

Sec. 8. The congress shall have power 
to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, 
and excises, to pay the debts and pro¬ 
vide for the common defense and gener¬ 
al welfare of the United States; but all 
duties, imposts, and excise shall be uni¬ 
form throughout the United States; 

To borrow money on the credit of the 
United States; 

To regulate commerce with foreign 
nations, and among the several states, 
and with the Indian tribes; 

To establish an uniform rule of natur¬ 
alization, and uniform laws on the sub¬ 
ject of bankruptcies throughout the 
United States; 

To coin money, regulate the value 
thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the 
Btandard of weights and measures; 

To provide for the punishment of 
counterfeiting the securities and current 
coin of the United States; 

To establish post-offices and post¬ 
roads; 

To promote the progress of science 
and useful arts, by securing for limited 
times, to authors and inventors, the 
exclusive right to their respective writ¬ 
ings and discoveries; 

To constitue tribunals inferior to the 
supreme court; 

To define and punish piracies and 
felonies committed on the high seas, 
and offenses against the law of nations; 

To declare war, grant letters of mar¬ 
que and reprisal, and make rules con¬ 
cerning captures on land and water; 

To raise and support armies, but no 
appropriation of money to that use shall 
be for a longer term than two years; 

To provide and maintain a navy; 

To make rules for the government and 
regulation of the land and naval forces; 

To provide for calling forth the militia 
to execute the laws of the Union, sup¬ 
press insurrections, and repel invasions; 

To provide for organizing, arming, 
and disciplining the militia, and for 
governing such part of them as may be 
employed in the service of the United 
States, reserving to the states repect- 
ively the appointment of the officers, 
and the authority of training the militia 
according to the discipline prescribed 
by congress; # 

To exercise exclusive legislation in all 
cases whatsoever over such district (not 
exceeding ten miles square) as may, by 


cession of particular states, and the 
acceptance of congress, become the seat 
of the government of the United States, 
and to exercise like authority over all 
places purchased by the consent of the 
legislature of the state in which the 
same shall be, for the erection of forte, 
magazines, arsenals, dock-yards, and 
other needful buildings; and 

To make all laws which shall be neces¬ 
sary and proper for carrying into execu¬ 
tion the foregoing powers, and all other 
powers vested by this constitution in 
the government of the United States, or 
in any department or officer thereof. 

Sec. 9. The migration or importa¬ 
tion of such persons as any of the states 
now existing shall think proper to ad¬ 
mit shall not be prohibited by congress 
prior to the year one thousand eight 
hundred and eight; but a tax of duty 
may be imposed on such importation, 
not exceeding ten dollars for each 
person. 

The privilege of the writ of habeas 
corpus 6hall not be suspended, unless 
when in cases of rebellion or invasion 
the public safety may require it. 

No bill of attainder or ex post facto 
law shall be passed. 

No capitation or other direct tax shall 
be laid, unless in proportion to the cen¬ 
sus or enumeration hereinbefore directed 
to be taken. 

No tax or duty shall be laid on articles 
exported from any state. 

No preference shall be given by any 
regulation of commerce or revenue to 
the ports of one state over those of an¬ 
other; nor shall vessels bound to or 
from one state be obliged to enter, clear, 
or pay duties in another. 

No money shall be drawn from the 
treasury but in consequence of appro¬ 
priations made by law; and a regular 
statement and account of the receipts 
and expenditures of all public money 
shall be published from time to time. 

No title of nobility shall be granted 
by the United States; and no person 
holding any office of profit or trust under 
them shall, without the consent of the 
congress, accept of any present, emolu¬ 
ment, office, or title, of any kind what¬ 
ever, from any king, prince, or foreign 
state. 

Sec. 10. No state shall enter into any 
treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant 
letters of marque and reprisal; coin 
money; emit bills of credit; make any¬ 
thing but gold and silver coin a tender 
in payment of debts; pass any bill of 
attainder, ex post facto law, or law im¬ 
pairing the obligation of contracts, or 
grant any title of nobility. 

No state shall, without the consent of 
the congress, lay any imposts or duties 
on imports or exports, except what may 
be absolutely necessary for executing 
its inspection laws; and the net produce 
of all duties and imposts, laid by any 
state on imports or exports, shall be for 
the use of the treasury of the United 
States; and all such laws shall be sub¬ 
ject to the revision and control of the 
congress. 

No state shall, without the consent of 
congress, lay any duty of tonnage, keep 
troops, or ships of war in time of peace, 
enter into any agreement or compact 
with another state, or with a foreign 


power, or engage in war, unless actually 
invaded, or in such imminent danger 
as will not admit of delay. 

Article II., Sec. 1. The executive 
power shall be vested in a president of 
the United States of America. He shall 
hold his office during the term of four 
years, and, together with the vice-presi¬ 
dent, chosen for the same term, be 
elected as follows: 

Each state shall appoint, in such man¬ 
ner as the legislature thereof may direct, 
a number of electors, equal to the whole 
number of senators and representatives 
to which the state may be entitled in 
the congress; but no senator or repre¬ 
sentative, or persons holding an office of 
trust or profit under the United States, 
shall be appointed an elector. 

The congress may determine the time 
of choosing the electors, and the day on 
which they shall give their votes; which 
day shall be the same throughout the 
United States. 

No person, except a natural-born citi¬ 
zen or a citizen of the United States at 
the time of the adoption of the consti¬ 
tution, shall be eligible to the office of 
president; neither shall any person be 
eligible to that office who shall not have 
attained at the age of thirty-five years, 
and been fourteen years resident within 
the United States. 

In case of the removal of the president 
from office, or of his death, resignation, 
or inability to discharge the powers and 
duties of the said office, the same shall 
devolve on the vice-president, and the 
congress may by law provide for the 
case of removal, death, resignation or 
inability, both of the president and vice- 
president, declaring what officer shall 
then act as president, and such officer 
shall act accordingly, until the disability 
be removed, or a president shall be 
elected. 

The president shall, at stated times, 
receive for his services a compensation, 
which shall neither be increased nor 
diminished during the period for which 
he shall have been elected, and he shall 
not receive within that period any other 
emolument from the United States, or 
any of them. 

Before he enters on the execution of 
his office, he shall take the following 
oath or affirmation: “I do solemnly 
swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully 
execute the office of president of the 
United States, and will, to the best of 
my ability, preserve, protect, and defend 
the constitution of the United States.” 

Sec. 2. The president shall be com¬ 
mander-in-chief of the army and navy of 
the United States, and of the militia of 
the several states when called into the 
actual service of the United States; he 
may require the opinion, in writing,of the 
principal officer in each of the executive 
departments upon any subject relating 
to the duties of their respective offices, 
and he shall have power to grant re¬ 
prieves and pardons for offenses against 
the United States, except in cases of 
impeachment. 

He shall have power, by and with the 
advice and consent of the senate, to 
make treaties, provided two-thirds of 
the senators present concur; and he 
shall nominate, and by and with the ad¬ 
vice and consent of the senate, shall 




CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES 


CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES 


appoint ambassadors, other public min¬ 
isters and consuls, judges of the supreme 
court, and all other officers of the United 
States, whose appointments are not 
herein otherwise provided for, and which 
shall be established by law; but the 
congress may by law vest the appoint¬ 
ment of such inferior officers as they 
think proper in the president alone, in 
the courts of law, or in the heads of 
departments. 

The president shall have power to fill 
up all vacancies that may happen during 
the recess of the senate, by granting 
commissions which shall expire at the 
end of their next session. 

Sec. 3. He shall from time to time 
give to the congress information of the 
state of the Union, and recommend to 
their consideration such measures as he 
shall judge necessary and expedient; he 
may on extraordinary occasions convene 
both houses, or either of them, and in 
cases of disagreement between them, 
with respect to the time of adjournment, 
he may adjourn them to such time as he 
shall think proper; he shall receive am¬ 
bassadors and other public ministers; 
he shall take care that the laws be faith¬ 
fully executed, and shall commission all 
the officers of the United States. 

Sec. 4. The president, vice-president, 
and all civil officers of the United States, 
shall be removed from office on impeach¬ 
ment for, and conviction of, treason, 
bribery, or other high crimes and mis¬ 
demeanors. 

Article III., Sec. 1. The judicial power 
of the United States shall be vested in 
one supreme court, and in such inferior 
courts as the congress may from time to 
time ordain and establish. The judges, 
both of the supreme and inferior courts, 
shall hold their offices during good be¬ 
havior, and shall, at stated times, _ re¬ 
ceive for their services a compensation, 
vhich shall not be diminished during 
their continuance in office. 

Sec. 2. The judicial power shall ex¬ 
tend to all cases, in law and equity, 
arising under this constitution, the laws 
of the United States, and treaties made, 
or which shall be made, under their 
authority; to all cases affecting am¬ 
bassadors, other public ministers, and 
consuls; to all cases of admiralty and 
maritime jurisdiction; to controversies 
to which the United States shall be a 
party; to controversies between two 
or more states; between a state and 
citizens of another state; between citi¬ 
zens of different states; between citizens 
of the same state claiming lands under 
grants of different states, and between 
a state, or the citizens thereof, and 
foreign states, citizens, or subjects. 

In all cases affecting ambassadors, 
other public ministers, and consuls, and 
those m which a state shall be party, the 
supreme court shall have original juris¬ 
diction. In all the other cases before 
mentioned, the supreme court shall have 
appellate jurisdiction, both as to law 
and fact, with such exceptions and under 
such regulations as the congress shall 
make. 

The trial of all crimes, except in cases 
of impeachment, shall be by jury; and 
such trial shall be held in the state where 
the said crimes shall have been com¬ 
mitted ; but when not committed within 


any state, the trial shall be at such 
place or places as the congress may by 
aw have directed. 

Sec. 3. Treason against the United 
States shall consist only in levying war 
against them, or in adhering to their 
enemies, giving them aid and comfort. 

No person shall be convicted of trea¬ 
son unless on the testimony of two wit¬ 
nesses to the same overt act, or on con¬ 
fession in open court. • 

The congress shall have power to de¬ 
clare the punishment of treason; but no 
attainder of treason shall work corrup¬ 
tion of blood, or forfeiture except during 
the life of the person attainted. 

Article IV., Sec. 1. Full faith and 
credit shall be given in each state to the 
public acts, records, and judicial pro¬ 
ceedings of every other state. And the 
congress may by general laws prescribe 
the manner in which such acts, records, 
and proceedings shall be proved, and 
the effect thereof. 

Sec. 2. The citizens of each state shall 
be entitled to all privileges and immuni¬ 
ties of citizens in the several states. 

A person charged in any state with 
treason, felony, or other crime, who 
shall flee from justice, and be found in 
another state, shall, on demand of the 
executive authority of the state from 
which he fled, be delivered up, to be 
removed to.the state having jurisdiction 
of the crhne. 

No person held to service or labor in 
one state, under the laws thereof, escap¬ 
ing into another, shall in consequence of 
any law or regulation therein, be dis¬ 
charged from such service or labor, but 
shall be delivered up on claim of the 
party to whom such service or labor may 
be due. 

Sec. 3. New states may be admitted 
by the congress into this Union; but no 
new state shall be formed or erected 
within the jurisdiction of any other 
state, nor any state be formed by the 
junction of two or more states, or parts 
of states, without the consent of the 
legislatures of the states concerned as 
well as of the congress. 

The congress shall have power to dis¬ 
pose of and make all needful rules and 
regulations respecting the territory or 
other property belonging to the United 
States; and nothing in this constitution 
shall be so construed as to prejudice any 
claims of the United States, or any 
particular state. 

Sec. 4. The United States shall guar¬ 
antee to every state in this Union a 
republican form of government, and 
shall protect each of them against in¬ 
vasion, and, on application of the legis¬ 
lature, or of the executive (when the 
legislature cannot be convened), against 
domestic violence. 

Article V. The congress, whenever 
two-thirds of both houses shall deem it 
necessary, shall propose amendments to 
this constitution, or, on the application 
of the legislatures of two-thirds of the 
several states, shall call a convention 
for proposing amendments, which, in 
either case, shall be valid to all intents 
and purposes as part of this constitution, 
when ratified by the legislatures of three- 
fourths of the several states, or by con¬ 
ventions in three-fourths thereof, as the 
one or the other mode of ratification 


may be proposed by the congress; pro¬ 
vided, that no amendment which may 
be made prior to the year one thousand 
eight hundred and eight shall in any 
manner affect the first and fourth 
clauses in the ninth section of the first 
article; and that no state, without its 
consent, shall be deprived of its equal 
suffrage in the senate. 

Article VI. All debts contracted and 
engagements entered into before ths 
adoption of this constitution shall be as 
valid against the United States under 
this constitution, as under the con¬ 
federation. 

This constitution and the laws of the 
United States which shall be made in 
pursuance thereof, and all treaties made, 
or which shall be made, under the 
authority of the United States, shall 
be the supreme law of the land; and 
the judges in every state shall be bound 
thereby, anything in the constitution 
or laws of any state to the contrary 
notwithstanding. 

The senators and representatives 
before memtioned, and the members of 
the several state legislatures, and all 
executive and judicial officers, both of 
the United States and of the several 
states, shall be bound by oath or affirma¬ 
tion to support this constitution; but 
no religious test shall ever be required 
as a qualification to any office or public 
trust under the United States. 

Article VII. The ratification of the 
conventions of nine states shall be 
sufficient for the establishment of this 
constitution between the states so 
ratifying the same. 

Done in convention, by the unani¬ 
mous consent of the states present, the 
17th day of September, in the year of our 
Lord one thousand seven hundred and 
eighty-seven, and of the independence 
of the United States of America the 
twelfth. 

AMENDMENTS. 

Article I. Congress shall make no 
law respecting an establishment of 
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise 
thereof; or abridging the freedom of 
speech or of the press; or the right of 
the people peaceably to assemble, and 
to petition the government for redress of 
grievances. 

Article II. A well-regulated militia 
being necessary to the security of a free 
state, the right of the people to keep and 
bear arms shall not be infringed. 

Article III. No soldier shall, in time 
of peace, be quartered in any house 
without the consent of the owner, nor 
in time of war but in a manner to be 
prescribed by law. 

Article IV. The right of the people to 
be secure in their persons, houses, 
papers, and effects, against unreason¬ 
able searches and seizures, shall not be 
violated; and no warrants shall issue 
but upon probable cause, supported 
by oath or affirmation, and particularly 
describing the place to be searched, 
and the persons or things to be seized. . 

Article V. No person shall be held to 
answer for a capital or otherwise in¬ 
famous crime, unless on a presentment | 
or indictment of a grand jury, except 
in cases arising in the land or naval 
forces, or in the militia, when in actual 




CONSUL 


CONSUL 


service, in time of war and public 
danger; nor shall any person be sub¬ 
ject for the same offense to be twice put 
in jeopardy of life or limb, nor shall be 
compelled in any criminal case to be 
a witness against himself; nor to be 
deprived of life, liberty, or property, 
without due process of law; nor shall 
private property be taken for public 
use without just compensation. 

Article VI. In all criminal prosecu¬ 
tions, the accused shall enjoy the right 
to a speedy and public trial, by an im¬ 
partial jury of the state and district 
wherein the crime shall have been 
committed, which district shall have 
been previously ascertained by law, and 
to be informed of the nature and cause of 
the accusations; to be confronted 
with the witnesses against him; to 
have compulsory process for obtaining 
witnesses in his favor, and to have the 
assistance of counsel for his defense. 

Article VII. In suits at common law, 
where the value in controversy shall 
exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial 
by jury shall be preserved, and no fact 
tried by a jury shall be otherwise re¬ 
examined in any court of the United 
States than according to the rules of the 
common law. 

Article VIII. Excessive bail shall not 
be required, nor excessive fines imposed 
nor cruel and unusual punishment in¬ 
flicted. 

Article IX. The enumeration in the 
constitution of certain rights shall not 
be construed to deny or disparage others 
retained by the people. 

Article X. The powers not delegated 
to the United States by the constitu¬ 
tion, nor prohibited by it to the states, 
are reserved to the states respectively, 
or to the people. 

Article XI. The judicial power of the 
United States shall not be construed to 
extend to any suit in law or equity com¬ 
menced or prosecuted against one of 
the United States by citizens of another 
state, or by citizens or subject of any 
foreign state. 

Article XII. The electors shall meet 
in their respective states, and vote by 
ballot for president and vice-president, 
one of whom at least shall not be an 
inhabitant of the same state with them¬ 
selves. They shall name in their ballots 
the person voted for as president, and 
in distinct ballots the person voted for 
as vice-president; and they shall make 
distinct lists of all persons voted for as 
president, and of all persons voted for 
as vice-president, and of the number of 
votes for each, which lists they shall 
sign and certify, and transmit, sealed, to 
the seat of the government of the United 
States, directed to the president of the 
senate. The president of the senate 
shall, in the presence of the senate and 
house of representatives, open all the 
certificates, and the votes shall then be 
counted; the person having the greatest 
number of votes for president shall be 
the president, if such number be a 
majority of the whole number of elec¬ 
tors appointed; and if no person have 
such a majority, then from the persons 
having the highest numbers, not exceed¬ 
ing three, on the list of those voted for as 
president, the house of representatives 
shall choose immediately, by ballot, the 


president. But in choosing the presi¬ 
dent, the votes shall be taken by srates, 
the representation from each state hav¬ 
ing one vote; a quorum for this purpose 
shall consist of a member or members 
from two-thirds of the states, and a ma¬ 
jority of all the states shall be necessary 
to a choice. And if the house of repre¬ 
sentatives shall not choose a president, 
whenever the right of choice shall de¬ 
volve upon them, before the fourth day 
of March next following, then the vice- 
president shall act as president, as in 
the case of the death or other constitu¬ 
tional disability of the president. The 
person having the greatest number of 
votes as vice-president shall be the vice- 
president, if such number be a majority 
of the whole number of electors ap¬ 
pointed; and if no person have a ma¬ 
jority, then from the two highest num¬ 
bers on the list the senate shall choose 
the vice-president; a quorum for the 
purpose shall consist of two-thirds of 
the. whole number of senators, and a 
majority of the whole number shall be 
necessary to a choice. But no person 
constitutionally ineligible to the office of 
president shall be eligible to that of 
vice-president of the United States. 

Article XIII., Sec. 1. Neither slavery 
nor involuntary servitude, except as a 
punishment for crime whereof the party 
shall have been duly convicted, shall 
exist within the United States, or any 
place subject to their jurisdiction. 

Sec. 2. Congress shall have power to 
enforce this article by appropriate 
legislation. 

Article XIV 7 Sec. 1. All persons born 
or naturalized in the United States, and 
subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are 
citizens of the United States, and of the 
state wherein they reside. No state 
shall make or enforce any law which 
shall abridge the privileges or immuni¬ 
ties of citizens of the United States; nor 
shall any state deprive any person of 
life, liberty, or property without due 
process of law, nor deny to any person 
within its jurisdiction the equal pro¬ 
tection of the laws. 

Sec. 2. Representatives shall be ap¬ 
portioned among the several states 
according to their respective numbers, 
counting the whole number of persons 
in each state, excluding Indians not 
taxed. But when the right to vote as 
any election for the choice of electors 
for president and vice-president of the 
United States, representatives in con¬ 
gress, the executive and judicial officers 
of a state, or the members of the legis¬ 
lature thereof, is denied to any of the 
male inhabitants of such state being 
twenty-one years of age, and citizens 
of the United States, or in any way 
abridged, except for participation in 
rebellion or other crime, the basis of 
representation therein shall be re¬ 
duced in the proportions which the 
number of such male citizens shall bear 
to the whole number of male citizens 
twenty-one years of age in such state. 

Sec. 3. No person shall be a senator or 
representative in congress, or elector of 
president and vice-president, or hold 
any office, civil or military, under the 
United States, or under any state, who, 
having previously taken an oath as a 
member of congress, or as an officer'of 


the United States, or as a member of any 
state legislature, or as an executive or 
judicial officer of any state, to support 
the constitution of the United States, 
shall have engaged in insurrection or 
rebellion against the same, or given aid 
or comfort to the enemies thereof. But 
congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of 
each house, remove such disability. 

Sec. 4. The validity of the public 
debt of the United States authorized 
by law, including debts incurred for 
payment of pensions and bounties for 
services in suppressing insurrection or 
rebellion, shall not be questioned. But 
neither the United States nor any state 
shall assume or pay any debt or obliga¬ 
tion incurred in aid of insurrection or 
rebellion against the United States, or 
any claim for the loss or emancipation 
of any slave; but all such debts, obliga¬ 
tions, and claims shall be held illegal and 
void. 

Sec. 5. The congress shall have power 
to enforce, by appropriate legislation, 
the provisions of this article. 

Article XV., Sec. 1. The right of the 
citizens of the United States to vote 
shall not be denied or abridged by the 
United States, or by any state, on ac¬ 
count of race, color, or previous con¬ 
dition of servitude. 

Sec. 2. The congress shall have power 
to enforce this article by appropriate 
legislation. 

CON'SUL, a name originally given to 
the two highest magistrates in the re¬ 
public of Rome. In the beginning of 
the republic the authority of the consuls 
was almost as great as that of the pre¬ 
ceding kings. They could declare war, 
conclude peace, make alliances, and even 
order a citizen to be put to death; but 
their powers were gradually curtailed, 
especially by the establishment of the 
tribunes of the people, early in the 5th 
century. But they still stood at the 
head of the whole republic: all officers 
were under them, the tribunes of the 
people only excepted: they convoked 
the senate, proposed what they thought 
fit, and executed the laws. In times of 
emergency they received unlimited 
power, and could even sentence to death 
without trial, levy troops, and make 
war without the resolve of the people 
first obtained. Under the emperors the 
consular dignity sunk to a shadow, and 
became merely honorary. The last con¬ 
sul at Rome was Theodorus Paulinus 
(a.d.536). 

In France the name of consul was 
temporarily adopted for the chief 
magistrates after the revolution. As 
early as Aug. 2, 1802, Bonaparte was 
proclaimed first consul for life, and thus 
the constitution of France became 
again practically monarchical. On 
April 10, 1804, he was proclaimed 
emperor, and even the nominal consu¬ 
late ended. 

At present consuls are officials ap¬ 
pointed by the government of one coun¬ 
try to attend to its commercial interests 
in seaports or other towns of another 
country. The duties of a consul gen¬ 
erally speaking are to promote the 
trade of the country he represents; to 
give advice and assistance when called 
upon to his fellow-subjects; to uphold 
their lawful interests and privileges if 






CONSUMPTION 


CONVERSION 


any attempt be made to injure them; 
to transmit reports of trade to his 
own government, to authenticate cer¬ 
tain documents, etc. They are gener¬ 
ally of three ranks: consuls-general, con¬ 
suls, and vice-consuls. 

CONSUMPTION, or PHTHISIS, a 
disease known by emaciation, debility, 
cough, hectic fever, and purulent ex¬ 
pectoration. The predisposing causes 
are very variable—hereditary taint, 
scrofulous diathesis, syphilis, small-pox, 
etc.; exposure to fumes and dusty air 
in certain trades; violent passions and 
excess of various kinds, sudden lower¬ 
ing of the temperature of the body, etc. 
The more immediate or occasional 
causes are pneumonic inflammation 
proceeding to suppuration, catarrh, 
asthma, and tubercles in the lungs, the 
last of which is by far the most general. 
The incipient symptoms usually vary 
with the cause of the disease; but when 
it arises from tubercles it is usually 
marked by a short dry cough that be¬ 
comes habitual, but from which nothing 
is spit up for some time except a frothy 
mucus. The breathing is at the same 
time somewhat impeded, the body be¬ 
comes gradually leaner, and great lan¬ 
guor, with indolence, dejection, and 
loss of appetite prevail. At a later 
stage the cough becomes more trouble¬ 
some, particularly by night, and is 
attended with an expectoration, the 
matter of which assumes a greenish 
color and purulent appearance, being 
on many occasions streaked with blood. 
In some cases a more severe degree of 
blood-spitting attends, and the patient 
spits up a considerable quantity of 
florid, frothy blood. At a more ad¬ 
vanced period of the disease a pain is 
sometimes felt on one side in so high a 
degree as to prevent the person from 
lying easily on that side; but it more 
frequently happens that it is felt only on 
making a full inspiration, or coughing. 
At the first commencement of the dis¬ 
ease the pulse is often natural, but it 
afterwards becomes full, hard, and fre¬ 
quent. At the same time the face 
flushes, particularly after eating, the 
palms of the hands and soles of the feet 
are affected with burning heat; the 
respiration is difficult and laborious; 
evening exacerbations become obvious, 
and by degrees the fever assumes the 
hectic form with remittent exacerba¬ 
tions twice every day, at noon and 
evening. From the first appearance of 
the hectic symptoms the urine is high 
colored, and deposits a copious branny 
red sediment. At this time the patient 
is usually costive; but in the more 
advanced stages a diarrhoea often comes 
on, colliquative sweats likewise break 
out, and these alternate with each other, 
and induce great debility. Some days 
before death the extremities become 
cold. In some cases a delirium precedes 
that event. The morbid appearance 
most frequently to be met with on the 
dissection of those who die of phthisis 
is the existence of tubercles in the 
cellular substance of the lungs, most 
usually at the upper and back part; 
but, in some instances, occupying the 
outer part, and forming adhesions to 
the pleura. In some cases life has been 
protracted till not one-twentieth part 


of the lungs appeared, on dissection, 
fit for performing their function. The 
left lobe is oftener affected than the 
right. The diet in this disorder should 
be nutritious, but not heating, or diffi¬ 
cult of digestion. Milk, especially that 
of the ass; farinaceous vegetables; 
acescent fruits; animal soups; and, 
above all, cod-liver oil, etc. are usually 
given. It is also of the utmost im¬ 
portance to see that the digestive organs 
are in proper working order. As much 
open air as possible, combined with 
abundance of nutritious food, is at 
present the treatment in vogue. With 
regard to urgent symptoms requiring 
palliation, the cough may be allayed by 
demulcents, but especially mild opiates 
swallowed slowly; colliquative sweats 
by acids, particularly the mineral; di¬ 
arrhoea by chalk and other astringents, 
or by small doses of opium. 

CONTA'GION, the communication of 
disease by contact direct or indirect. 
A distinction has sometimes been made 
between contagion, as the communica¬ 
tion of disease strictly by contact, and 
infection, as communication of disease 
by the miasmata, exhalations or germs 
which one body gives out and the other 
receives. There is little doubt that ex¬ 
cessively minute disease germs proceed 
from the breath, the perspiration or 
other excretions of a diseased person, 
and are capable of propagating the 
disease in another person; but the true 
nature of these is little understood. 
Antiseptics, or disinfectants, are used 
to destroy the poisonous particles, such 
as carbolic acid, sulphur, permanganate 
of potash, chlorine gas, etc. 

CONTEMPT, a term applied to an act 
of disobedience, impertinence, etc., to a 
judge or his mandates. It is really a 
crime and can be punished by the court 
as the court sees fit. Some American 
judges have tried to punish persons not 
connected with a law case who have 
criticized the conduct of the judge out¬ 
side the court, but this power has never 
been legally established. 

CONTINENT, a connected tract of 
land of great extent, forming a sort of 
whole by itself, as Europe, Asia, Africa, 
North and South America; or we may 
speak of the eastern and western con¬ 
tinents, Europe, Asia, and Africa being 
regarded as one, and North and South 
America another. Australia, from its 
size, may also be regarded as a con¬ 
tinent. 

CONTINENTAL SYSTEM, a plan de¬ 
vised by Napoleon to exclude Britain 
from all intercourse with the continent 
of Europe. It began with the decree of 
Beilin of November 21, 1806, by which 
the British Islands were declared to be 
in a state of blockade; all commerce, 
intercourse, and correspondence were 
prohibited; every Briton found in 
France, or a country occupied by French 
troops, was declared a prisoner of war; 
all property belonging to Britons, fair 
prize, and all trade in goods from 
Britain or British colonies entirely 
prohibited. Britain replied by orders in 
council prohibiting trade with French 
ports, and declaring all harbors of 
France and her allies subjected to the 
same restrictions as if they were closely 
blockaded. Further decrees on the part 


of France, of a still more stringent kind, 
declared all vessels of whatever flag, 
which had been searched by a British 
vessel or paid duty to Britain, de¬ 
nationalized, and directing the burning 
of all British goods, etc. These decrees 
caused great annoyance, and gave rise 
to much smuggling, till annulled at the 
fall of Napoleon, 1814. 

CONTRABAND, in commerce, all 
goods and wares exported from or im- 

[ >orted into any country, against the 
aws of said country. There are, also, a 
number of articles termed contraband 
of war which neutrals may be prevented, 
by one belligerent, from carrying to 
another. These generally include not 
only arms and munitions of war, but all 
the articles out of which they may be 
made. In recent times even provisions 
in certain cases have been considered 
contraband of war. 

CONTRACT, in law, an agreement or 
covenant between two or more persons, 
in which each party binds himself to do 
or forbear some act, and each acquires 
a right to what the other promises. Con¬ 
tracts may be in express terms or im¬ 
plied from the acts of the parties; they 
may be verbal or written, and at com¬ 
mon law both forms are binding; but by 
statute law a promise must be in writing. 
To be valid, a contract must be entered 
into parties legally competent, that is, 
of sound mind and of full age The act 
contracted for must not be contrary to 
law or public policy. Thus an agree¬ 
ment to do injury to another, or a con¬ 
tract not to marry at all is void. The 
contract must be founded on a con¬ 
sideration either of money or some act 
whereby an undoubted advantage ac¬ 
crues to the party sued. Lastly, the con¬ 
tract is voidable, if obtained by fraud, 
mistake or compulsion. 

CONTRALTO, in music, the highest 
voice of a male adult, or the lowest of a 
woman or a boy, called also the alto, or 
when possessed by a man counter-tenor. 
It is next below the treble and above 
the tenor, its easy range being from 
tenor G to treble C. 

CONVENTION, a coming together of 
persons delegated to act for others, or 
not so delegated, the purpose of which is 
to make agreements, treaties, nomina¬ 
tions or elections for office, transact 
business of various kinds and to do 
other things that may seem desirable to 
the convention. Political conventions 
generally have to do with the machinery 
of politics not connected with the actual 
government of a state. The first 
national convention of a political party 
was that of the anti-masonic party in 
1828. The idea immediately was 
adopted and today seems to form an 
inalienable and necessary part of Ameri¬ 
can political procedure. 

CONVERSAZIONE (sat-si-6'ne), a re¬ 
ception, usually on a large scale and in 
the evening, at which the company 
move about, converse with their ac¬ 
quaintances, partake of tea, coffee, or 
other refreshments, and often have 
objects of art, science, or general, in¬ 
terest set out for their inspection. 

CONVERSION, a term in logic. A 
proposition is converted when the pre¬ 
dicate is put in the place of the sueject, 

I and the subject in place of the predicate; 





CONVEX LENS 


COOLIE 


as, "no A is B” (“no virtuous man is a 
rebel”), the converse of which is “no B 
is A” (“no rebel is a virtuous man”). 
Simple conversion, however, in this 
manner is not always logical. In the 
case of universal affirmatives, for ex¬ 
ample, “all A are B” (say, “all men are 
animals”), the simple converse “all B 
are A” (“all animals are men”) would 
not be true. 

CONVEX LENS. See Lens. 

CONVEY'ANCING, the practice of 
drawing deeds, leases, or other writings 
(conveyances) for transferring the title 
to property from one person to another, 
of investigating the title of the vendors 
and purchasers of property, and of fram¬ 
ing those multifarious deeds and con¬ 
tracts which govern and define the rights 
and liabilities of families and individuals. 

CON'VICT, the general term for a 
person who has been found guilty of a 
serious offense and sentenced to penal 
servitude. 

CONVIC'TION, the finding a person 
guilty of an offense by the verdict of a 
jury. In certain cases of minor offenses, 
such as are tried before j'ustices of the 
peace, etc., the law allows of convictions 
without the intervention of a jury. 

CONVICT LABOR, labor performed 
by felons, or other convicts, and espe¬ 
cially a term applied to the labor of con¬ 
victs the products of which are pur¬ 
chased by contractors at an annual 
ayment. The convict labor plan has 
een bitterly opposed by labor unions 
as destructive to the interests of free 
labor and this view has been confirmed 
by experience. Convict labor, even 
when used for public purposes, such as 
road building, has been found expensive, 
undesirable and inefficient. 

CONVOL'VULUS, a genus of plants, 
consisting of slender twining herbs with 
milky j'uice; bell-shaped flowers and five 

frpp gt nTTlPBQ 

CONVUL'SION, a diseased action of 
muscular fibers, known by violent and 
involuntary contractions of the muscu¬ 
lar parts, with alternative relaxations. 
Convulsions are universal or partial, and 
have obtained different names accord¬ 
ing to the parts affected, or the symp¬ 
toms. The muscles principally affected 
in all species of convulsions are those 
immediately under the direction of the 
will, as those of the eyelids, eye, face, 
j’aws, neck, superior and inferior ex¬ 
tremities. Convulsions are produced 
commonly by irritation of some part of 
the brain or spinal cord, such as the 
general convulsions in inflammation of 
the brain membrances, or of the nerves 
themselves. Children of a nervous 
temperament are often the subjects of 
convulsions during dentition, particu¬ 
larly when accompanied by a disordered 
state of the bowels or the presence of 
worms. 

CONWAY, Moncure Daniel, an Ameri¬ 
can author, clergyman ,and historian. 
He was born in Virginia in 1832 and 
early allied himself with the abolitionist 
party and the Unitarian Church,. In 
1863 he went to England and resided 
there for 20 years. He recently re¬ 
turned to the United States. His 
principal works are The Rejected Stone, 
Idols and Ideals, Demonology and Devil 
Lore, and a number of literary essays. I 


COOCH-BEHAR', or KUCH-BEHAR', 

a native state in India, in political re¬ 
lation with the government of Bengal. 
The greater portion of the soil is fertile 
and well-cultivated. Area, 1307 sq. 
miles; pop. 578,868.—The chief town, 
Cooch-Behar, contains some handsome 
public buildings and a splendid new 
palace of the Maharajah. Pop. 11,480. 

COOK, Eliza, English poetess, born in 
London in 1818. She published a col¬ 
lection of poems under the title of 
Melaia and Other Poems. She after¬ 
ward wrote a great many poems mostly 
of a lyric cast, and some of her songs 
have been highly popular. She died in 
1889. 

COOK, James, a famous British navi¬ 
gator, born in Yorkshire, 1728. In 1755 
he entered the royal navy, and four 
years later as sailing-master of the Mer¬ 
cury performed valuable services in 
surveying the St. Lawrence River and 



Captain Cook. 


the coast of Newfoundland. Some ob¬ 
servations on a solar eclipse, communi¬ 
cated to the Royal Society, brought 
him into notice, and he was appointed 
commander of a scientific expedition to 
the Pacific, with the rank of lieutenant 
in the navy. During this expedition he 
successively visited Tahiti, New Zea¬ 
land, discovered New South Wales, 
and returned by the Cape of Good Hope 
to Britain in 1771. In 1772 Captain 
Cook, now raised to the rank of a com¬ 
mander in the navy, commanded a 
second expedition to the Pacific and 
Southern Oceans, which resulted like 
the former in many interesting obser¬ 
vations and discoveries. He returned to 
Britain in 1774. Two years later he 
again set out on an expedition to ascer¬ 
tain the possibility of a north-west 
passage. On this voyage he explored 
the western coast of North America, 
and discovered the Sandwich Islands, on 
one of which, Hawaii, he was killed by 
the natives, February 14, 1779. 

COOK, Joseph, an American clergy¬ 
man and author, born in New York in 
1838, died in 1901. For six years until 
1880 he delivered his famous “Boston 
Monday Lectures” and subsequently 
toured the country as a lecturer. _ 

COOKE, Jay, a noted American 
financier, born in Ohio in 1821. During 
the civil war he negotiated loans of 


over $2,000,000,000 for the govern¬ 
ment and was one of the most effect¬ 
ive advocates of the present national 
banking system. He died in 1905. 

COOKE, John Esten, an American 
novelist, born in Virginia in 1830, died 
in 1886. His literary career was inter¬ 
rupted by the civil war in which he took 
an active part. His principal works of 
fiction are The Virginia Comedians, and 
a sequel to that work, The Story of 
Eagle’s Nest, Leather Stocking and 
Silk, Ellie, or the Human Comedy, and 
Henry St. John, Gentleman. He also 
wrote several works of history. 

COOKE, Rose Terry, an American 
story writer and poet, born in Connecti¬ 
cut in 1827, died in 1892. She pub¬ 
lished Poems in 1860, Steadfast in 1889, 
Happy Dodd in 1879 and several col¬ 
lections of short stories which in their 
day were widely read. 

COOKERY, the preparation of food 
so as to render it more palatable and 
more digestible. The art is of great im¬ 
portance, not only for comfort but also 
for health. Food is mainly prepared by 
submitting it to the action of fire, as by 
roasting, boiling, stewing, etc. These 
processes give each a different flavor to 
food, but result alike in rendering the 
tissues, both of animal and vegetable 
food, softer and much more easily dealt 
with by the digestive organs. The art 
of cookery was carried to considerable 
perfection among some of the ancient 
nations, as for instance the Egyptians, 
Persians, and Athenians. Extravagance 
and luxury at table were notable 
features of Roman life under the empire. 
Among moderns the Italians were the 
first to reach a high degree of art in this 
department. Their cooking, like that 
of the ancient Romans, is distinguished 
by a free use of oil. Italian cookery 
seems to have been transplanted by the 
princesses of the House of Medici to 
France, and was carried there to per¬ 
haps the highest degree of perfection; 
even yet the skill and resource which 
the French cook shows in dealing often 
with very slight materials is a highly 
creditable feature in the domestic 
economy of the nation. 

COOLEY, Thomas McIntyre, an Amer¬ 
ican jurist and author, born in New 
York in 1824, died in 1898. For several 
years he was a professor in the law 
school of the University of Michigan 
and from 1864 to 1885 an associate 
justice of the Supreme Court of Michi¬ 
gan. His various publications are 
authority on constitutional law. 

COOLIDGE, Thomas Jefferson, an 
American diplomat, born at Boston in 
1831. He served as United States 
minister to France in 1892 and served 
subsequently on the Canadian American 
Joint High Commission. 

COOLIE, a name in Hindustan for a 
day laborer, also extended to those of 
some other eastern countries. Many of 
these have been introduced into the 
West Indies, Mauritius, and other 
places, their passage being paid for them 
on their agreeing to serve for a term of 
years. The first coolie emigrants appear 
to have been those sent to British 
Guiana from Calcutta in 1839 to supply 
the want of labor felt after the abolition 
of slavery. The coolies employed in 






COOLIDGE 


COPENHAGEN 


Guiana are still chiefly from India, but 
there is also a considerable number of 
Chinese. Coolies have also been intro¬ 
duced into Jamaica, Trinidad, Natal, 
and large numbers into Mauritius, the 
Indian population of the latter island 
being nearly 250,000. The Chinese 
coolies have been principally sent to 
Cuba and Peru. Chinese coolies were 
excluded from the United States by act 
of Congress in 1888. Through the ex¬ 
clusion of Japanese from the schools in 
San Francisco, a movement is now 
being made to have Japanese coolies 
also excluded. 

COOL-TANKARD, an old English 
beverage of various composition, but 
usually made of ale, with a little wine or 
wine and water, with an addition of 
lemon juice, spices, etc. 

COOM'ASSIE, a town, West Africa, 
capital of Ashantee, 130 miles north 
of Cape Coast Castle. It was taken and 
burned by Sir Garnet Wolseley in 1874. 
In 1900 it was invested by Ashanti na¬ 
tives, but was relieved after severe 
fighting. Pop. 50,000. 

COON OYSTER, in the southern 
states an oyster which grows close 
enough to shore to be obtained by the 
raccoon. 

COOPER, Henry Ernest, an Ameri¬ 
can lawyer, born in Indiana in 1857. 
He settled in Honolulu and was one of 
the leaders of the American revolution 
in the Hawaiian Islands. He filled 
several offices of the provisional govern¬ 
ment pending the annexation of the 
islands to the United States. 

COOPER, James Fenimore, American 
novelist, born at Burlington, New 
Jersey, in 1789, studied at Yale College, 
and entered the American navy as a 
midshipman at the age of sixteen. In 



1821 appeared the novel of Precaution, 
the first production of his pen. Though 
successful it gave no scope for his pecu¬ 
liar powers, and it was not till the pro¬ 
duction of The Spy and The Pioneers 
that he began to take a high place 
among contemporary novelists. Af¬ 
ter that came a steady flow of novels 
dealing with life on the sea and in the 
backwoods, most of which, like The' 
Pilot, Red Rover, Waterwitch, Pathfind¬ 
er, Deer-slayer, and Last of the Mohi¬ 


cans, are familiar names to the novel¬ 
reading public. After visiting Europe 
and serving as consul for the United 
States at Lyons for three years, Cooper 
returned to America, where he died 
at Cooperstown, New York, 1851. Be¬ 
sides his novels he wrote a history of the 
U. S. navy, and some volumes descrip¬ 
tive of his travels. 

COOPER, Peter, American inventor, 
manufacturer, and philanthropist, born 
1791, died 1883. He started life with 
few advantages, being almost self edu¬ 
cated; but by dint of energy, persever¬ 
ance, sagacity and integrity, accumu¬ 
lated a large fortune. He carried on 
the manufacture of glue and isinglass 
for over fifty years, and was also con¬ 
nected with the iron-manufacture, the 
railways (he designed and built the first 
American locomotive), and the tele¬ 
graphs of the U. States. 

CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETIES are asso¬ 
ciations of individuals for mutual assist¬ 
ance in industrial or commercial ob¬ 
jects. One form of co-operative socie¬ 
ties is that of an association of men be¬ 
longing to some trade or industry for 
the purpose of carrying it on entirely 
by their own efforts, and thus securing 
all the profits of their labors to them¬ 
selves; but much more common associa¬ 
tions are those the object of which is to 
provide the members, and sometimes 
also the general public, with the ordi¬ 
nary household necessaries, at as near 
as possible the prime cost. Associations 
of the former kind are thus associations 
for production, those of the latter for 
distribution, by means of what are 
commonly known as Co-operative Stores. 

COOPER’S CREEK, or the BARCOO, 
called by the latter name chiefly in its 
upper course, the largest inland river of 
Australia, which rises in Queensland by 
two branches, the Thomson and Victoria 
(or Barcoo), and flows southwest to 
Lake Eyre. 

COOPER UNION, an institution for 
the advancement of art and science, 
founded in New York in 1859 by Peter 
Cooper. The purpose is to educate the 
people by means of day and night 
classes in the different technical trades 
and sciences. The institution has over 
$5,000,000 in property and is in reality 
a technical school which is very well 
attended. It has about 2,000 students 
and confers degrees. 

COORG, or KURG, an ancient prin¬ 
cipality now a province in Southern 
Hindustan, lying between Mysore on the 
east and northeast and the districts of 
South Canara and Malabar on the west; 
area, 1583 sq. miles. The country has 
a healthy climate, and yields coffee, 
spices, timber, etc. The capital is 
Merkara. Pop. 180,607. 

CO'OS. See Cos. 

CO-PARTNERSHIP. See Partnership. 

COPE, a sacerdotal vestment, re¬ 
sembling a sleeveless cloak with a hood, 
reaching from the shoulders to the feet, 
worn on solemn occasions, and particu¬ 
larly in processions, by the pope and 
other bishops as well as by priests. It 
was one of the vestments retained at the 
reformation in the Anglican Church. 

COPE, Edward Drinker, an American 
zoologist born in Philadelphia in 1840, 
died in 1897. For many years he was 


professor in the University of Pennsyl¬ 
vania and from 1878 was the editor of 
the American Naturalist. Cope’s prin¬ 
cipal contribution to science was his fine 
collections of fossils and the classifica¬ 
tion and interpretation of the same. 
His principal writings are Origin of the 
Fittest, Origin of Genera, and Primary 
Factors of Organic Evolution. 



Cope. 

a, Probably Dr. Robert Langton, Queen’s 
Coll. Oxon. 1, Cope. 

b, Figure ot Pugin’s Glossary. 2 2^2, Cope. 

CO'PECK, a Russian copper coin, so 
called from the impression of St. George 
bearing a lance, the hundredth part of a 
silver ruble, or about the eightieth part of 
a paper ruble. It is equal to about three 
quarters of a cent. 

COPENHA'GEN, the capital of Den¬ 
mark, on the Sound, the larger and older 

P ortion of itr on the east side of the 
sland of Zealand, a smaller portion on 
the north point of the island of Amager, 
with between them a branch of the sea 
forming the harbor. It has a citadel 
and several strong forts protecting it 
on the sea side; and is mostly well built, 
principally of brick. The chief buildings 
are the royal palace of Rosenborg, with 
many antiques and precious articles; 
the Amalienborg, consisting, properly 
speaking, of four palaces, one of them 
the usual residence of the sovereign; the 
palace of Charlottenburg, now the re¬ 
pository of the Academy of Arts; the 
Royal Library, containing 550,000 vol¬ 
umes and 25,000 manuscripts; Thor- 
waldsen’s Museum, containing a great 
many of the sculptor’s works; the uni¬ 
versity buildings; the Vor Frue Kirke; 
the arsenal; etc. The university, 
founded by Christian I. in 1478, has 
about 700 professors and teachers, five 
faculties, and a library of 200,000 
volumes. The harbor is safe and com¬ 
modious. Copenhagen is the principal 
station of the Danish fleet and the cen¬ 
ter of the commerce of Denmark. It 
carries on an active trade with Norway, 
Sweden, Russia, and Germany, and in 
particular with Britain, the principal ex¬ 
ports being grain, butter, cheese, beef, 
pork, cattle, horses, hides, etc. It has 
foundries and machine-works, woolen 
and cotton mills, porcelain works, brew¬ 
eries, distilleries, etc., and produces also 
watches, clocks, pianofortes, etc. Sugar¬ 
refining and tanning are carried on. 
Pop. with suburbs, 476,806. 


































COPPER CONVERTER PLANT IN OPERATION. 

The gigantic size of the machines in the model metal manufactory is shown strikingly in this illustration but the great casting tools 
themselves are but toys compared to the giant crane, which, responsive to the touch of the engineer, travels from end to end of the 
great shop, picking up weights of hundreds of tons with greater ease than a person would pick a needle from the floor. 























COPERNICUS 


CORAL 


COPER'NICUS, Nicholas, astronomer, 
born at Thorn, then in Poland, Feb. 19, 
1473, his family being supposed to have 
come originally from Westphalia. Hav¬ 
ing studied medicine at Cracow, he 
afterward devoted himself to mathe¬ 
matics and astronomy, and in 1500 
taught mathematics at Rome with great 
success. Returning to his own country 
he was made a canon in the cathedral 
of Frauenburg, and began now to work 
out his new system of astronomy. 
Doubting that the motions of the 
heavenly bodies could be so confused 
and so complicated as the Ptolemaic 
system made them, he was induced to 
consider the simpler hypothesis that the 
sun was the center round which the 
earth and the other planets revolve. 
Besides this fundamental truth Coperni¬ 
cus anticipated, for he can scarcely be 
said to have proved, many other of the 
principal facts of astronomical science, 
such as the motion of the earth round its 
axis, the immense distance of the stars 
which made their apparent position the 
same from any part of the earth’s orbit, 
etc. His general theory also enabled 
him to explain for the first time many 
of the important phenomena of nature, 
such as the variations of the seasons and 
the precession of the equinoxes. The 
great work in which Copernicus ex¬ 
plained his theory, De Orbium Coeles- 
tium Revolutionibus (On the Revolu¬ 
tions of the Celestial Orbs), was com- 
leted in 1510, and published at Nurem- 
erg in 1543. It was long among books 
forbidden to Roman Catholics. He 
died at Frauenburg, 24th May, 1543. 

COP'PER, one of the most ancient 
known metals, deriving its name from 
Cyprus, large supplies having in Greek 
and Roman times come from that 
island. It is a metal of a pale red color 
tinged with yellow. Next to gold, 
silver, and platinum it is the most ductile 
and malleable of metals; it is more 
elastic than any metal except steel, and 
the most sonorous of all except alumin¬ 
ium. Its conducting power for heat 
and electricity is inferior only to that 
of silver. It has a distinct odor and a 
nauseous metallic taste. It is not 
altered by water, but tarnishes by 
exposure to the air, and becomes 
covered with a green carbonate. It 
occurs native in branched pieces, 
dendritic, in thin plates, and rarely in 
regular crystals, in the primitive and 
older secondary rocks. Blocks of native 
copper have sometimes been got weigh¬ 
ing many tons. Its ores are numerous 
and abundant. Of these several contain 
sulphur and iron or other metal, such as 
copper glance or vitreous copper; gray 
copper or Fahlerz, one of the most 
abundant and important ores; and 
copper pyrites or yellow copper ore, and 
other abundant ore. The red oxide of 
copper forms crystals of a_ fine red 
color, and is used for coloring glass. 
There are two native carbonates, the 
blue and the green, the latter being the 
beautiful mineral malachite, the former 
also known as blue malachite. Blue 
Vitrol is a sulphate, and is used for 
dyeing and preparing pigments, as are 
various other copper compounds. Ver¬ 
digris is an acetate. The arsenite of 
copper is the pigment Scheele’s green. 


Schweinfurth green is another copper 
pigment. All the compounds of copper 
are poisonous. It is found in most 
European countries, in Australia and 
Japan, in Africa and in North and South 
America (especially in the vicinity of 
Lake Superior). In Britain the mines 
of Cornwall are the richest. 

COP'PERAS, sulphate of iron or green 
vitriol, a salt of a peculiar astringent 
taste and of a fine green color. When 
exposed to the air it assumes a brownish 
hue. It is much used in dyeing black 
and in making ink, and in medicine 
as a tonic. The copperas of commerce 
is usually made by the decomposition 
of iron pyrites. 

COPPER-HEAD, a venomous N. 
American serpent, of the rattlesnake 
family. 

COPPER-HEADS, a name given to 
residents of the north during the civil 
war who either sympathized with the 
south, or opposed the prosecution of 
the war against the south. 

COPPER-PLATE, a polished plate of 
copper on which the lines of some draw¬ 
ing or design are engraved or etched to 
be printed from; also a print or impres¬ 
sion from such a plate. 

COPPER PYRI'TES, or yellow copper 
ore, a double sulphide of copper and iron 
composed in equal parts of copper, 
sulphur, and iron. It occurs mostly in 
primary and metamorphic rocks, and 
is the chief copper ore of England. 

COPTS, a name given to the Christian 
descendants of the Ancient Egyptian 
race, belonging mostly to the Jacobite 
or Monophysite sect. Reduced by a 
long course of oppression and misrule to 
a state of degradation, the number and 
national character of the Copts have 
greatly declined. At present they do not 
amount to more than perhaps 350,000. 
Their costume resembles that of the 
Moslems, but they are very generally 
in the habit of wearing a black turban 
for distinction’s sake. In various other 
respects they resemble the Moslem, and 
they practice circumcision and abhor 
the flesh of swine. The women go out 
with veiled faces like the Moslem women. 
There are schools for the male children, 
but very few of the females are taught 
to read. Confession is required of all. 
Fasting holds a prominent place in the 
life of the Copt, who is, indeed, required 
to fast (that is, to abstain from all 
animal food except fish) during the 
greater part of every year. The head of 
the Coptic Church is the Patriarch of 
Alexandria, who is also head of the 
Abyssinian Church. He is regarded 
as the successor of St. Mark, by whom 
the Copts believe that Christianity was 
introduced among them. They are 
very strict and exclusive in their religion 
but a certain number have latterly been 
converted to Protestantism. The Copts 
are quiet and industrious, have a good 
capacity for business, but are said to be 
servile and crafty. The Coptic scribes 
form a close guild. What is called the 
Coptic language is no longer spoken, 
Arabic having taken its place. It is 
still used, however, in a formal way in 
their religious services. It is regarded 
as the direct descendant of the ancient 
sacred language of the Egyptians. 
There is a tolerably abundant Coptic 


Christian literature, chiefly lives of 
saints, homilies, etc. It is written in 
what is substantially the Greek a’phabet 
with some additional letters. 

COPYING MACHINES, devices for 
making several copies of a writing, the 
chief of which are the socalled mimeo¬ 
graph and the papyrograph, the former 
an invention of Edison. Various other 
devices consist of sheets of jelly-like 
substance upon which the original, 
written in colored ink, is pressed leaving 
a reversed copy upon the surface of the 
jelly and from which other copies are 
made. No perfectly satisfactory copy¬ 
ing machine has yet been devised. 

COPYRIGHT, the exclusive property 
right to reproduce in writing, engraving, 
printing, or by any other means, of an 
artistic or literary thing for the purpose 
of sale. In the U. States a copyright 
is obtained by sending to the librarian 
of congress at Washington two copies 
of the thing with a fee of 50 cents (or 
$1 if papers are desired), on or before 
the day of publication. Copyright was 
originated in the reign of Queen Anne 
of England and has been practiced in 
the U. States since the beginning of this 
government. The right extends only to 
the form of the thing copyrighted and 
not to its substance. The right is 
granted for a period of 28 years and this 
period may be extended for an ad¬ 
ditional period of 14 years. Inter¬ 
pretation of the law is somewhat plastic, 
and infringement is a matter that must 
be decided by a court. By the act of 
1891 foreign works may be copyrighted 
in America if printed from plates made 
in this country and published simul¬ 
taneously. 

COQUELIN (ko'klan), Benoit Con¬ 
stant, a noted French actor, born at 
Boulogne-sur-Mer, Jan. 23, 1841. He 
visited the U. States in 1888, in 1893, 
and in 1894. His most celebrated 
character is that of Cyrano de Bergerac 
in Rostand’splay. Died 1909. 

COQUELIN, Ernest Alexandre 
Honore, brother of Constant Coquelin, 
a French actor, born in 1848. He is as 
well known for his success as a dramatic 
writer as for his histrionic talent. 

COQUIMBO (ko-kim'bo), or Laserena, 
a town of Chili, capital of the prov¬ 
ince of Coqumibo, stands near the sea, 
on a river of the same name. It is the 
see of a bishop. Pop. 13,000.—Porto 
Coquimbo, the port of the above, from 
which it is distant 7 miles to the s.w., 
has smelting works and a large export 
trade, chiefly in copper and the precious 
metals. Pop. 5100.—The province is 
rich in copper, silver, gold, and other 
metals, and is mountainous. Pop. 
165,474. 

COR'ACLE, a small boat or canoe of 
oval form and made of wicker-work 
covered with skins. It was used by the 
ancient Britons, and something similar 
is still in use among Welsh fishermen 
and on the Irish lakes. 

COR'ACOID BONE, a bone in birds 
joining the sternum and shoulder-bone, 
and gpving support to the wing. In 
mammals it is represented by the cora¬ 
coid process of the scapula. 

COR'AL, the name applied to the 
calcareous stony structures secreted by 
many of the sea-anemones, etc. Two 






CORBEL 


CORELLI 


kinds of corals are distinguished by 
naturalists, those in which the cal¬ 
careous skeleton is developed in the 
walls of the body, as in the reef-building 
corals, and those in which (as in the red 
coral of commerce) the skeleton is ex¬ 
ternal or cuticular. Reproduction takes 
place by ova, but chiefly by budding, 
the new individual remaining in organic 



Formation of coral reefs, according to 
Darwin. 

union with the old. The coral masses 
grow not merely by the multiplication 
of individuals, but by the increase in 
height of each of the latter, which, as 
they grow, become divided transversely 
by partitions. The animal, distended 
with ova, collapses on their discharge, 
and thus becomes too small for the cup 
which it formerly occupied; it cuts off 
the waste space by a horizontal layer of 
coral, and the repetition of this process 
gradually adds to the height of the mass. 
It is in this way that the coral reefs and 
islands, occurring in such abundance 
in the Pacific, the Indian Ocean, and the 
Red Sea, are built up—works of such 
stupendous and astonishing bulk when 
compared with the tiny creatures that 
produce them. 

COR'BEL, in architecture, a piece of 
stone, wood, or iron projecting from the 
vertical face of a wall, to support some 
superincumbent mass. Corbels are of a 



Corbel-table. 


great variety of forms, and are orna¬ 
mented in many ways. They are some¬ 
times used in rows to support a project¬ 
ing course called a corbel-table. 

CORCORAN ART GALLERY, a col¬ 
lection of paintings and sculptures in 
Washington, D. C., presented to that 
city by W. W. Corcoran, containing 
numerous famous pieces. It is housed 
in a white marble building given by 
Ernest Flagg. 

CORD AY D’ ARMANS (kor-da-dar- 
man), Marie Anne Charlotte, commonly 
called Charlotte Corday, was born in 
Normandy in 1768, of a family which 
counted the poet Corneille among its 
ancestors. Her lover, an officer in the 
garrison of Caen, was accused by Marat 


as a conspirator against the republic, 
and assassinated by villains hired for 
that purpose. This, as well as a deep- 
rooted hatred against all oppressors, 
determined Charlotte Corday to free 
her country from Marat. Having 
obtained an interview with Marat at his 
own house she plunged her dagger into 
his bosom, and gave herself up to the 
attendants who rushed in at his cries. 
When tried for the murder before the 
revolutionary tribunals, her air was 
dignified and her replies firm. In spite 
of the fervid eloquence of her advocate’s 
defense she was condemned to the 
guillotine, and was executed on 17th 
July, 1793. 

CORDELIERS (kor'de-lerz), originally 
an order of Franciscan monks who wore 
as part of their dress a girdle of knotted 
cords; afterward the name given to a 
society of Jacobins, to which the names 
of Marat, Danton and Camille Des¬ 
moulins gave some reputation. The 
club lasted from 1792 to 1794, and took 
its name from their place of meeting. 

CORDITE, a new smokeless explosive 
for use in ordnance, so named from 
being made in cordlike forms. 

COR'DON, in a military sense, troops 
so disposed as to keep up an uninter¬ 
rupted line of communication, to pre¬ 
serve an area either from hostile invasion 
or from contagious diseases. In the 
latter sense it is called cordon sanitaire. 

CORDOVA, an ancient Spanish city 
on the Guadalquiver, in Andalusia, 
capital of a province of the same name. 
A part of the town is of Roman, a part 


of Moorish origin. Pop. 55,614.—The 
province includes the fertile and beau¬ 
tiful valley of the Guadalquiver and the 
mountains of . Sierra Morena. Area, 
5188 sq. miles; pop. 420,728. 

COR'DOVA, a town of the Argentine 
Republic, capital of province of same 
name. It occupies a beautiful site on 
the Primero, and has various important 
buildings and institutions, including a 
university. Pop. 58,275.—The prov¬ 
ince has an area of 54,000 sq. miles, a 
pop. of 456,000. 

CORDUROY', a thick cotton stuff 
corded or ribbed on the surface.—Cor¬ 
duroy road, in N. America, a road con¬ 
structed with logs laid together over 
swamps or marshy places for carriages 
to pass over. 


CORD-WOOD, wood cut and piled 

for sale by the cord, in distinction from 
long wood; properly, wood cut to the 
length of 4 feet; but in this respect the 
practice is not uniform. 

CORE'A, a kingdom of Asia, consist¬ 
ing chiefly of a peninsula lying north 
east of China, bounded n. by Manchuria, 
e. by the Sea of Japan, s. by a narrow 



sea which parts it from the Japanese 
Islands, and w. by the Yellow Sea Pop. 
vaguely estimated at about 9,000,000 
or more; area about 80,000 sq. miles. 
Soul or Seoul, is the capital. The 
eninsula is traversed through its length 
y a mountain range, abrupt and pre¬ 
cipitous on the east, but forming a 
gentle slope on the west side, which, 
being watered by the principal rivers 
of the country is exceedingly fertile. 
In the north the only grain that can be 
grown is barley; but in the south, wheat, 
cotton, rice, millet, and hemp are grown 


extensively. The ginseng root is a pro¬ 
duction greatly valued in China and 
Japan. Tigers, panthers, foxes, wolves, 
and sables are abundant. The penin¬ 
sula abounds in minerals, gold, silver, 
iron, copper, lead, and coal. Corea is 
governed by a king, whose sway is 
nominally absolute. Till recently China 
was suzerain of Corea, but the war with 
Japan ended this. Buddhism, Confu¬ 
cianism, and Taouism are the chief 
religions. 

CORELLI, Marie. An English nov¬ 
elist, the adopted daughter of Charles 
Mackay, the poet. She was bom in Italy 
in 1864, and educated in London and in 
a convent in France. A musical career 
was planned for her, but she early 
adopted literature instead. Among her 



Cordova. 


























































COREOPSIS 


CORNEILLE 


writings are: The Romance of Two 
Worlds; Thelma; The Sorrows of Satan; 
The Mighty Atom; The Murder of Deli- 
cia; Ziska; Jane; The Master-Christian; 
Boy; and Temporal Power. 

CO'REOP'SIS, An herbaceous annual 
or perennial plant of the order Com- 

S ositae, nearly all natives of eastern 
L America, and. popularly known as 
tick-seed, the fruit Deing in the shape of 
a small tick. It is often raised for its 
showy yellow or rose-purple flowers 
with yellow or brown discs. The 
perennials are grown in hardy borders; 
the annuals in the garden in almost any 
soil. 

COR'FU, a Greek island in the Medi¬ 
terranean, the most northerly of the 
Ionian Islands, at the mouth of the 
Adriatic, near the coast of Albania, about 
40 miles long, and from 15 to 20 wide; 
square miles, 427. The surface rises at 
one point to the height of 3000 feet, the 
scenery is beautiful, the climate pleasant 
and healthy, the soil fertile. Oranges, 
citrons, grapes, honey, wax, oil, and 
salt are abundant. 

COR'INTH, a once celebrated city 
upon the isthmus of the same name, 
which unites Peloponnesus with North¬ 
ern Greece. It was renowned among the 
cities of Greece, commanded by its ad¬ 
vantageous position a most important 
transit trade, and possessed all the 
splendor which wealth and luxury could 
create. St. Paul lived here a year and a 
half, and two of his epistles are addressed 
to the Corinthians.—New Corinth is a 
village on the shore of the gulf, several 
miles n. w. from the site of ancient 
Corinth; it is the seat of an archbishop. 
Pop.3000. 

CORINTHIAN ORDER, that order of 
Grecian architecture of which the most 
characteristic feature is the capital of 
the column, which is adorned with 




Corinthian order. 



aa, Dentils of the Corinthian cornice. 

beautifully carved acanthus leaves, but 
varies considerably in minor details. 
The column is generally fluted, with a 
fillet between the flutings, and stands 
upon a base. The entablature is va¬ 


riously decorated, especially the cornice; 
the frieze may be quite plain, or 
sculptured with foliage and animals. 
The Corinthian order was not very 
common in Greece before the time of 
Alexander the Great; among the Romans 
it was much employed. 

CORINTHIANS, Epistles to the, two 
epistles addressed to the church at 
Corinth about a.d. 57 or 58, which have 
been admitted as genuine writings of St. 
Paul by even the most critical assailants 
of the New Testament canon. 

CORIOLA'NUS, the name given to an 
ancient Roman, Caius, or more properly 
Cneius, Marcius, because the city of 
Corioli the capital of the kingdom of 
the Volsci, was taken almost solely by 
his exertions. He was banished for 
seeking to deprive the plebeians of their 
hard-earned privileges, and in particular 
of the tribuneship; and seeking revenge, 
he took refuge among the Volsci, the 
bitterest enemies of Rome, and pre¬ 
vailed upon them to go to war with her. 
The story of Coriolanus, which is now 
regarded as legendary, forms the sub¬ 
ject of one of Shakespeare’s plays. 

CORK, a city in the south of Ireland, 
capital of the county of Cork, situated 
on the river Lee. It is 15 miles from 
the sea, and besides an upper harbor 
at the city itself, and quays extending 
over four miles in length, there is a lower 
harbor at Queenstown, 11 miles below 
the town. The entrance, deep and 
narrow, is strongly fortified on each side. 
Cork is the third city in Ireland, and 
exports great quantities of grain, butter, 
bacon, hams, eggs, and live stock. The 
principal industries are tanning, dis¬ 
tilling, brewing, and the making of 
tweeds and friezes. Pop. 100,022.— 
The county is the most southerly and 
the largest in Ireland, having an area of 
2885 sq. miles, or 1,849,686 acres, of 
which less than a fourth is under crops. 
The county town is Cork; other towns 
are Queenstown, Fermoy, Youghal, 
Bandon, Mallow, and Kinsale. Pop. 
404,813. 

CORK is the external bark of a species 
of oak which grows in Spain, Portugal, 
and other southern parts of Europe 
and in the north of Africa, and is 
distinguished by the great thickness 
and sponginess of its bark, and by 
the leaves being evergreen, oblong, 
somewhat oval, downy underneath, 
and waved. The outer bark falls off of 
itself if left alone, but for commer¬ 
cial purposes it is stripped off when 
judged sufficiently matured, this being 
when the tree has reached the age of 
from fifteen to thirty years. The first 
stripping yields the coarsest kind of bark. 
In the course of eight or nine years, or 
even less, the same tree will yield 
another supply of cork of better quality, 
and the removal of this outer bark is 
said to be beneficial, the trees thus 
stripped reaching the age of 150 years or 
more. Cork is light, elastic, impervious 
to water, and by pressure can be greatly 
reduced in bulk, returning again to its 
original size. These qualities render it 
peculiarly serviceable for the stopping 
of vessels of different kinds, for floats, 
buoys, swimming-belts or jackets, arti¬ 
ficial limbs, etc. Corks for bottles are 
cut either by hand or by meads of a 



machine. The best corks are cut across 
the grain. 

COR'MORANT (a sea-crow), the name 
of several large web-footed birds of the 
pelican family, or forming a family by 
themselves. They have a longish and 
strongly-hooked bill, long neck, short 
wings, and rather long rounded tail; 


Common cormorant. 

all the toes are united by a web, and, 
though excellent swimmers, they are 
able to perch on trees; color generally 
black or dark. The common cormorant 
of Europe is larger than a goose, but 
with smaller wings. It occupies cliffs 
by the sea, feeds on fish, and is ex¬ 
tremely voracious. It dives and swims 
with great power, and pursues its prey 
beneath the surface of the water, often 
to a great depth. Among the Chinese 
cormorants have long been trained to 
fish for man. At first a ring is placed 
on the lower part of the bird’s neck to 
prevent it swallowing the prey, and in 
time it learns to deliver the fish to its 
master without such a precaution being 
necessary. 

CORMUS. See Corm. 

CORN, a hardened portion of the 
cuticle of the foot, appearing as a sort 
of distinct growth, produced by pres¬ 
sure. Corns are generally found on the 
outside of the toes, but sometimes be¬ 
tween them, on the sides of the foot, op 
even on the ball. They appear at first, 
as small dark points in the hardened 
skin, and in this state stimulants op 
escharotics, as nitrate of silver (lunap 
caustic), are recommended. Perhaps 
the most efficacious remedy for corns is 
the application of glacial acetic acid 
night and morning. 

CORN is the generic term for all kinds 
of grain used for making bread, and is 
applied specifically to the principal 
breadstuff: in England to wheat, in the 
U. States generally to maize, and fre¬ 
quently in Scotland to oats. 

CORN, Indian. See Maize. 
CORNEILLE (kor-na-ye), Pierre, the 
father of French tragedy and classic 
comedy was born at Rouen in 1606, at 
which place his father was advocate- 
general. He began his dramatic ca¬ 
reer with comedy, and a series of 
vigorous dramas, Melite (1629), Cli- 
tandre, La Veuve, La Suivante, etc., 
announced the advent of a dramatist 
of a high order. In 1635 he entered 
the field of tragedy with Medea; but 
it was not till the appearance of his 
next work, the famous Cid, that Cor¬ 
neille’s claim was recognized to a place 
amongst the great tragic poets. The 
Cid was an imitation of a Spanish drama. 

































CORNELIA 


CORNWALL 


and though gravely defective in the 
improbabilities of the plot and other 
respects, achieved an immense success 
for a certain sublimity of sentiment 
and loftiness of ideal, which are the 
native characteristics of Corneille’s 
poetry. After the Cid appeared in 
rapid succession Horace (1639); Cinna 
(1639), his masterpiece, according to 
Voltaire; and Polyeucte (1640), works 
which show Corneille’s genius at its 
best. He died in 1684. 

CORNE'LIA, daughter of Scipio Afri- 
canus the elder, married Tiberius Sem- 
pronius Gracchus, censor b.c. 169, by 
whom she was the mother of the two 
tribunes, Tiberius and Caius Gracchus. 

CORNE'LIAN, or Camelian, a gem of 
a light-red or flesh color. It consists 
of silica along with minute quantities of 
the oxides of iron, aluminium, and 
sometimes of other metals, and is used 
for seals, bracelets, necklaces, and 
other articles. 

CORNE'LIUS NEPOS, a Roman 
author of the 1st century b.c., the con¬ 
temporary of Cicero and Catullus. The 
only extant work attributed to him is 
a collection of short biographies, prob¬ 
ably an abridgment of a work written 
by Nepos. These biographies have 
long been a favorite school-book, and 
popular editions of them are very 
numerous. 

CORNE'LIUS, Peter von, German 
painter, bom at Diisseldorf in 1787, died 
in 1867. He early exhibited a taste for 
art, and studied the great masters, espe¬ 
cially Raphael. In 1811 he went to 
Rome, where, in conjunction with Over¬ 
beck, Veit, and other associates, he may 
be said to have founded a new school of 
German art, and revived fresco-painting 
in imitation of Michael Angelo and Ra¬ 
phael. He left Rome in 1819 for Diis- 
seldorf, where he had been appointed 
director of the academy, but he soon 
settled in Munich to give his whole at¬ 
tention to the painting of the Glyptothek 
and the Ludwigskirche there. In these 
two great works he was assisted by his 
Munich pupils. In 1833 he made an¬ 
other visit to Rome, and in 1839 he vis¬ 
ited Paris. In 1841 he was invited to 
Berlin by Frederick William IV., who 
intrusted him with the painting of the 
royal mausoleum or Campo Santo. 
The most celebrated cartoon in this series 
is the Four Riders of the Apocalypse. 
The series consists of twelve paintings, 
which have been engraved. Cornelius, 
a true representative of modern German 
thought, introduced into art a meta¬ 
physical and subjective element which 
is easily liable to be abused; and in his 
work grandeur of conception and eleva¬ 
tion of tone have to make up for the 
want of the finest natural effects. 

CORNELL', Alonzo B., American 
politician, son of Ezra Cornell, was 
born at Ithaca, N. Y., in 1832. He was 
the Republican candidate for Lieutenant- 
Governor of New York in 1863, and 
from 1869 to 1873 was surveyor of 
customs in NewYork. He was chair¬ 
man of the Republican State Committee 
from 1870 to 187S, and was three times 
Speaker of the New York Assembly. 
FVom 1880 to 1883 he was Governor 
of New York. 


CORNELL, Ezra, American capitalist 
and philanthropist, founder of Cornell 
University was born in 1807 in West¬ 
chester County, N. Y. His attention 
being turned accidentally in i842 to 
the project of constructing a telegraph 
line from Baltimore to Washington, 
he invented a machine for laying the 
wires under ground and was subse¬ 
quently put in charge of the work. The 
insulation being poor, however, the 
plan had to be abandoned, and on 
Cornell’s suggestion the wires were 
strung on poles, and the line was thus 
speedily completed. Subsequently Cor¬ 
nell devoted his attention almost wholly 
to the construction of telegraph lines 
and the organization of telegraph com¬ 
panies, and was instrumental in forming 
the Western Union Telegraph Com¬ 
pany in 1855. He was a member of the 
first Republican National Convention in 
1856, was president of the New York 
State Agricultural Society in 1862, and 
was a member of the State Assembly in 
1862-63, and of the State Senate in 
1864-67. In 1868 “The Cornell Univer¬ 
sity,” so founded, was formally opened. 
Mr. Cornell also built a public library 
at Ithaca. He died in 1874. 

CORNELL UNIVERSITY, founded by 
Ezra Cornell at Ithaca, N. Y., in 1865. 
Cornell University comprises the fol¬ 
lowing departments and colleges; The 
Graduate Department, having charge of 
all graduate studies pursued at the uni¬ 
versity under the several faculties. This 
department offers courses leading to the 
degrees of A.M., Ph.D., etc. Twenty- 
four fellowships, ranging from $500 to 
$600 a year, and 17 scholarships, of the 
annual value of $300 a year, are avail¬ 
able for students. The Academic De¬ 
partment offers elective courses lead¬ 
ing, whether sciences, letters, or the 
classics are mainly chosen, to the degree 
of A.B. The College of Law offers 
courses leading to the LL.B. degree. 
The Medical College, partially conducted 
at New York City, confers the degree 
of M.D. The College of Agriculture of¬ 
fers courses leading to the B.S.A. de¬ 
gree. Connected with this college is an 
agricultural experiment station, estab¬ 
lished by the Federal Government in 
1887. The New York State Veterinary 
College confers the degree of D.V.M. 
The State College of Forestry confers 
the degree of F.E. The College of Archi¬ 
tecture confers the degree of B.Arch. 
The College of Civil Engineering confers 
the degree of C.E. Sibley College of 
Mechanical Engineering and Mechanic 
Arts, consisting of the departments of 
mechanical, electrical, experimental en¬ 
gineering, the department of mechanic 
arts, etc., confers the degree of M.E. 

The libraries, including the famous 
Andrew D. White collection on the 
French Revolution and the Fisk Dante 
collection, contain 261,852 volumes, 
besides 43,000 pamphlets. The income 
of the university from all sources is 
about $800,000 a year. The presidents 
since its inception have been: Andrew 
D. White, LL.D. (1865-85); Charles 
Kendall Adams, LL.D. (1885-92); Jacob 
Gould Schurman, LL.D (1892—■). 

CORNER, a trade term applied to 
the act of acquiring control of all or 
nearly all of a commodity, or of the 


stock-shares of a company (when they 
are to be bought in the market), the 
urpose being to force those who are 
ound to deliver the goods into buying 
the goods (or shares) from those who 
control them, at the latter’s prices. 
When those who are engineering the 
corner are forced through lack of means, 
to throw their holdings on the market 
the corner is said to be smashed. Few 
corners have been successful. 

CORNET, a wind-instrument of former 
times, originally curvilinear or serpen¬ 
tine in form and increasing in diameter 
from the mouthpiece to the lower end. 



Cornet-a-pistons. 


The modem comet is a keyed bugle 
which has a very agreeable tone, and 
is much used in orchestras and military 
bands. 

CORN-HUSKING, Com-shucking, an 
assemblage of friends and neighbors at 
the house of a farmer to assist him in 
stripping the husks or shucks from his 
Indian com. 

CORN'ING, a city and one of the 

county seats of Steuben county, N. Y., 
18 miles w.n.w. of Elmira; on the Che¬ 
mung river, and on the New York Cen¬ 
tral, the Erie, and the Lackawanna rail¬ 
roads. Pop. 12,061. 

CORN-LAWS, a name commonly 
given to certain statutes passed to pro¬ 
tect the agricultural interest in Britain. 

CORN'WALL, a maritime county of 
England, forming the southwestern 
extremity of the island, bounded e. by 
Devonshire, and surrounded on aU 
other sides by the sea; area, 1350 sq. 
miles or 863,665 acres. The chief wealth 
of the county is in its minerals, especially 
its mines of copper and tin, though the 
value of both has diminished. Several 
mines exceed 350 fathoms in depth. 
In the Botallack Copper Mine, a few 
miles north of Land’s End, the work¬ 
ings are carried below the sea. Corn¬ 
wall, with the Scilly Isles, seems to 
have been the Cassiterides or Tin Islands 
of antiquity. The natives long main¬ 
tained their independence against the 
Saxons, and their country was spoken 
of as West Wales. Their language also 
long continued to be Celtic. It gives 
the title Duke of Cornwall to the eldest 
son of the sovereign of Great Britain, 


























CORNWALLIS 


CORPUS CHRISTI 


and forms a royal duchy, the revenues 
of which belong to the Prince of Wales 
for the time being. The dukedom 
was created for the Black Prince in 
1337. Pop. 322,957. 

CORN'WALLIS, Charles, Marquis of, 
son of the first Earl Cornwallis, born in 
1738. On the outbreak of the American 
war he sailed with his regiment, served 
with distinction under Howe and 
Clinton, and in 1780 was left in inde¬ 
pendent command in South Carolina 
with 1000 men. He defeated Gen. 
Gates at Camden 1780, and General 
Green at Guilford in 1781, but six 
months afterward was besieged in 
Yorktown and compelled to surrender 
19th Oct. 1781. This disaster proved 
decisive of the war. In 1786 Lord 
Cornwallis went out to India with the 
double appointment of commander-in- 
chief and governor-general, invaded 



Lord Cornwallis. 


Mysore in 1791, and obliged Tippoo 
Saib to surrender much territory. 
Having returned to Britain he was 
created a marquis (1792), appointed 
Lord-lieutenant of Ireland, and again 
in 1804 governor-general of India. He 
died the following year. 

COROL'LA, in botany, the portion of 
the flower inside the calyx; the inner 
floral envelope. The corolla surrounds 
the parts of fructification and is com¬ 
posed of leaves called petals. When 
there are several free leaves it is called a 
polypetalous corolla, as in the "rose; but 
when the petals are united by the mar¬ 
gins into a continuous structure it is 
called monopetalous, or more correctly 
gamopetalous. It may generally be dis¬ 
tinguished from the calyx by the fine¬ 
ness of its texture and the gayness of its 
colors; but there are many exceptions. 

CORONA, the beautiful, brilliant 
streamers which are seen radiating 
from the opaque disc of the sun during 
a total eclipse. The nature of the 
corona is wholly unknown, although 
it is believed to be of electric or mag¬ 
netic origin. As no two coronse are 
alike the presumption is that the corona 
itself is a perpetually changing radiation. 
The streamers are hundreds of thou¬ 
sands of miles in length. 

CORONA'TION, the placing of the 
crown on a monarch’s head with solemn 
rites and ceremonies. Part of the 


ceremony usually consists in the oath 
which the monarch takes that he will 
govern justly, will always consult the 
real welfare of his people, and will 
conscientiously observe the fundamen¬ 
tal laws of the state. 



Corona. 


COR'ONER, an official whose chief 
duty is to inquire into the cause of the 
death of persons killed or dying sud¬ 
denly. His examination is made in all 
cases with the aid of a jury, in sight of 
the body, and at the place where the 
death happened. If the body is not 
found he cannot sit. If the jury have 
brought in a verdict of murder or man¬ 
slaughter the coroner may commit the 
accused party to prison or admit him 
to bail. 

COR'ONET, such a variety of crown as 
is worn by princes and noblemen. The 
coronet of a British duke is adorned with 
strawberry leaves; that of a marquis has 



1, Coronet of a duke. 2, Do. of a marquis. 

3, Do. of an earl. 4, Do. of a vis¬ 
count. 4, Do. of a baron. 

leaves with pearls interposed; that of an 
earl raises the pearls above the leaves; 
that of a viscount is surrounded with 
pearls only; that of a baron has only 
six pearls. . _ _ 

COROT (ko-ro), Jean-Baptiste-Ca- 
mille, French artist, born at Pans in 
1796. He exhibited for the first time 
in the Salon in 1827, but some years 
elapsed before the high qualities of his 
work were recognized. The fortune 
which he inherited from his father en¬ 
abled him, however, to follow out the 
bent of his genius, and the last twenty- 
five years of his life were a continuous 
triumph. He died in 1875. He fre¬ 


quently painted figure subjects, in- 
chiding, the large sacred pictures, the 
Flight into Egypt and the Baptism of 
Christ; but his most characteristic and 
successful work was in landscape. His 
woodland scenes, painted for the most 
part at dawn or twilight in a scheme of 
pale greens and silvery grays, show a 
singularly subtle feeling for this phase 
of nature, and are undoubtedly among 
the most important contributions of the 
century to landscape art. 

COR'PORAL, a petty officer ranking 
just above the ordinary private and be¬ 
low the sergeant. He has charge of one 
of the squads of the company, places 
and relieves sentinels, etc. 

CORPORA'TION, in English common 
law (the first modern definition of a 
corporation) a body with certain legal 
rights and powers. A corporation has 
essentially three factors—persons who 
are its members, persons who are its 
trustees, and a legal charter for its 
existence. A corporation consisting 
of only one person (as the sovereign of 
England, or the Roman Catholic arch¬ 
bishop of New York or Chicago) is 
called a sole corporation; and a cor¬ 
poration consisting of several persons is 
called an aggregate or sole corporation. 
Corporations may be ecclesiastical, 
civil, eleemosynary, and so on. Strictly 
speaking joint stock companies, such as 
railroads, modern “trusts,” etc., are 
not corporations although generally 
so termed in the United States. 

CORPS (kor), a word often used as a 
military and a political term.—A corps 
d'armSe, or army corps, one of the 
largest divisions of an army.—Corps 
diplomatique, the body of ministers or 
diplomatic characters.—Corps legislatif 
(kor la-zhis-la-tef), the lower house of 
the French legislature in 1857-70. 

COR'PULENCE, the unwieldy state 
of the human body due to the excessive 
deposition of fat. It is promoted by a 
diet too rich in fat-forming materials, 
fats, starch and sugars, bodily inactivity 
tranquillity of mind, etc. There is, 
however, a diseased state of the system, 
which, independently of all these in¬ 
fluences, will increase the production 
and deposition of fat. If corpulence is 
excessive it becomes troublesome and 
at length dangerous. In curing cor¬ 
pulency due attention must be paid to 
the regulating of the diet, exercise, and 
sleep of the individual. Especial atten¬ 
tion must be given to the kind of diet. 
Avoid all kinds of fat-forming food, such 
as fat, cream, butter, sugar, potatoes, 
farinaceous food and malt liquors, and 
indeed alcoholic liquors of all kinds. 
Little bread should be eaten: a moderate 
increase in animal foods, lean beef, fish, 
fowl, eggs, is allowed: green vegetables 
and fresh fruit may be partaken of. 
Regular exercise to suit the person’s 
powers should be engaged in. A noted 
instance of corpulency is Daniel Lam¬ 
bert, who weighed over 50 stone, or 
more than 700 lbs. Moderate corpu¬ 
lence may be quite consistent with 
health. 

CORPUS CHRISTI, the consecrated 
host at the Lord’s supper, which, ac¬ 
cording to the doctrines of the R. Catho¬ 
lic Church, is changed by the act of con¬ 
secration into the real body of Christ, 




















CORPUSCULAR THEORY OF LIGHT 


CORUNDUM 


This doctnne caused the adoration of the 
consecrated host, and hence the R. 
Catholic Church has ordained for the 
host a particular festival, called the 
Corpus Christi feast. This was insti¬ 
tuted in 1264 by Pope Urban IV. by 
a bull, in which he appointed the Thurs¬ 
day of the week after Pentecost for the 
celebration of the Corpus Christi festival 
throughout Christendom. Since then 
this festival has been kept as one of the 
greatest of the Catholic Church. Splen¬ 
did processions, in which the host is 
carried by a priest in a precious box, 
form an essential part of it. In France it 
is known as the fete-dieu. 

CORPUS'CULAR THEORY OF 
LIGHT, the older theory, which ex¬ 
plained the phenomena of light by 
supposing that a luminous body emits 
excessively minute particles of matter, 
corpuscules at they were called which 
striking the eye produce the sensation 
of light. Newton held the corpuscular 
theory, and supported it with great 
ingenuity. This theory has long been 
displaced by the undulatory theory 
(which see). 

CORRAL', in South America and 
elsewhere, a yard or stockade for 

CORREGGIO (kor-rej'o), Antonio Al¬ 
legri, Italian painter, born at Correggio, 
near Modena, in 1494. Among his best 

I )ictures are Night, in which the chief 
ight is the glory beaming from the In¬ 
fant Savior; the St. Jerome; the Mar¬ 
riage of St. Catherine; several Madon¬ 
nas, one of them (called La Zingarella, 
or the Gipsy Girl) said to represent his 
wife; the Pentitent Magdalene; the 
altar-pieces of St. Francis, St. George, 
and St. Sebastian; Christ in the Garden 
of Olives; the fresco of the Ascension 
in the Church of St. John, Parma; the 
Assumption of the Virgin in the cathe¬ 
dral of the same city; the Ecce Homo, 
and Cupid, Mercury, and Venus, both 
in the National Gallery, London. He 
died in 1534. 

CORREZE (kor-raz), an inland de¬ 
partment, France; area, 2265 sq. miles; 
capital, Tulle. It belongs almost en¬ 
tirely to the basin of the Garonne. Ex¬ 
cept in a few valleys the soil is far from 
fertile, heaths occupying a great ex¬ 
tent of surface, and agriculture being 
in a very backward state. Pop. 326,494. 

CORRIEN'TES, a tow T n, Argentine 
Republic, capital of the province of 
same name, on the Parana, near its con¬ 
fluence with the Paraguay, 390 miles 
n. Buenos Ayres. Pop. 15,500. Pop. of 
prov. 290,000. 

CORRIGAN, Michael Augustine, an 
American Roman Catholic archbishop, 
born in New Jersey in 1839, died in 
1902. From 1868 to 1873 he was pres¬ 
ident of Seton Hall College; in 1873 
he was made bishop of Newark; in 1880 
coadjutor to Cardinal McCloskey, arch¬ 
bishop of New York, and in 18S5 arch¬ 
bishop of New York, w T hich he re¬ 
mained until his death. Archbishop 
Corrigan was regarded as one of the 
ablest scholars of the American hier¬ 
archy. 

CORRO'SIVES, in surgery, substances 
which eat away whatever part of the 
body they are applied to; such are 
glacial acetic acid, burned alum, white 


percipitate of mercury, red precipitate 

of mercury, butter of antimony, etc. 

CORROSIVE SUBLIMATE, the bi¬ 
chloride of mercury, a white crystalline 
solid, and an acrid poison of great 
virulence. The stomach-pump and 
emetics are the surest preventives of its 
deleterious effects when accidentally 
swallowed; white of egg is also service¬ 
able, in counteracting its poisonous in¬ 
fluence on the stomach. It is a power¬ 
ful antiseptic. 

COR'RUGATED IRON, sheet-iron 
strengthened by being bent into parallel 
furrows. It is largely used for roofing, 
and when dipped in melted zinc, to 
give it a thin coating, is commonly 
know r n as galvanized iron. 

CORRUPT PRACTICES, fraudulent 
methods used in public elections. The 
term is especially used in England and 
special laws have been enacted by 
parliament bearing on the matter. 
Most corrupt practices are provided for 
by common law, but statutes have been 
made in most of the United States pro¬ 
viding for the punishment of fraud of 
every kind in elections. 

COR'SAIRS, the Anglicized form of 
the term used in the south of Europe to 
denote those pirates who sailed from 
Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, and the ports of 
Morocco. 

CORSELET (kors'let): (1st) a cuirass 
or armor to protect the body from in¬ 
jury, worn formerly by pikemen, gener¬ 
ally of leather, and pistol proof. (2d) 
The part of a w r inged insect which 
answers to the breast of other animals. 

CORSET, a piece of underclothing 
worn to give shape to the body, con¬ 
sisting of a sort of closely-fitting jacket, 
usually stiffened by strips of steel, 
whalebone, or other means, and tight¬ 
ened by a lace. The materials of which 
it is made should be smooth and elastic, 
and it should be specially fitted for the 
individual wearer, as no two human 
figures are precisely alike. It should 
be remembered, also, that corsets are 
meant to preserve a good figure, not 
to make one, and any forcible com¬ 
pression of the shape, especially on 
young persons, will only end in destroy¬ 
ing natural grace of movement and in 
serious injury to the health. 

COR'SICA, an island in the Mediter¬ 
ranean, forming the French department 
of same name. It is separated from the 
island of Sardinia, on the south, by the 
Strait of Bonifacio, about 10 miles 
wide; length, n. to s., 110 miles; breath, 
near its center, 53 miles; area, 3377 
sq. miles. The most distinguished men 
to whom Corsica has given birth are 
Paoli and Napoleon. Pop. 288,596. 

COR'SO, an Italian term given to a 
leading street or fashionable carriage- 
drive. 

CORT, Henry, the inventor of the 
rocesses of puddling and rolling iron, 
orn at Lancaster in 1740. He died in 
1800. 

CORTES (kor'tes), the old assembly 
of the estates in Spain and Portugal. 
In early times the king was very de¬ 
pendent upon them, especially in the 
kingdom of Aragon. When the king¬ 
doms of Aragon and Castile were united 
under Ferdinand and Isabella the crown 
succeeded in rendering itself more inde¬ 


pendent of the estates, and in 1538 
Charles abolished the assembly of the 
estates in Castile altogether. Gradually 
the popular liberties were encroached 
upon, and the cortes at length were con¬ 
vened only for the purpose of homage or 
ceremony, or when a question regarding 
the succession arose. In 1808 Napoleon 
revived the cortes for his owm ends. The 
present cortes of Spain are composed of 
a senate and congress equal in author¬ 
ity, and having the power along with 
the king to make laws. (See Spain.) 
The Portuguese cortes is coeval with the 
monarchy, and has had a history very 
similar to that of the Spanish. 

COR'TEZ, or CORTES, Fernando, or 
Hernan, the conqueror of Mexico, was 
born in 1485 at Medellin, in Estrema- 
dura; died near Seville 1547. He w r ent 
to the West Indies in 1504, where Velas- 



Fernando Cortez. 


quez, governor of Cuba, under w'hom 
he had greatly distinguished himself, 
gave him the command of a fleet, which 
was sent on a voyage of discovery. 
Cortez quitted Santiago de Cuba in 1518, 
with eleven vessels, ahout 700 Spaniards, 
eighteen horses, and ten small field- 
pieces. He landed on the shore of the 
Gulf of Mexico, w'here he caused his 
vessels to be burned, in order that his 
soldiers might have no other resource 
than their own valor. Having in¬ 
duced the Totonacs and Tlaxcalans to 
become his allies he marched toward 
Mexico, w here he was amicably received; 
but, having seized their monarch 
Montezuma, and treated the people with 
great cruelty, they finally resisted. 
After a desperate struggle, in which 
100,000 Mexicans are said to have 
perished, the city was taken, and soon 
after the w r hole country was subjugated. 
In 1528 he returned to Spain; but two 
years after he w r as again sent out to 
Mexico, where he remained for ten years, 
discovering meanwhile the peninsula of 
California. He returned once more to 
Spain, where, notwithstanding his great 
services, he was coldly received and 
neglected. After taking part in an 
expedition to Algiers in 1541 he passed 
the remainder of his days in solitude. 

CORUN'DUM, the earth alumina as 
found native in a crystalline state. In 
hardness it is next to the diamond. The 
amethyst, ruby, sapphire, and topaz are 
considered as varieties of this mineral, 
which is found in India and China, and 
is most usually in the form of a six- 
sided prism or six-sided pyramid. It is 
nearly pure anhydrous alumina, and its 
specific gravity is nearly four times that 
of water. Its color is various—green, 
blue, or red, inclining to gray, due to 














■ I 























PLATE 1. 


COSTUMES—Ancient. 


FIG. 1. 




1. Egyptian woman in the Kalasiris. 2. Egyptian with apron and Sphinxhood. 3. Greek with chlamys. 4. Greek woman in double cloak. 5. Greek 
woman in long skirt and wide upper garment. 6. Roman with toga (time of emperors). 7. Roman lictorwith sagum. 8. Roman woman in tunic, palla. 9. 
Roman peasant with sleeveless coat. 


PLATE 1. 


COSTUMES—Middle Ages. 


FIG. 2. 


1. Man with coat and mantle : 1 1th century. 2. Warrior in Full Armor with spear. 3. Woman with schapel, gown and surcoat; 1 1th century. 4. Man 
with hood, schecke and dupfing ; 14th century. 5. Woman with Krueseler, gown and mantle ; 14th century. 6. Man in scalloped surtout with sash turban and 
tappert; 1 Sth century. 7. Woman in scalloped robe and turban ; 15th century. 8, 9. Man and woman in costume with tinkling bells; 15th century. 


COpVr:GHT ,s 47. BY R S Pf ALE 


THEWE^NEO COMPANY, AKROhTo 






























PLATE 2. 



1. Man in doublet with deep waistcoat and short mantle. 2. Woman with hood, gown (embroidered bodice) and apron. 3. Man in slit costume with 
mantle, hat and sandals. 4. Woman with cape and turban. 5. Woman with farthingale and mill-stone (Elizabethan) ruff. 6. Man with cuirass, short mantle 
and mill-stone (Elizabethan) ruff. 7. Man in doublet, puffed breeches and short mantle. 8. Woman with overgarment, hat and calotte. 


PLATE 2. 


COSTUMES—17th and 18th Century. 



1. Costumes in the times of the Thirty Years’ War, with waistcoat, lace collar, jackboots and spur-straps. 2. Woman with skirt bodice with sleeves, hat 
with feathers and ruff. 3. Man in short-sleeved jacket, skirt, trousers and mantle. 4. Woman in short-sleeved robe and undergarment. 5, 6. Costumes in the 
days of Louis XV. 7, 8. Costumes toward the end of the 18th century and at the time of the French Revolution. 


COPYRIGHT 1897. BY R S.PEALE 


THE WERNER COMPANY. AKRON 0. 














A 


CORUNA 


COTTON 


traces of iron, copper, etc. Emery is a 
variety of corundum. 

CORUN'A, a seaport of Spain, in the 
province of the same name in Galicia, 
on the northwest coast, on a peninsula 
at the entrance of the Bay of Betanzos. 



Pop. 37,251.—The province is hilly, and 
its inhabitants chiefly engaged in agri ¬ 
culture and fishing. Area, 3079 sq 
miles; pop. 616,043. 

COR'VETTE, a vessel of war, ship- 
rigged, having a flush deck, with no 
quarter-deck and only one tier of guns; 
but the term is now somewhat loosely 
used. In the British navy there is a 
class of corvettes built of iron or steel, 
Bwift vessels, propelled by steam as 
well as by a large spread of canvas, and 
carrying heavy guns. 

COR'VIDAs, the crows, a family of 
birds, in which the bill is strong, of 
conical shape, more or less compressed, 
and the gape straight. The nostrils are 
covered with stiff bristle-like feathers 
directed forward. The family in¬ 
cludes the common crow, rook, raven, 
magpie, jay, jackdaw, nut-cracker, cor- 
nish chough, etc. 

CORYBAN'TES, frantic priests of 
Cybele, who celebrated the mysteries 
with orgiastic dances to the sound of 
drum and cymbal. 

COR'YMB, in botany, that form of in¬ 
florescence in which the flowers, each on 
its own pedicel of different lengths, are so 
arranged along a common axis as to 
form a flat broad mass of flowers with 
a convex or level top, as in the hawthorn 
and candytuft. 

CORYPHjE'NA, a genus of fishes of 
the mackerel family. The body _ is 
elongated, compressed, covered with 
small scales, and the dorsal fin extends 
the whole length of the back, or nearly 
so. All the species, natives of the seas 
of warm climates, are very rapid in 
their motions, and very voracious. 
They are of brilliant colors, and are 
objects of admiration to every voyager. 

CORYPHAD'US, the leader of the 
chorus in the Greek dramas. His 
functions were often as wide as those 
of our stage-manager, conductor, and 
ballet-master. The name coryph6e is 
now applied to a ballet-dancer. 

COSMET'ICS, external preparations 
for rendering the skin soft, pure, and 
white, or for beautifying and improving 
the complexion. To these may be 
added preparations for preserving _ or 
beautifying the teeth, and those which 
are applied to the hair. 

COSMIC DUST, the fine dust which 
falls upon the earth from regions be¬ 
yond the earth. This may be ob¬ 
served often after a heavy rain in favor¬ 
able places. The origin of this extra¬ 


terrestrial material is believed to be 
meteoric 

COSMOG'ONY, a theory of the origin 
or formation of the universe. Such 
theories may be comprehended under 
three classes:—1. The first represents 
the world as eternal, in form »s well s 
substance. 2. The matter of the world 
is eternal, but not its form. 3. The 
matter and form of the universe is 
ascribed to the direct agency of a spirit¬ 
ual cause; the world had a beginning, 
and shall have an end. 

COSMOS, order or harmony, and 
hence the universe as an orderly and 
beautiful system. In this sense it has 
been adopted by Humboldt as the title 
of his celebrated work, which describes 
the nature of the heavens as well as the 
physical phenomena of the earth. 

COSSACK POSTS, in the U. States 
army a system of outposts consisting of 
four men and a non-commissioned 
officer, They are used instead of the old 
style line of pickets and are claimed, by 
American army officers to be far more 
efficient and self-reliant, owing to the 
support which the members of the out¬ 
post lend tc one another. 

COS'SACKS, tribes who inhabit the 
southern and eastern parts of Russia, 
paying no taxes, but performing in¬ 
stead the duty of soldiers. They supply 
the empire with one of the most valua¬ 
ble elements in :‘ts national army, form¬ 
ing a first-rate irregular cavalry, and 
rendering excellent service as scouts 
and skirmishers. In 1570 they built 
their principal “stanitza” and rendez¬ 
vous, called Tcherkask, on the Don, not 
far above its mouth. As it was ren¬ 
dered unhealthy by the overflowing of 
the island on which it stood, New 
Tcherkask was founded in 1805 some 
miles from the old city, to which nearly 
all the inhabitants removed. This 
forms the capital of the country of the 
Don Cossacks, which constitutes a 
government of Russia, and has an area 
of 61,900 sq. miles and a population of 
1,474,133. It has a military organiza¬ 
tion of its own. 

COSTA RICA, the most southern state 
of the republics of Central America; 
bounded n. by Nicaragua, e. and n. by 
the Caribbean Sea; e. and s. by Colom¬ 
bia; and s. and w. by the Pacific. Area, 
about 23,200 sq. miles. The capital is 
San Jos6, and the two established ports 
are Punta Arenas, on the Pacific side, 
and Port Limon, on the Caribbean 
Sea. It has been an independent state 
since 1821, from 1824 to 1839, forming 
a part of the Central American Confed¬ 
eration, but subsequently separate. Pop. 
243,000, mostly of Spanish descent. 

COSTER, Laurens (called Janszoon, 
that is, son of John), whose name is con¬ 
nected with the origin of printing, was 
born in Haarlem in 1370 or 1371, died 
about 1440. According to a statement 
first found in Junius’ Batavia (1588), he 
was the original inventor of movable 
types, and on this ground the Dutch 
have erected statues in his honor. 

COSTS, in law, are the expenses in¬ 
curred by the plaintiff and defendant. 
As a rule these are paid by the loser in a 
suit, but there are always extra-judicial 
expenses incurred by both parties, which 
each has to pay whatever be the issue 


of the suit. In criminal cases the party 
accused may have his expenses if the 
court thinks the accusation unreason¬ 
able. In matrimonial suits, the wife, 
whether petitioner or respondent, is gen¬ 
erally entitled to her costs from the 
husband. 

COS'TUME, the style of attire char¬ 
acteristic of an individual, community, 
class, or people; the modes of clothing 
and personal adornment which prevail 
in any period or country.—Costume 
balls, also called fancy dress balls, are 
entertainments at which the guests 
adopt a style of dress different from 
the one usually worn. It may be one 
which was worn at another period, or 
one worn in another country, or a 
modern dress worn by some particular 
class of society A favorite plan is to 
make up as some well-known character 
in history or literature. 

COTE-D’OR, an inland and eastern 
department of France, part of the old 
province of Burgundy, having Dijon 
as its capital. Area, 3382 sq. miles. 
The vineyards of the eastern slopes of 
the Cote-d’Or produce the celebrated 
wines of Upper Burgundy. Iron, coal, 
marble, etc., are found. Pop. 381, 574. 

COTES-DU-NORD (kot-du-nor), a 
maritime department in the north of 
France, forming part of ancient Brit¬ 
tany; capital Brieuc. Area, 2659 sq. 
miles. Pop. 628,256. 

COTIL'LION, a brisk dance of French 
origin, performed by eight persons 
together, resembling the quadrille which 
superseded it. The name is now given 
to a dance which often winds up a ball, 
and which is danced with any number 
of dancers and with a great variety of 
figures the ‘pairs of dancers following 
in this the leading pair, and partners 
being successively changed. 

COTTON, a vegetable fiber used 
extensively in the manufactures and 
highly valuable because of the ease 
with which it is grown and its structural 
value in the weaving arts. Cotton is 
cultivated in those parts of the globe 



Cotton plant in bloom. 


between the two thirty-fifth parallels 
of latitude (a region which contains the 
largest portion of the land surface of the 
globe), although its most profitable 
cultivation is between the twentieth 
and thirty-fifth parallels north of the 
equator. Within this belt lie the cotton 
districts of the United States, northern 
Mexico, Egypt, northern Africa, and 
Asia, except the extreme southern 








COTTON 


COUES 


parts of India and the Malay Peninsula. 
South of the equator cotton is grown 
in Brazil, nearly all of which country 
is said to be favorably adapted to its 
cultivation; in Australia, though not 
to any great extent; in Africa, where 
the extent of production is not known; 
and in the islands of the Pacific. 

All the species are perennial shrubs, 
though in cultivation they are some¬ 
times treated as if they were annuals. 
They have alternate stalked and lobed 
leaves, large yellow flowers, and a three 
or five celled capsule, which bursts open 
when ripe through the middle of the cell, 
liberating the numerous black seeds 
covered with the beautiful filamentous 
cotton. The North American cotton 
is produced by two well-marked va¬ 
rieties, the long-staple cotton, which 
has a fine soft silky fibre nearly two 
inches long, and the short-staple 
cotton, which has a fibre little over 
one inch long adhering closely to the 
seed. The long-staple variety known 
as Sea Island cotton holds the first 
place in the market. It is grown in 
some of the southern states of Amer¬ 
ica, especially on islands bordering 
the coast. The mode of cultivation is 
usually as follows:—The seeds are sown 
in the spring in drills of about a yard in 
width, the plant appearing above ground 
in about eight days afterwards. The 
rows of young plants are then carefully 
weeded and hoed, a process which re¬ 
quires to be repeated at two or three 
subsequent periods. No hoeing takes 
place after the flowering has commenced, 
from which a period of 70 days generally 
elapses till the ripening of the seed. To 
prevent the lustre of the cotton wool 
from being tarnished, the pods must not 
remain ungathered longer than eight 
days after coming to maturity. The 
cotton wool is collected by picking with 
the fingers the flakes from the pods, and 
then spreading out to dry, an operation 
which requires to be thoroughly per¬ 
formed. The cotton now comes to be 
separated from the seeds, a process form¬ 
erly effected by manual labour, but 
which is now generally accomplished by 
machinery. After being cleansed from 
the seeds, the cotton wool is formed into 
bales, and is now ready for delivery to 
the manufacturer. 

Cotton has been cultivated in India 
and the adjacent islands from time im¬ 
memorial. It was known in Egypt in 
the sixth century before the Christian 
era, but was then probably imported 
from India. It was not till a compara¬ 
tively late period that the nations of the 
West became acquainted with this useful 
commodity, and even then it appears 
only to have been used as an article of 
the greatest luxury. The introduction 
of the cotton-shrub into Europe dates 
from the ninth century, and was first 
effected by the Spanish Moors, who 
planted it in the plains of Valencia. 
Cotton manufactories were shortly after¬ 
wards established at Cordova, Granada, 
and Seville; and by the 14th century 
the cotton stuffs manufactured in the 
Kingdom of Granada had come to be re¬ 
garded as superior in quality to those of 
Syria. About the 14th century cotton 
thread began to be imported into Eng¬ 
land by the Venetians and Genoese. In 


China the cotton-shrub was known at a 
very early period, but it does not appear 
to have been turned to any account as 
an article of manufacture till the sixth 
century of the Christian era, nor was it ex¬ 
tensively jused for that purpose till nearly 
the middle of the 14th century. In the 
newworld the manufacture of cotton cloth 
appears to have been well understood by 
the Mexicans and Peruvians long before 
the advent of Europeans. It was plant¬ 
ed by the English colonists of Virginia 
in 1621, but only as an experiment, and 
the amount produced was long very 
small, the crop only amounting to about 
2,000,000 pounds in 1791. After this it 
rapidly increased, and in 1810 94,000,- 
000 pounds were exported The quantity 
now produced is enormous, the crop of 
1906-7 being estimated at 13,551,000 bales, 
averaging 492 pounds each. The chief 
cotton growing states are Texas, Georgia, 
Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, 
Arkansas, Louisiana, North Carolina, 
Tennessee and Florida. The United 
States furnishes two-thirds of the cotton 
supply of the world. The raw cotton 
exported in 1907 was 9,036,434 bales of 
500 pounds each. 

As a general rule, cotton is a dry- 
weather plant, heavy rainfall interfer¬ 
ing with both the culture and the stand, 
although an extremely dry spring inter¬ 
feres with the growth. The experiment 
stations in the southern states have aid¬ 
ed in introducing improved methods of 
cultivating, fertilizing, and handling 
the crop. Rotation of crops and green 
manuring have been shown to be of 
great advantage. From the date of 
bloom, warm, dry weather is needful, 
until picking time, which usually com¬ 
mences from July 10 in Southern 
Texas, up to September 10 in Tennessee, 
and continues until frost puts a stop to 
further growth. During the harvest 
all available hands are called into full 
employment. The cotton is gathered 
into baskets or bags hung from the 
shoulders of the pickers, and when the 
crop has been secured it is spread out, 
dried, and then the fiber separated 
from the seeds. For long-staple or Sea 
Island cotton in South Carolina, the 
usual date to begin preparing land is 
February 1; planting begins April 1 
and ends May 1; picking is from August 
25 to December 10. 

COTTON, Charles Stanhope, an Amer¬ 
ican naval officer, born at Milwaukee, 
Wis., in 1843. He was graduated at the 
naval academy and took part in the 
battle between the Merrimac and 
Monitor in March, 1862. He was com¬ 
mander of the cruiser Harvard during 
the war with Spain. 

COTTON-FAMINE, a term used to 
designate the stagnation of the cotton 
industry in England during the last 
years of the civil war, owing to the arrest 
by the war, of the industry of cotton 
growing in the U. States. Owing to this 
stagnation nearly 400,000 persons were 
thrown out of employment in England 
and maintained by charity for nearly 
two years. 

COTTON-GIN, a machine invented 
by Eli Whitney in 1794 for separating 
the cotton fiber from the seed. 


COTTON-GRASS, a kind of plant with 
long silky hairs upon the fruit. It 
grows freely in the U. States and is 
regarded as good food for sheep. 

COTTON INSECTS, insects injurious 
to growing cotton, the chief of which is 
the larva of a moth. Millions of dollars 
are annually lost in crops owing to the 
ravages of this destructive insect. The 
moth is a night flier and deposits its 
eggs on the under side of the cotton 
leaf. Here they hatch during the sum¬ 
mer and the worm feeds on the plant. 
The bud-worm is another insect destruc¬ 
tive to cotton. 

COTTON SEED, COTTON SEED OIL, 

the seed of the cotton plant and the oil 
extracted from it. After the oil has 
been pressed out of the cotton seed, 
the residuum is the pulp of the seed, 
called cotton seed stearine, or cotton 
seed cake. It is a highly valuable prod¬ 
uct for cattle food and fertilizer. The 
oil is used for cooking, for the adultera¬ 
tion of lard and lard oil, while the 
stearine is often used for the adultera¬ 
tion of lard. The hulls of the seed are 
used as a low grade food for animals. 

COTTON-SPINNING, a term employed 
to describe in the aggregate all the 
operations involved in transforming raw 
cotton into yarn. 

COTTONTAIL, the popular name of a 
small American hare. 

COTTON-WOOD, a tree of the poplar 

kind, a native of N. America. The 
“cotton" from the seeds has been used 
in France and German}' for making cloth 
hats and paper, but the experiment was 
found unprofitable. 

COTURNIX. See Quail. 

COTYLE'DONS, the seed-leaves or 
seed-lobes of the embryo plant form¬ 
ing, together with the radicle and 
plumule, the embryo, which exists in 
every seed capable of germination. 
Some plants have only one cotyledon, 
and are accordingly termed monocotyle- 
donous; others have two, and are dicot¬ 
yledonous. These differences aie ac¬ 
companied by remarkable differences 
in the structure of the stems, leaves, and 
blossoms, which form the basis for the 
division of flowering plants into two 
great classes. The embryo plant of the 
Conifer* has many (three to twelve) 
cotyledons, and is called polycotyledon- 
ous. The cotyledons contain a supply 
of food for the use of the germinating 
plant. In some plants the store is very 
large, and in germination the seed- 
leaves remain under the ground, as in 
the pea and oak; in others the store is not 
so large, and the seed-leaves appear 
above ground and perform the functions 
of true leaves; while there is a large 
class of seeds where the embryo is very 
small, and the food is stored up around 
it, as in wheat and the buttercup 

COUCHANT, in heraldry said of a 
beast lying down with the head raised.' 

COUES, Elliott, an American zoolo¬ 
gist and anatomist, born in New Hamp¬ 
shire in 1842, died 1899. He was 
naturalist for the Northern Boundary 
Commission in 1873-6 and from 1877 
to 1887 was professor of anatomy at 
the National Medical college at Wash¬ 
ington. He published numerous scien¬ 
tific works upon ornithology in which 
science he was a distinguished specialist 





COUDERT 


COUP 


COUDERT, Frederic Rene, an Ameri¬ 
can lawyer and diplomat, born in New 
York in 1832. He appeared for the U. 
States before the International Bering 
Sea Commission and was a member in 
1896-8 of the Venezuela Boundary 
Commission. 

COUGAR (ko'gar), or PUMA, a quad¬ 
ruped of the cat kind, inhabiting most 
parts of America. Its color is a uniform 
fawn or reddish-brown, without spots 



Cougar. 


or markings of any kind. It may attain 
a length of 9 feet, inclusive of the tail. 
In habits it is stealthy and cowardly, 
and seldom or never attacks man. It is 
by some called the panther or red tiger, 
and is one of the most destructive of all 
the animals of America, particularly in 
the warmer climates, where it carries off 
fowls, dogs, cats, and other domestic 
animals. 

COUGH, a sudden and forcible ex¬ 
piration immediately preceded by clos¬ 
ure of the glottis or narrowed portion 
of the box of the windpipe. The force 
for the action is obtained by a deep 
breath, then follows the closure of the 
glottis, succeeded by the expiratory 
effort forcing open the glottis. The 
action is performed by the expiratory 
muscles, that is the abdominal muscles, 
by whose contraction the diaphragm is 
forced up, and the muscles of the chest, 
by which the ribs are pulled down. The 
cavity of the chest being thus diminished 
air is driven out of the lungs. The 
object of the cough is usually to expel 
any foreign material in the lungs or 
air-tubes. The offending material may 
be there present as the result of inflam¬ 
mation, catarrh, etc. It may also have 
gained entrance from without. Thus 
the irritating material may be merely 
some food or drink which has slipped 
into the larynx, or it may be dust ? etc., 
in the air inhaled, and the cough is the 
means of expelling the intruder. But 
cough may also be produced when there 
is no irritating material present. The 
larynx or windpipe may be in an in¬ 
flamed and irritable condition, in which 
state even the entrance of cold air will 
excite coughing. Moreover, cough may 
be produced by irritation of nerves, 
distant from the lungs and air-passages, 
by what is called reflex action. Thus 
irritation of the stomach, irritation con¬ 
nected with the ear, irritation of cer¬ 
tain nerves by pressure of growths, etc., 
may produce cough, when the respira¬ 
tory organs are not directly affected at 
all. Irritation at the back of the throat, 
as of the tickling of a long uvula, and so 
on, also produces it. A catarrhal cough 
is generally considered unimportant, par¬ 
ticularly if there be no fever connected 
with it. But every cough lasting longer 

P. E.—21 


than two or three days is suspicious, 
and ought to be medically treated. 

COUNCIL, an assembly met for de¬ 
liberation, or to give advice. The term 
specially applies to an assembly of the 
representatives of independent churches, 
convened for deliberation and the 
enactment of canons or ecclesiastical 
laws. The four general or oecumenical 
councils recognized by all churches are: 
1, the Council of Nice, in 325, by which 
the dogma respecting the Son of God 
was settled; 2, that of Constantinople, 
381, by which the doctrine concerning 
the Holy Ghost was decided; 3, that of 
Ephesus, 431; and 4, that of Chalcedon, 
451; in which two last the doctrine of 
the union of the divine and human 
nature in Christ was more precisely 
determined. Among the principal Latin 
councils are that of Clermont (1096), 
in the reign of Urban II., in which the 
first crusade was resolved upon; the 
Council of Constance, the most numer¬ 
ous of all the councils, held in 1414, 
which pronounced the condemnation 
of John Huss (1415), and of Jerome of 
Prague (1416) ; the Council of Basel, in 
1431, which intended a reformation, 
if not in the doctrines, yet in the con¬ 
stitution and discipline of the church; 
and the Council of Trent, which began 
its session in 1545, and labored chiefly 
to confirm the doctrines of the Catholic 
Church against the Protestants. On 
the 8th of December, 1869, an oecumeni¬ 
cal council, summoned by a bull of Pope 
Pius IX., assembled at Rome. This 
council adopted a dogmatic Decree or 
Constitutio de Fide, and a Constitutio 
de Ecclesia, the most important article 
of which latter declares the infallibility 
of the pope when speaking ex cathedri. 

COUNCIL BLUFFS, a city and im¬ 
portant manufacturing center, Potta¬ 
wattamie Co., Iowa, on the left bank of 
the Missouri, opposite Omaha City, with 
which it is connected by a bridge 2750 
feet in length and 50 feet above high 
water. The name is derived from _ a 
council held here with the Indians in 
1804. Pop. 35.000. 

COUNCIL OF WAR, an assembly of 
officers of high rank called to consult 
with the commander-in-chief of an 
army or admiral of a fleet on matters of 
supreme importance. 

COUNSEL, a person retained by a 
client to plead his cause in a court of 
judicature. , 

COUNT, in modern times the custom 
of styling all the sons of a count also 
counts makes this designation on the 
Continent very common, and the rank 
little more than nominal. In point of 
rank, the English earls are considered 
as corresponding to the continental 
counts, an earl’s wife being styled a 
countess. 

COUNT, in law, an independent part 
of a declaration or indictment, which, 
if it stood alone, would constitute a 
ground of action. 

COUNTERFEITING, a term generally 
applied to the making of imitation 
money, coin or paper. The U. States 
secret service has examples of counter¬ 
feit coins and bills so like the original 
that they are distinguished only with 
the greatest difficulty by experts. An 
enormous amount of counterfeit money 


must be in constant circulation. The 

crime is a felony. 

COUNTER-IRRITANT, in med. a sub¬ 
stance employed to produce an artificial 
or secondary disease, in order to relieve 
another or primary one. The term is 
more specifically applied to such irritat¬ 
ing substances, as, when applied to the 
skin, redden or blister it, or produce 
pustules, purulent issues, etc. The 
commonest counter-irritants are such 
as mustard, turpentine, cantharides or 
Spanish flies, croton oil, and the cautery. 

COUNTERPOINT, in music, a term 
equivalent to harmony, or the writing 
of a carefully planned accompanying 
part ; or that branch of the art which, 
musical thought being given, teaches 
the development of it, by extension or 
embellishment, by transposition, repeti¬ 
tion, or imitation throughout the dif¬ 
ferent parts. Counterpoint is divided 
into simple, florid or figurate, and double. 
Simple counterpoint is a composition in 
two or more parts, the notes of each part 
being equal in value to those of the 
corresponding part or parts and con¬ 
cords. In florid counterpoint, two or 
more notes are written against each 
note of the subject, or canto-fermo, and 
discords are admissible. Double coun¬ 
terpoint is an inversion of the parts, so 
that the base may become the subject, 
and the subject the base, etc., thus pro¬ 
ducing new melodies and new harmonies. 

COUNTERSIGN, a private signal, 
word, or phrase given to soldiers on 
guard, with orders to let no man pass 
unless he first give that signj a military 
watchword. 

COUNTY, an administrative unit of a 
state or a government, or the territory 
ruled over by a count. In England the 
term shire is used instead of county. 
Counties in the U. States are in reality 
units of administration, which each 
send one or more representatives to the 
state legislature. Counties have taxing 
power, prosecute crime, and administer 
justice generally. Cities are parts of 
counties, a city often being conterminous 
with a county, as Chicago and Philadel¬ 
phia. New York includes four counties. 
St. Louis has a separate charter and has 
no connection with the county, sending 
its own members to the legislature. 

COUNTY COUNCILS, administrative 
bodies created by the British parliament 
in 1888 to replace the justices of the 
peace who had formerly administered 
county affairs and to give local self- 
government to the counties. These 
councils are elective administrative 
bodies, and were perfected in 1894 by 
the local self-government act. 

COUNTY COURT, a tribunal of 
justice the jurisdiction of which is 
limited to the county in which it exists. 
In this much the English and the 
American county courts are much the 
same thing, although the county court 
in England is a relatively more im¬ 
portant body. 

COUP (ko), a term used in various con¬ 
nections to convey the idea of prompt¬ 
ness and force.—Coup de main, a 
prompt, vigorous, and successful attack. 
—Coup dT:tat, a sudden decisive blow 
in politics; a stroke of policy;specifically, 
an exertion of prerogative to alter the 
laws or the constitution of a country 




COUPLE 


COWLEY 


without the consent or concurrence of 
the people expressed through their 
representatives, especially when such 
exertion is supported by armed force.— 
Coup de soleil. See Sunstroke. 

COUPLE, in dynamics, two equal 
and parallel forces acting in different 
directions, and applied to the same body. 
The distance between their lines of 
action is called the arm of the couple, 
and the product of one of the two equal 
forces by this arm is called the moment 
of the couple. 

COUPLET, two verses or lines of 
poetry of equal length and rhythm, 
often embodying an idea of the nature 
of an aphorism. 

COUPLING, in machinery, a contri¬ 
vance for connecting one portion of a 
system of shafting with another, and of 
which there are various forms. A com¬ 
mon form is the flange or plate coupling, 
which consists of two flanges separately 



Flange coupling. 


fitted on to the two contiguous ends of 
the lengths of shaft to be connected, and 
firmly secured together by screws. The 
most useful kinds of couplings are those 
that' are adjustable, or can be readily 
put on and off.—The term is also ap¬ 
plied to an organ register, by which two 
or more rows of keys can be connected 
by a mechanism, so that they can be 
played together. 

COUPON (kft’pan), an interest-certifi¬ 
cate printed at the bottom of transfera¬ 
ble bonds, and so called because it is cut 
off or detached and given up when a 
payment is made. Also one of a series 
of tickets which binds the issuer to 
make certain payments, perform some 
service, or give value for certain 
amounts at different periods, in consid¬ 
eration of money received. 

COURIER, a bearer of special des¬ 
patches, whether public or private; 
also an attendant on a party traveling 
abroad, whose especial duty is to make 
all arrangements at hotels and on the 
journey. 

COURLAND, a government in Russia, 
bounded n. by Livonia and the Gulf of 
Riga, w. the Baltic, s. Kovno, and e. by 
Vitebsk; area, 10,535 sq. miles? pop. 
712,700. 

COURSING, a kind of sport in which 
hares are hunted by greyhounds, which 
follow the game by sight instead of by 
scent. 

COURT, a term generally applied to 
the judicial part of a government’s 
machinery, and sometimes to bodies 
with judicial powers to settle disputes 
outside of litigation, properly so called. 
Courts have existed in all ages and are 
an evolution from the power of the 
chief or king in savage or prehistoric 
eoples. In England and the United 
tates courts are essentially the same 
and have the same powers, although 
there are a few minor differences. In 
the United States two distinct systems 
of courts exist, the federal courts which, 


with the exception of the supreme 
court (a constitutional creation) are the 
creation of the congress, and state 
courts which, (with the exception of 
the state supreme court) are creatures 
of the state legislature. In the federal 
system there is a court of claims, courts 
for the various territories,. district 
courts and circuit courts, the judges of 
which are all appointed by the pres¬ 
ident and retain their positions on 
good behavior. The state courts con¬ 
sist of tribunals arranged with a view to 
the territory of the state and its divi¬ 
sions and the judges, as those also of the 
state supreme court are elected by the 
people. There are county courts, 
circuit courts, and appellate courts, the 
court of last appeal being the supreme 
court. The federal judiciary tries all 
cases concerned with the federal govern¬ 
ment, or cases of an interstate kind. 

COURT, MILITARY, COURTS-MAR¬ 
TIAL, in the United States judicial 
bodies created by congress for the 
trial of offenses committed by soldiers. 
Soldiers, however, can be prosecuted in 
the civil courts for other than military 
offenses. Military courts are of several 
kinds, as general court, summary court, 
garrison court, regimental court, and 
court of inquiry. 

COURT-PLASTER (so called because 
originally applied by ladies of the court 
as patches on the face), black, flesh- 
colored, or transparent silk varnished 
over with a solution of isinglass, which 
is often perfumed with benzoin, used 
for covering slight wounds. 

COUSIN (ko-zan), Victor, French 
philosopher and writer, founder of the 
so-called Eclectic school of philosophy, 
was born at Paris 1792, died as Cannes 
1867. The head and founder of the 
modern school of eclecticism in France, 
he borrowed from many sources. His 
eclecticism was based on the principle 
that every system, however erroneous, 
which has anywhere commanded assent, 
contains some elements of truth, by 
which its acceptance may be explained, 
and that it is the business of philosophi¬ 
cal criticism to discover and combipe 
these scattered elements of truth. 

COUTHON (ko-ton), Georges, a noted 
French revolutionist, was born in 1756, 
and was bred to the profession of a 
lawyer. Some time after the revolution 
he was chosen a member of the national 
assembly, and allying himself with 
Robespierre aided and abetted the 
latter in all his atrocities. On the down¬ 
fall of Robespierre’s party Couthon 
shared, along with him and St. Just, in 
the decree of arrest, and was guillotined, 
July 28, 1794. 

COUVADE (ko-vadO, a singular cus¬ 
tom prevalent in ancient as well as 
modern times among some of the primi¬ 
tive races in all parts of the world. After 
the birth of a child the father takes to 
bed, and receives the food and compli¬ 
ments usually given elsewhere to the 
mother. The custom was observed, 
according to Diodorus, among the Corsi¬ 
cans; and Strabo notices it among the 
Spanish Basques, by whom, as well as 
by the Gascons, it is still to some ex¬ 
tent practiced. Travelers from Marco 
Polo downward have met with a some¬ 
what similar custom among the Chinese, 


the Dyaks of Borneo, the negroes, the 
aboriginal tribes of North and South 

COVENANT, in law, an agreement 
between two or more parties in writing 
signed, sealed, and delivered, whereby 
they agree to do, or not to no, some 
specified act. In theology, the promises 
of God as revealed in the Scriptures, 
conditional on certain terms on the part 
of man, as obedience, repentance, faith, 
etc ^ 

COVENANTERS, in Scottish his¬ 
tory, the name given to the party which 
struggled for religious liberty from 1637 
on to the revolution; but more especi¬ 
ally applied to the insurgents who, after 
the passing of the act of 1662 denounc¬ 
ing the solemn league and covenant as 
a seditious oath, took up arms in de¬ 
fense of the Presbyterian form of church 
government. 

COVENTRY, a city in England, 
county of Warwick, 85 miles northwest 
of London. Coventry is the center of 
the ribbon trade, and manufactures also 
silk fabrics, cambric frilling, cottons, 
watches, machinery, and bicycles. It 
sends one member to parliament. Pop. 
69,877. 

COV’ERDALE, Miles, the earliest 
translator of the Bible into English, 
was born in Yorkshire in 1487, died 1568. 

COV'INGTON, a city of Kentucky, on 
the s. bank of the Ohio River, opposite 
Cincinnati, of which it is substantially a 
suburb, connected by means of bridges 
and ferries. It has a large general trade 
and manufacturing business. Pop. 
50,145. 

COW, the general term applied to the 
females of the genus Bos or ox, the most 
valuable to man of all the ruminating 
animals. Among the best breeds of 
dairy cows in Britain are the Devon¬ 
shire, the Ayrshire, the shorthorn, the 
polled Angus or Aberdeenshire, and the 
Alderney. See Ox and cattle. 

COW-BERRY, the red whortleberry, 
a procumbent shrub of high moorlands 
in Europe, Asia, and N. America, has 
evergreen box-like leaves, and pro¬ 
duces a red acid berry used for jellies and 
preserves. 

COWBOYS, a name first applied to 
cattle thieves during the war of the 
American Revolution and later to the 
herdsmen upon the large cattle ranches 
of Texas and the West. Cowboys are 
excellent horsemen and acquire great 
skill in catching and “rounding up” the 
cattle on a large range. They are pro¬ 
verbial for their generosity and manli¬ 
ness. 

COW-BUNTING, an American bird 

about the size of the sky-lark. It drops 
its eggs into the nests of other birds to 
be hatched by them, but has never been 
known to drop more than one egg into 
the same nest. It is migratory spending 
its winters regularly in the lower parts of 
North and South Carolina and Georgia, 
and appearing in Pennsylvania about 
the end of March. These birds often 
frequent corn and rice fields in company 
with the red-winged troopials, but are 
more commonly found accompanying 
the cattle, feeding on seeds, worms, etc. 

COWLEY (kou'li), Abraham, an Eng¬ 
lish poet of great celebrity in his day, 
was born at London in 1618, died 1667. 










COWPER 


CRAMP 


He published his first volume, Poetic 
Blossoms, at the age of fifteen. He 
took a considerable interest in science, 
and was one of the founders of the 
Royal Society. His chief works are: 
Love’s Riddle, a pastoral comedy; Da- 



Young cow-bunting fed by female 
yellow-throat. 

videis, a scriptural epic; Naufragium 
Joculare; The Mistress, a collection of 
love verses; Pindarique Odes; Liber 
Plantarum; etc. 

COWPER (ko'per or kou'per), Will¬ 
iam, English poet, born at Berkham- 
stead in 1731, died at East Dereham, in 
Norfolk, 1800. In 1776, on the advice 
of Mrs. Unwin, he commenced a poem 
on the Progress of Error, which he fol¬ 
lowed by three other poems, Truth, 
Table-talk, and Expostulation; these 
with some others were published in a 
volume in 1782. The Task, together 
with Tirocinium, formed a second 
volume in 1785. The History of John 
Gilpin is also due to the suggestion 
of Lady Austen. The translation of 
Homer, begun in 1784, occupied him 
for the next six years, and was pub¬ 
lished in 1791. He removed during its 
progress, in 1786, from Olney to Weston. 
In the beginning of 1794 he was again 
attacked with madness, which was 
aggravated by the death of Mrs. Unwin 
in 1796. The revisal of his Horner, and 
the composition of some short pieces, 
occupied the latter years of his life. He 
is considered among the best of descrip¬ 
tive poets 

COW-POX, the vaccine disease which 
appears on the teats of the cow, in the 
form of vesicles of a blue color, ap¬ 
proaching to livid. These vesicles are 
elevated at the margin and depressed at 
the center; they are surrounded with 
inflammation and contain a limpid fluid. 
This fluid or virus is capable of com¬ 
municating genuine cow-pox to the 
human subject, and of protecting against 
small-pox either completely, or, at least, 
against the virulent form of the disease. 
See Vaccination. 

COW'SLIP, the popular name of 
several varieties of a favorite wild flower 
found in pastures. It has umbels of 
small, buff-yellow, scented flowers on 
short pedicels. Its flowers possess seda¬ 
tive properties, and have been used as 
an anodyne, a sort of wine being pre¬ 
pared from them. 

COW-TREES, a name of various trees 
having an abundance of milky juice 
especially a South American tree, which, 
when wounded, yields a rich milky nu¬ 
tritious juice in such abundance as to 
render it an important article of food. 


This fluid resembles in appearance and 
quality the milk of the cow. The tree is 
common in Venezuela, growing to the 
height of 100 ft. The leaves are leath¬ 
ery, about 1 ft. long and 3 or 4 inches 
broad. 

COX, Kenyon, an American painter, 
born in Ohio in 1856. He studied paint¬ 
ing in Paris and on his return to New 
York painted several portraits which 
became well known. 

COX, Palmer, an American artist and 
illustrator, born in Quebec in 1840. 
His most widely known work is his 
quaint Brownies, consisting of drawings 
and verses. 

COX, Samuel Sullivan, an American 
author and legislator, born in Ohio in 
1824, died in 1889. He was congress¬ 
man from 1857 almost continually un¬ 
til his death representing districts in 
Ohio and New York to which state he 
removed in 1866. He was minister to 
Turkey in 1885-6. Cox published 
several light books of politics and 
travel. He was nicknamed “Sunset 
Cox” because of one of his glowing 
descriptions. 

COYOTE, the American prairie wolf, 
several varieties of which inhabit the 
Western United States and British 
Columbia. The animal is noted for its 


disconcerting and continuous yelping 
during the night. It travels in packs, 
is as large as a setter dog, and seldom 
attacks men. The hair is reddish- 
yellow tipped with black. 

CRAB, a popular name for all the 
ten-footed, short-tailed crustaceans com¬ 
prising many genera, distinguished from 
the lobster and other long-tailed deca¬ 
pods by the shortness of their tail, which 
is folded under the body. Most inhabit 
the sea, others fresh water, some the 
land, only going to the sea to spawn. 
Of the crabs several species are highly 
esteemed as an article of food, and the 
fishery constitutes an important trade 
on many coasts. 

CRAB, a name given to various ma¬ 
chines, especially to a kind of portable 
windlass or machine for raising weights, 
etc. Crabs are much used in building 
operations for raising stones or other 
weights, and in loading and discharging 
vessels. 


CRAB-APPLE, a small, wild, very 
sour species of apple. See Apple. 

CRACOW', the old captital of Poland, 
in 1815-46 capital of a republic of the 
same name now forming part of Austrian 
Galicia, is situated on the left bank of 
the Vistula, where it becomes navigable, 
and consists of Cracow proper, or the old 
city, and several suburbs. It is the see of 
a bishop, is well built and regularly 
fortified. The cathedral, a fine old 
Gothic edifice, contains monuments of 
many Polish kings, of Kosciusko, etc. 
The university was founded in 1364, 
but gradually fell into decay, and was 
reorganized in 1817. It has a library 
of 300,000 volumes. On a hill near the 
town stands the monument of Kos¬ 
ciusko, 120 feet high. Pop. 74,593 
(21,000 being Jews); with all its suburbs, 
94 696. 

CRADLE OF LIBERTY, a name often 
applied to Faneuil Hall, Boston, owing 
to the early indignation meetings against 
British rule held there. 

CRAFTS, James Mason, an American 
chemist, born in Boston in 1839. His 
investigations have been chiefly con¬ 
cerned with organic chemistry and also 
with physical chemistry. His method 
of making certain compounds syn¬ 
thetically is one of the most important 


of the recent discoveries in chemistry. 
Crafts has been honored with member¬ 
ship in several learned societies of 
Europe and America. 

CRAIK, Dinah Maria, English novel-, 
ist, born at Stoke-upon-Trent 1826, her 
father’s name being Mulock. She 
became the wife of George Lillie Craik 
in 1865. She published a volume of 
poems under the title of Thirty Years; 
many essays and papers on ethical and 
domestic subjects; books tor young 
people, and about twenty-four novels, 
the best of which a e: John Halifax, 
Gentleman; A Life for a Life; Agatha’s 
Husband; and The Woman's Kingdom. 
She died in 1887. 

CRAMP, an involuntary contraction 
of a voluntary muscle produced by 
cold or by long continued action. It 
can be removed by heat or friction. 
When a swimmer is attacked by cramp 
of the leg-muscles he should turn on his 
back, “float,” and vigorously rub the 



The cathedral, Cracow. 





























CRAMP 


CRAVAT 


muscles of the legs. Cramp accom¬ 
panies colic, cholera, and tetanus, and 
often attacks the muscles of persons 
who use the hands continuously, such 
as writers, telegraph operators, etc. 

CRAMP, Charles Henry, an American 
ship builder born at Philadelphia in 
1828, and head of the Cramp Ship 
Building Compoany. It was this com¬ 
pany that built the battleship Maine 
which was destroyed in Havana Harbor 
Feb. 15, 1898. 

CRAN'BERRY, a native of Europe, 
N. Asia, and N. America. The berry, 
w T hen ripe, is globose and dark red, and 
a little more than \ inch in diameter. 
These berries form a sauce of exquisite 
flavor, and are used for tarts. The 
American cranberry, a native of Canada 
and the U. States, has larger berries 
than the European species, and is ex¬ 
tensively cultivated in some localities. 

CRANE, the common name of birds 
of the genus Grus. They are generally 
of considerable size, and remarkable for 
their long necks and stiltlike legs, which 
eminently fit them for living in marshes 



Crowned crane. 

and situations subject to inundations, 
where they usually seek their food. 
This is partly of vegetable matter, but 
they also devour insects, worms, frogs, 
lizards, reptiles, small fish, and the 
spawn of various aquatic animals 
They build their nests among bushes or 
upon tussocks in marshes, and lay but 
two eggs. Cranes annually migrate to 
distant regions, and perform voyages 
astonishing for their great length. The 
common crane has the general plumage 
ash-gray, the throat black, the rump 
ornamented with long, stiff, and curled 
feathers, the head with bristly feathers; 
legs black; length about 4 feet. It in¬ 
habits Europe, Asia, and the north of 
Africa. The crowned crane has the 
general plumage bluish ash-gray, the 
tail and primary quills black, the wing 
coverts pure white; the head is crowned 
with a tuft of slender yellow feathers, 
which can be spread out at pleasure. 
It inhabits North and West Africa. 
The demoiselle crane is so called from 
the elegance of its.form. It is ash-gray, 
and the head is adorned with two tufts 
of feathers formed by a prolongation 
of the ear-coverts. Its habitat is Africa 
and the south of Europe. Among North 
American species _ are the whooping 
crane, a larger species than the common 
crane, and the brown or sand-hill crane. 

CRANE, a machine for raising great 
weights and depositing them at some 
distance from their original place, for 
example, raising bales from the hold of a 


ship and depositing them on the quay. 
Cranes are generally constructed on the 
principle of the wheel and axle, cog¬ 
wheel, or wheel and pinion. A very 
efficient wheel-and-pinion crane much 
used on quays consists of a jib or trans¬ 
verse beam, inclined to the vertical at 
an angle of from 40° to 50°, which, by 
means of a collar, turns on a vertical 
shaft. The upper end of the jib carries 
a fixed pulley, and the lower end a 
cylinder, which is put in motion by a 
wheel and pinion. The weight is made 
fast to a rope or chain which passes over 
the pulley and is wound round the 
cylinder. On turning the cylinder 
(either by a winch handle attached to 
the wheel which works in the pinion, or 
by the application of steam-power) the 
weight is raised as far as necessary. 
The jib is then turned on its arbor till 
the weight is brought immediately over 
the spot where it is to be deposited, and 
the moving power is withdrawn so as to 
allow the weight to descend by its own 
gravity. 

CRANE, Stephen, an American writer, 
born in Newark, N. J., in 1870, died 1900. 
He was early a war-correspondent and 
published several military stories, the 
chief of which was The Red Badge of 
Courage (1896). 

CRANE, William Henry, an American 
actor, born in Massachusetts in 1845. 
He became noted in 1877 for his power 
of comedy when he appeared with 
Stuart Robson in Our Boarding House. 
Crane for many years was the leading 
spirit in the joint performance with 
Robson in which the partners played 
the two Dromios in Shakespeare’s 
Comedy of Errors. After his separation 
from Robson he attempted Falstaff but 
with poor success. 

CRA'NIUM. See Skull. 

CRANK, an iron axis with the end 
bent like an elbow, serving as a handle 
for communicating circular motion; as, 
the crank of a grindstone; or for chang¬ 
ing circular into longitudinal motion, 
as in some saw-mills, or longitudinal 
into circular motion, as in a steam- 
engine. The single crank (1) can only 
be used on the end of an axis. The 



1 Single crank. 2, Double crank. 

3, Bell crank. 

double crank (2) is employed when it is 
necessary that the axis should be ex¬ 
tended on both sides of the point at 
which the reciprocating motion is 
applied. An exemplification of this 
arrangement is afforded by the ma¬ 
chinery of steam-boats. The bell- 
crank (3), so called from its being much 
used in bell-hanging, is for a totally 
different purpose to the others, being 
used merely to change the direction of 
motion, as from a horizontal to a vertical 
line. 


CRAN'MER, Thomas, Archbishop of 
Canterbury, and famous for the part he 
played in the English reformation dur¬ 
ing the reign of Henry VIII., was born 
at Aslacton, Notts, in 1489; executed 
by burning at Oxford, 1556. An 
opinion which he gave on the question 
of Henry VIII.’s proposed divorce from 
Catharine brought him under the 
favorable notice of the king. Cranmer 
was sent for to court, made a king’s 
chaplain, and commanded to write a 
treatise on the subject of the divorce. In 
1530 he was sent abroad with others to 
collect the opinions of the divines and 
canonists of France, Italy, and Ger¬ 
many, on the validity of the king’s 
marriage. At Rome he presented his 
treatise to the pope, but his mission was 
fruitless. In January, 1533, he was 
appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. 
Soon after he set the papal authority 
at defiance by pronouncing sentence of 
divorce between Henry and Catharine, 
and confirming the king’s marriage with 
Anne Boleyn. The pope threatened 
excommunication, and an act of par¬ 
liament was immediately passed for 
abolishing the pope’s supremacy, and 
declaring the king chief head of the 
Church of England. In 1536 he pan¬ 
dered to Henry’s passions by promot¬ 
ing the divorce of Anne Boleyn. He was 
sent to the Tower on the accession of 
Mary. He was tried and was sentenced 
to be degraded and deprived of office. 
After this flattering promises were 
made, which induced him to sign a 
recantation of his alleged errors, and 
become in fact, a Catholic convert. 
But when he was brought into St. 
Mary’s Church, Oxford, to read his re¬ 
cantation in public, instead of confessing 
the justness of his sentence, and sub¬ 
mitting to it in silence or imploring 
mercy, he calmly acknowledged that 
the fear of death had made him belie 
his conscience; and declaring that 
nothing could afford him consolation 
but the prospect of extenuating his guilt 
by encountering, as a Protestant peni¬ 
tent, -with firmness and resignation, the 
fiery torments which awaited him. He 
was immediately hurried to the stake, 
where he behaved with the resolution of 
a martyr. 

CRAPE, a light transparent stuff, 
like gauze, made of raw silk, gummed 
and twisted on the mill, woven with¬ 
out crossing, and much used in mourn¬ 
ing. 

CRAPS, a dice game. When the 
amount of the stake is decided upon the 
first player throws the dice. If the 
number thrown is two, three or twelve 
he loses. If seven or eleven he wins. If 
none of these numbers is thrown he 
keeps on “shooting” until he again 
throws the first number, when he wins, 
or seven, when he loses. 

CRATER, the orifice or mouth of a 
volcano.. Craters may be central or 
lateral, and there may be several sub¬ 
sidiary ones, which may shift their 
places, or become merged by subsidence 
into others. 

CRAVAT', a neckcloth; an article of 
silk, muslin, or other material, worn by 
men about the neck; so called from Fr. 
cravate, a Croat, because this piece of 
dress was adopted in the 17th century 












CRAWFISH 


CREDIT FONCIER 


from the Croats who entered the French 
service. 

CRAWFISH, or CRAYFISH, a name 
of various crustaceous animals, the 
common crawfish being the river lobster, 
a macrurous (long-tailed), ten-footed 
crustacean, resembling the lobster in 
appearance and habits. The crawfish 
by their burrowing habits injure mill- 
dams and the levees of the Mississippi. 
Crawfish are regarded by many as fur¬ 
nishing a delicate dish for the table. 

CRAWFORD, Francis Marion, an 
American novelist, born in Italy in 1854. 
His first publication was Mr. Isaacs 1882, 
since which time he has produced an av¬ 
erage of two novels a year. His prin¬ 
cipal stories are laid in Italy. Died 1909. 

CRAY'ONS, colored pencils obtained 
from certain mineral substances in their 
natural state, but more commonly 
manufactured from a fine paste of chalk 
or pipe-clay colored with various pig¬ 
ments, and consolidated by means of 
pm, wax, etc. A kind of crayon paint¬ 
ing (or pastel painting) is practiced to 
some extent, the coloring matter in a 
soft state being rubbed on with the 
finger. Its chief advantages consist in 
the great facility of its execution, and 
the soft beauty and richness of coloring 
of effects so easily produced. The paper 
used has a specially granulated sur¬ 
face. 

CREAM, the yellowish, thick, oily 
layer which forms at the surface when 
new milk is allowed to remain at rest. 
When it is agitated or churned butter 
Is formed. 

CREAMERY, a name applied to a 
factory where butter is made. The 
growth of the creamery industry in the 
U. States has been enormous since its 
beginning in 1864. The creamery is 
usually situated in the middle of a milk 
producing region and the milk is de¬ 
livered daily to the factory, and the 
butter is manufactured by machinery 
at a great reduction in cost. The 
largest creamery district in the U. 
States is that near Elgin, Ill. 

CREAM OF TARTAR, or POTASSIUM 
BITARTRATE, exists in grapes, tamar¬ 
inds, and other foods. It is prepared 
from the crystalline crust (crude tartar 
or argol) deposited on the vessels in 
which grape juice has been fermented. 
The argol is dissolved by boiling with 
water, the mixture filtered, and the 
cream of tartar allowed to crystallize 
out. The commercial product usually 
contains a small percentage of calcium 
tartrate. It is frequently employed in 
medicine for its diuretic, cathartic, and 
refrigerant properties; as a mordant in 
dyeing wool; and as an ingredient in 
baking-powder. 

CRE'ASOTE, a substance discovered 
by Reichenbach about 1831 in wood- 
tar, from which it is _ separated by a 
tedious process. It is generally ob¬ 
tained, however, from the products of 
the destructive distillation of wood. 
In a pure state it is oily, heavy, colorless, 
has a sweetish burning taste and a 
strong smell of peat smoke or smoked 
meat. It is a powerful antiseptic. 
Wood treated with it is not subject to 
dry-rot or other disease. It has been 
used in surgery and medicine with great 
success. 


CREASY (kre'si), Sir Edward Shep¬ 
herd, English historian, was born at 
Bexley, Kent, in 1812, died 1'878. His 
principal works are: The Rise and 
Progress of the British Constitution, 
and The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the 
World. 

CREA'TIONISM, the doctrine that a 
soul is specially created for each human 
fetus as soon as it is formed in the 
womb: opposed to traducianism, which 
teaches that the souls of children as well 
as their bodies are begotten by repro¬ 
duction from the substance of the 
parents’ and to infusionism, which 
holds that souls are pre-existent, and 
that a soul is divinely infused into each 
human fetus as soon as it is formed by 
generation. Many theologians, how¬ 
ever, regard the mode of the soul’s 
coming into being as a part of the mys¬ 
tery which envelops the whole subject 
of the existence and transmission of life. 
The term creationism has also recently 
been applied to that theory of the origin 
of man which is opposed to evolution. 

CRECHE (krash), a public nursery 
for the children of poor women who have 
to work out during the day, where for a 
small payment they are nursed and fed 
during the day, remaining with their 
parents at night. These institutions 
were first started in Paris in 1844; they 
were soon afterward introduced into 
Great Britain, and are now common in 
large towns in the U, States. 

CRECY, or Cressy, a small town of 
France, in the department of Somme, 9 
miles north of Abbeville and 100 miles 
north of Paris; pop. 1,748. It is cele¬ 


each other’s honesty, solvency, and 
resources. By means of a credit system 
a comparatively small stock of money 
can be made to do duty for carrying on a 
number of different transactions; but 
it is indispensable for every good system 
of credit that money must be instantly 
available when required, and this prin¬ 
ciple applies to every species of trans¬ 
action where postponed payment is con¬ 
cerned. Public credit is the confidence 
which men entertain in the ability and 
disposition of a nation to make good its. 
engagements with its creditors; or the 
estimation in which individuals hold 
the public promises of payment, whether 
such promises are expressed or implied. 
The term is also applied to the general 
credit of individuals in a nation; when 
merchants and others are wealthy and 
punctual in fulfilling engagements; or 
when they transact business with honor 
and fidelity; or when transfers of prop¬ 
erty are made with ease. So we speak of 
the credit of a bank when general con¬ 
fidence is placed in its ability to redeem 
its notes, and the credit of a mercantile 
house rests on its supposed ability and 
probity, which induce men to trust to 
its engagements. When the public 
credit is questionable it raises the pre¬ 
mium on loans. 

CREDIT, Letter of, an order given by 
bankers or others at one place to enable 
a person to receive money from their 
agents at another place. 

CREDIT FONCIER (kra-de fon-sya), 
a peculiar mode of raising money on 
land in. France, the peculiarity of which 
is that the advance must not exceed 



} Battlefield of Cr6cy. 


brated on account of a battle fought here, 
August 26, 1346, between the English 
and French. Edward III. and his son, 
the Black Prince, were both engaged, 
and the French were defeated with great 
slaughter, 30,000 foot and 1,200 horse 
being left dead on the field; among 
whom were the King of Bohemia, the 
Count of Alengon, Louis, count of Flan¬ 
ders, with many others of the French 
nobility. 

CRED'IT, in economics, is the post¬ 
ponement agreed on by the parties of 
the payment of a debt to a future day. 
It implies confidence of the creditor in 
the debtor; and a “credit system” is 
one of general confidence of people in 


one-half of the value of the property 
pledged or hypothecated, and that the 
repayment of the loan is by an annuity 
terminable at a certain date. Several 
companies have been established by 
the French government with the priv¬ 
ilege of making such loans. 

CREDIT MOBILIER (kra-de mo-bel- 
ya), a scheme which originated in France 
in 1852, its objects being to undertake 
trading enterprises of all kinds on the 
principle of limited liability, to buy up 
existing trading companies, and to 
carry on the business of bankers and 
stock-jobbers, 

CREDITOR, one who has given credit 
to another. Creditors are “general,” 














CREDIT MOBILIER 


CRIBBAGE 


"when they have only right of action 
against the debtor; "secured,” when 
they have a lien protecting them; 
"preferred” when the law secures them 
a special right in preference to other 
creditors. A judgment creditor is one 
who secured judgment against a 
debtor. 

CREED, a summary of belief, from 
the Latin credo (I believe), with which 
the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds begin. 
These two creeds, together with the 
Athanasian Creed, are the most ancient 
authoritative Christian creeds, though 
numerous ancient formularies of faith 
are preserved in the writings of the early 
fathers, Irenseus, Origen, Tertullian, 
etc., which agree in substance, though 
with some diversity of expression. 
The Nicene Creed was so called from 
being adopted as the creed of the church 
at the Council of Nicfea or Nice, 325 
a.d., though its terms were subsequently 
somewhat altered. The Apostles’ Creed 
probably dates from the end of the 4th 
century; but there is no evidence of its 
being accepted in its present form till 
the middle of the 8th. The Athanasian 
Creed was certainly not drawn up by 
St Athanasius, as there is no sufficient 
evidence for its existence before the 
end of the 8th or beginning of the 9th 
century. In addition to these three 
creeds, the Roman Catholic Church has 
the creed of Pius IV., put forth in 1564, 
and consisting of the Nicene Creed with 
additional articles adopted by the Coun¬ 
cil of Trent, to which is now added a 
profession of belief in the definitions of 
the Vatican Council. The English 
Church adopts as "thoroughly to be re¬ 
ceived and believed” the three ancient 
creeds, which as part of her liturgy may 
be read in the Book of Common Prayer, 
but does not consider any of them to be 
inspired. Besides the creeds, there are 
numerous Confessions of Faith, which 
have been adopted by different churches 
and sects. The Thirty-nine Articles of 
the Book of Common Prayer form a 
confession of faith for the Anglican 
Church. The creed of the Church of 
Scotland and other Presbyterian 
churches is contained in the Confession 
of Faith, drawn up by the Westminster 
Assembly of Divines, and completed in 
1646. 

CREEDMOOR, a station on the Long 
Island railway, 11 miles east of the city 
of New York. It is much frequented 
by riflemen for target practice. 

CREEK, a small inlet, bay, or cove; 
a recess in the shore of the sea or of a 
river. In America and Australia the 
term is often applied to a small river or 
rivulet. 

CREEKS, American Indians formerly 
in Georgia and Alabama, but now 
planted in the Indian Territory. The 
number of warriors used to amount to 
about 6000, but altogether the tribe 
does not now exceed 15,000. They have 
made considerable progress in agricul¬ 
ture, and raise horses, cattle, fowls, and 
hogs, and cultivate tobacco, rice, and 
corn. 

CREEPERS, a family of birds which 
strongly resemble the woodpeckers in 
their habit of creeping on the stems of 
trees with the aid of the strong quills 
which project from the tail-feathers, 


and of securing their insect food by an 
exsertile tongue. The common creeper 
is European, but is represented by 
American species. It is a pretty and 
interesting little bird, which builds its 
nest usually in holes or crevices of trees. 
The wall-creeper of Southern Europe 
searches for its insect food on rocks. 
The family is found in all parts of the 
world. 

CREMATION, the burning of the 
bodies of the dead, a practice which was 
frequent in ancient times instead of 
burial, and which has recently been 
advocated on hygienic grounds by 
many scientific men in Europe and 
America on account of the dangers to 
the living caused by the presence of 
graveyards and cemeteries. Various 
methods of cremation have been pro¬ 
posed, the great difficulty being to con¬ 
sume the body without permitting the 
escape of noxious exhalations, and with¬ 
out mingling the ashes with foreign 
substances. In Siemens’ process, a 
modification of a plan of Sir Henry 
Thompson, this is successfully accom¬ 
plished. Cremation societies exist in 
many countries, and crematories have 
been erected in or near not a few towns 

CREMO'NA, a city of Italy, capital of 
province of same name, on the left bank 
of the Po, 47 miles s e. by e. of Milan. 
It is surrounded by walls and wet 
ditches, its circumference being nearly 
five miles. The most remarkable edifice 
is the cathedral, begun in 1107 and com¬ 
pleted about 1491. Close by and con¬ 
nected with the cathedral, is the 
Torazzo, one of the loftiest and most 
beautiful towers in Italy. Cremona is 
the seat of a bishopric, and has consider¬ 
able manufactures of silk, wool, cotton, 
etc. It was at one time celebrated for 
its violins, especially those made by 
Antonius Straduarius, Joseph Guar- 
nerius, and members of the Amati 
family. Pop. 37,693. The province has 
an area of about 500 sq. miles, and a 
population of 300,000. 

CRE'OLE is the name which was 
originally given to all the descendants 
of Spaniards born in America and the 
West Indies. It is now used in a wider 
sense to signify the descendants of 
Europeans of any nation born in S. 
America and the West Indies, as well 
as in some other localities. 

CREOSOTE. See Creasote. 

CRESCENDO (kre-shen'do), or Cres. 
(Italian), a musical term signifying that 
the notes of the passage over which it is 
placed are to be gradually swelled. 

CRES'CENT, an emblem representing 
the moon in her horned state. This 
emblem is of very high antiquity, being 
that of the Greek goddess Artemis or 
Diana. It is found on medals of many 
ancient cities, particularly of Byzan¬ 
tium, from whence it is supposed to have 
been borrowed by the Ottomans. Since 
their establishment in Europe it has 
been the universal emblem of their 
empire. The crescent has given name 
to a Turkish order of knighthood from 
the form of the badge, instituted by 
Selim, sultan of Turkey, in 1801. 

CRESS, the name of several species of 
plants. Water-cress is used as a salad, 
and is valued in medicine for its anti¬ 
scorbutic qualities. The leaves have a 


moderately pungent taste. It grows 
on the brinks of rivulets and in moist 
grounds. 

CRESSELLE (kre-sel') ,a wooden rattle 
used in some Roman Catholic countries 
during Passion Week instead of bells, 
to give notice of divine worship. 

CRESSET, a name which appears to 
have been given in the middle ages and 
later indifferently to the fixed candle¬ 
sticks in great halls and churches, to the 



Various forms of cressets. 


great lights used as beacons and other¬ 
wise; and to lamps or fire-pans sus¬ 
pended on pivots and carried on poles in 
processions, municipal and military 
watches, etc. 

CRESSY. See Cr4cy 

CRETA'CEOUS (or Chalk) SYSTEM, 
in geol. the upper strata of the Second¬ 
ary series, immediately below the Ter¬ 
tiary series, and superincumbent on the 
Oolite system. This group is common 
to Europe, and also to a part of Asia. 
It consists of chalk resting upon arena¬ 
ceous and argillaceous deposits, which 
are also regarded as part of the system. 

CRETE. See Candia, 

CRET'INISM, a form. ,of idiocy asso¬ 
ciated with a peculiar condition of the 
body, occurring in Switzerland and 
other mountainous countries. Cretins 
are usually affected with goitre, and are 
usually the offspring of goitrous parents 
They are ill grown and stunted, with 
swollen bellies. The skin is coarse, head 
large, the nose sunken and flattened at 
the bridge, the lips thick, chin pro¬ 
truding, mouth wide and gaping, the 
tongue large. The countenance is dull 
and heavy; there is general muscular 
weakness and slowness of sensibility. 
Associated with these are feebleness or 
want of intellect, varying in degree from 
absolute vacuity to a certain power of 
acquiring a little knowledge; sometimes 
deafness and dumbness, perhaps squint¬ 
ing and blindness. Careful training may 
do much for them, along with good food, 
cleanliness, exercise, etc. 

CRETONNE (kre-ton'), a cotton cloth 
with various textures of surface, printed 
on one side with pictorial ana other 
patterns, and used for curtains, covering 
furniture, etc. 

CREUSE (krewz), an inland depart¬ 
ment, France, comprising most part of 
the old province of Marche; area, 2150 
sq. miles. Pop. 284,942. 

CRIB'BAGE, a game at cards played 
with the whole pack. It may be played 
by two, three, or four persons; and when 
by two, five or six cards may be dealt 
to each. Five-card cribbage played by 
two persons is the most scientific game. 
Sixty-one-points make the game; there 
are no tricks and no trumps, the 
object being to make pairs, fifteens, 
sequences, or the go, or prevent the 
adversary from doing the same. Court 




CRICHTON 


CRIMEAN WAR 


cards and tens count as ten each, and 
all the rest count for the number of 
“pips” upon them. Every pair, that is, 
every couple of cards of the same value 
belonging to different suits (two aces, 
two fours, two kings, etc.), counts two; 
and when there are three or four similar 
cards, as many pairs are counted as 
there are different combinations of the 
■cards taken two at a time. Every com¬ 
bination of cards, the united pips of 
which make up fifteen, counts two. 
A sequence consists of three or more 
cards of any suit following one another 
in rank, and counts one for each card. 
When the player whose turn it is to play 
cannot play a card without going be¬ 
yond thirty-one, the other player scores 
one for having been the nearest to 
thirty-one. This is called scoring one 
for “the go.” The remaining cards 
after thirty-one, or the next point to it, 
is made, are thrown up, and each 
player’s cards are counted. When all 
the cards in a hand, either with or with¬ 
out the turn-up card, are of one suit, 
or when all the cards in the crib, with 
the turn-up card, are of one suit, it is 
called a flush, and counts one for each 
card When the turn-up card is a knave 
the dealer scores two (“two for his 
heels”). When a knave of the same suit 
with the turn-up card is found in the 
hand of either player, the player in whose 
hand it is scores one (“one for his nob”). 

CRICHTON (kri'ton), James, sur- 
named the Admirable, a Scottish celeb¬ 
rity, son of Robert Crichton, lord- 
advocate, was born in 1560, died about 
1585. He was educated at the Univer¬ 
sity of St. Andrews, and according to the 
current accounts of him, before his 
twentieth year, had run through the 
whole circle of the sciences, could speak 
and write to perfection ten different 
languages and was equally distinguished 
for his skill in riding, fencing, singing, 
and playing upon all sorts of instru¬ 
ments. He visited Paris, Genoa, Venice, 
Padua, etc., challenging all scholars to 
learned disputations, vanquishing doc¬ 
tors of the universities, and disarming 
the most famous swordsmen of the time 
in fencing. He was latterly tutor to a 
son of the Duke of Mantua, and is said 
to have been stabbed to the heart in a 
dastardly manner by his pupil. The 
story of his achievements seems to be 
rather highly colored; but he was ex¬ 
travagantly praised by Aldus Manutius 
the printer of Venice, by whom he was 
well known. He left some Latin poems, 
which are said to be possessed of no 
remarkable quality. 

CRICKET, the house-cricket is about 
an inch long, with antenna of about 
an inch and a half, of a pale yellow¬ 
ish color mixed with brown By the 
friction of the peculiarly-formed wing- 
covers the males produce that, strid- 
ulous sound by which these insects 
are so well known, and which has be¬ 
come associated with ideas of cheerful 
domestic comfort. They live in holes 
and crevices near fire places or in other 
warm situations, whence they come out 
at night to feed on crumbs and other 
fragments of food. The field-cricket 
makes a similar noise. 

CRICKET, an open-air game played 
with bats, balls, and wickets on a place 


of smooth green sward. It is played by 
two opposite sets or sides of players, 
generally numbering eleven each. Two 
wickets of three stumps each are 
pitched fronting each other at a distance 
of about 22 yards apart, the stumps 
being upright rods stuck in the ground, 
and projecting 27 inches. On the top 
of each set of stumps are placed two 
small pieces of wood called bails. After 
the rival sides have tossed for the choice 
of either taking the bat or fielding, two 
men are sent to the wickets bat in hand. 
The opposite or fielding side are all 
simultaneously engaged; one (the bowl¬ 
er) being stationed behind one wicket 
for the purpose of bowling his ball 
against the opposite wicket, where his 
coadjutor (the wicket-keeper) stands 
ready to catch the ball should it pass 
near him' the other fielders are placed in 
such parts of the field as is judged most 
favorable for stopping the ball after it 
has been struck by the batsman or 
missed by the wicket-keeper. It is the 
object of the batsman to prevent the 
ball delivered by the bowler reaching 
his wicket either by merely stopping it 
with his bat or by driving it away to a 
distant part of the field. Should the ball 
be driven any distance the two batsmen 
run across and exchange wickets, and 
continue to do so as long as there is no 
risk in being “run out,” that is, of having 
the stumps struck by the ball while 
they are out of their position near the 
wickets. Each time the batsmen run 
between the wickets is counted as a 
“run,” and is marked to the credit of the 
striker of the ball. If the batsman 
allows the ball to carry away a bail or a 
stump, if he knocks down any part of 
his own wicket, if any part of his person 
stops a ball that would have otherwise 
reached his wicket, or if he strikes a ball 
so that it is caught by one of the op- 
osite party before it reaches the ground 
e is “out,” that Is, he gives up his bat 
to one of his own side; and so the game 
goes on until all the men on one side 
have played and been put out. This 
constitutes what is called an “innings.” 
The other side now take the bat and try 
to defend their wickets and make runs 
as their rivals did. Generally after two 
innings each have been played by the 
contestants the game comes to an end, 
that side being the victors who can 
score the greatest number of runs. 

CRILLON (kre-yon), Louis des Balbes 
de Berton de, great French warrior of 
the 16th century, born in 1541, died 
1615. He distinguished himself in five 
successive reigns. 

CRIME, a term used to indicate some¬ 
times a violation of the higher moral 
law, sometimes more specifically the 
violation of a certain group of the laws 
formulated by a nation. This group 
properly comprises in its scheme all 
offenses endangering the welfare of the 
community, as distinct from civil or 
private injuries, which are as between 
person and person, and terminate with 
the compensation of the injured. Hence, 
from the legal point of view crime is 
sometimes defined as an offense punish¬ 
able by law directly, as opposed to an 
offense which the law punishes indirectly 
by granting damages to the person 
wronged. (See Criminal Law.) Whether 


used in the legal or the moral sense 
crime implies freedom of will, the power 
of distinguishing between right and 
wrong, and a fulfilled intention. 'Hence, 
though the theoretic rule of common 
law is that all infraction of law is 
criminal and penal, it is held that young 
children, madmen, and idiots cannot 
commit crimes. 

CRIME'A, The, a peninsula of south¬ 
ern Russia; area, 10,000 sq. miles. 
Three-fourths of the Crimea belongs to 
the regions of steppes, but the other 
part, confided entirely to the south, 
and stretching along the coast from 
west to east, abounds in beautiful 
mountain scenery. Here the valleys 
looking southward are luxuriant with 
vines and olive and mulberry planta¬ 
tions, while the northern slope gives a 
large yield in cereals and fruits. The 
climate, however, is unequal, and in 
winter is severe. The forests are of 
limited extent. Pop. estim. at 450,000. 
The chief town and port is Sebastopol. 
In 1783 the Russians took possession of 
the country; and with the view of over¬ 
awing the Turks the great naval arsenal 
of Sebastopol, occupying the most com¬ 
manding position in the Black 6ea, was 
begun by Catharine II. in 1786. Its mili¬ 
tary resources were steadily developed 
up to the time of the Anglo-French 
campaign (see Crimean War) of 1854, 
when it fell into the hands of the allies. 

CRIME'AN WAR, the struggle be¬ 
tween England, France, and Turkey on 
the one hand, and Russia on the other, 
to prevent the undue preponderance of 
Russia in the east of Europe; 1854 to 
1856. The old plans for the extension of 
Russian power conceived by Catharine 
II. and Potemkin were resuscitated by 
Nicholas I., who, believing that he had 
secured himself from interference on the 
part of Austria and Prussia, and that 
an Anglo-French alliance was impos¬ 
sible, prepared to carry them into action. 
Servia, Bosnia, Bulgaria, and the prin¬ 
cipalities of the Danube were to become 
Russian protectorates, and Constanti¬ 
nople was to be provisionally occupied 
by Russian troops. The first markedly 
aggressive step—the demand by Russia 
for a protectorate over the Greek Church 
throughout the Turkish empire- 
brought matters to a crisis. An ulti¬ 
matum presented by Menschikoff in 
May, 1853, was rejected by the Porte] 
the Russians occupied the Danubian 
principalities; and war was declared by 
the Porte in October, 1853, by France 
and England in 1854, and by Sardinia 
in 1855. A French and English fleet 
entered the Baltic and captured Bo¬ 
rn arsund and one of the Aland Is¬ 
lands, and in the south the allies 
landed at Varna, under Lord Raglan 
and Marshal St. Arnaud as com¬ 
manders-in-chief. While the allies 
were making preparations Prussia and 
Austria demanded the evacuation of the 
Danubian principalities, and on evacua¬ 
tion being ordered by Nicholas, “for 
strategic reasons,” the principalities 
were provisionally occupied by the 
Austrians. It soon became obvious that 
the Crimea must be the seat of the war, 
and 50,000 French and English troops 
with 6000 Turks were landed at Eupa- 
toria (Sept. 1854). Five days later the 





CRIMINAL LAW 


CROCODILE 


battle of Alma was won by the allies (20th 
Sept.), and the march continued toward 
the south side of Sebastopol. Soon 
after St. Arnaud died and was succeeded 
by Canrobert. The siege of Sebastopol 
was commenced by a grand attack 
which proved a failure, and the Russians 
under Liprandi retaliated by attacking 
the English at Balaklava (Oct. 25), but 
were defeated with heavy loss. It was 
at this battle that the famous, but 
useless, charge was made by the Light 
Brigade. A second attack at Inkerman 
was again repulsed by the allies, but the 
siege works made slow progress during 
the winter, in which the ill-supplied 
troops suffered great privations. The 
death of Nicholas and succession of 
Alexander II., in March, 1855, brought 
no change of policy. Canrobert re¬ 
signed in favor of Pelissier; and shortly 
after an unsuccessful attack on those 
parts of the fortification known as the 
Malakhoff and Redan Lord Raglan died, 
and was succeeded by Simpson. The 
bombardment was continued, and in 
September the French successfully 
stormed the Malakhoff, the simultaneous 
attack on the Redan by the British 
proving a failure. The Russians, how¬ 
ever, then withdrew from the city to the 
north forts and the allies took possession. 
The chief subsequent event was the 
capture of Kars, in Asia, by the Rus¬ 
sians after a splendid defense by the 
Turks under General Williams By 
this time, however, the allies had 
practical possession of the Crimea, and 
overtures of peace were gladly accepted. 
A treaty was accordingly concluded at 
Paris on 27th April, 1856, by which the 
independence of the Ottoman Empire 
was guaranteed. See Paris, Treaty of. 

CRIMINAL LAW, the law relating to 
crimes The general theory of the com¬ 
mon law is, that all wrongs are divisible 
into two species: first, civil or private 
wrongs or torts; secondly, criminal or 
public wrongs. The former are to be 
redressed by private suits or remedies 
instituted by the parties injured. The 
latter are redressed by the state acting 
in its sovereign capacity. The general 
description of the private wrongs is, 
that they comprehend those injuries 
which affect the rights and property of 
the individual, and terminate there; 
that of public wrongs or offenses being, 
that they comprehend such acts as 
injure, not merely individuals, but the 
community at large, by endangering 
the peace, the comfort, the good order, 
the policy, and even the existence of 
society. In the first, therefore, so far 
as the law is concerned, the compen¬ 
sation of the individual, whose rights 
have been infringed is held to be a suffi¬ 
cient atonement; but in the second 
class of offenses it is demanded that 
the offender make satisfaction to the 
community as acting prejudically to 
its welfare. The exact boundaries be¬ 
tween these classes are not, however, 
always easy to be discerned, even in 
theory; for there are few private wrongs 
which do not exert an influence beyond 
the individual whom they directly in¬ 
jure. i The divisions, torts and crimes, 
are thus not necessarily mutually ex¬ 
clusive, cases sometimes occurring in 
which the person injured obtains dam¬ 


ages, while at the same time the crimi¬ 
nal is subjected to punishment, not as 
against the individual, but as against 
the state. It is, moreover, obvious that 
legal criminality is not in any strict 
sense the measure of the morality of 
actions, though the legal enactment 
tends to enforce itself as a moral law. 
In large part it is only an approximate 
expression of the current sense of justice, 
this expression being both aided and 
hindered by the historical and con¬ 
stantly reflexive character of legal 
method. The basis of the criminal law 
of Britain and the United States is to 
be found in a series of loose definitions 
and descriptions, of which many, and 
those among the more important, date 
from the 13th century. The irregular 
superstructure reared upon these con¬ 
sists mainly of parliamentary enact¬ 
ments which originated in the 18th 
century. 

In the United States the common law 
of England generally obtains, in some 
states more than in others, while in 
all there is a criminal code, or a mass 
of statutes defining crime and fixing the 
punishment. On the other hand, the 
United States itself has a criminal code 
consisting of congressional enactments. 
The various states have wide differ¬ 
ences in their statutory laws with 
reference to crime. 

CRIMINOLOGY, the science which 
deals with crime and its social and in¬ 
dividual causes. Criminology in its 
most rational form, is embodied in the 
writings of Cesare Lombroso, the 
Italian alienist, but the attempts of 
less capable persons, such as professors 
of sociology, prison chaplains, wardens, 
“students,” and uncultured physicians, 
have, especially in the United States, 
reduced the entire discussion to the 
level of a farce. Intelligently to under¬ 
stand criminology one must first master 
the main facts of organic evolution, 
anthropology, and human anatomy. 

CRIMSON, a rich deep red color, a 
red that owes its characteristic tint to a 
certain admixture of blue. 

CRIN'OLINE, properly a kind of 
fabric made chiefly of horse-hair, but 
afterward generally applied to a kind 
of petticoat supported by steel hoops, 
and intended to distend or give a cer¬ 
tain set to the skirt of a lady’s dress. 
Hooped skirts (farthingales or fardin- 
gales), supported by whalebone, were 
worn in the time of Queen Elizabeth 
and James I., and the fashion was again 
introduced in the time of George II. 
The crinoline proper came in about 1856, 
and was worn by women of all ranks, 
sometimes proving by their portentous 
dimensions a source of much incon¬ 
venience and no little danger. The 
immense bell-shaped crinolines happily 
fell into disuse about 1866. Crinoline 
wire was for years a leading branch in 
the steel trade. A horse-hair and 
cotton fabric used as a material for 
making ladies’ bonnets is also called 
crinoline. 

CRIP'PLE CREEK, a town and coun¬ 
ty-seat of Teller County, Col., 30 miles 
west-southwest of Colorado Springs. It 
was founded in 1890, developed rapidly 
after 1893, and was nearly destroyed 


by fire in 1S96. Population, 10,147; the 
district contains about 50,000. 

CRI'SIS, in medicine, the turning' 
point in a disease at which a decided 
change for the better or the worse takes 
place. In regular fevers the crisis takes 
place on regular days, which are called 
critical days (the 7th, 14th, and 21st) 
sometimes, however, a little sooner or 
later, according to the climate and the 
constitution of the patient. The word 
crisis is also figuratively used for a deci¬ 
sive point in any important affair or 
business, for instance, in politics and 
commerce. Commercial crises have 
been in an especial degree the subjects 
of study at the hands of economists 
with the result of establishing a curious 
periodicity in their recurrence. 

CRISP, Charles Frederic, an Ameri¬ 
can politician and lawyer, born in Eng¬ 
land in 1845, died 1896. He came to 
the United States as a child. He 
fought in the Confederate army and 
from 1891 to 1895 was speaker of the 
national house of representatives. 

CRISPI, Francesco, an Italian states¬ 
man born in Sicily in 1819, died in 1901. 
He was a helper of Garibaldi, and in 
1876 he was elected president of the 
Chamber of Deputies. From that time 
to 1898 he was prominent in European 
politics as cabinet officer and prime 
minister of Italy. In 1898 he retired to 
the practice of law and occasionally 
wrote for popular magazines on ques¬ 
tions of European policy. 

CRITTENDEN, John Jordan, an Amer¬ 
ican statesman, born in Kentucky in 
1787, died in 1863. He served in the 
war of 1812, was United States senator 
for 20 years, governor of Kentucky in 
1848-50, and twice United States at¬ 
torney-general. He proposed the Crit¬ 
tenden compromise, which aimed at 
the permanent retention of slavery in 
all states in which slavery existed. 

CROATIA, a country which forms 
with Slavonia and the former “Military 
Frontiers” a province of the Hungarian 
ortion of the Austrian monarchy, partly 
ounded by the Adriatic; total area, 
16,411 sq. miles. The inhabitants are 
Croats and Serbs (both Slavs by race), 
with a mixture of Germans, Hungarians, 
Jews, and Gypsies. About three-fourths 
of the population are R. Catholics, the 
rest belong chiefly to the Greek Church. 
The chief towns are Agram (the capital), 
Warasdin,and Karlstadt. Pop. 2,184,414. 

CROCHET (kro'sha), a species of 
knitting performed with a small hook, 
of ivory, steel, or wood, the material 
used being woolen, cotton, or silk thread. 
Various fancy articles are made in 
crochet-work. 

CROCKETT, David, an American 
backwoodsman, born in Tennessee in 
1786, died in 1836. He was the origina¬ 
tor of the aphorism “Be sure you’re 
right, then go ahead.” Crockett was 
the ideal of the American pioneer. He 
fought in the Indian war under Jackson 
and was elected to congress and was 
killed while defending the Alamo. 

CROC'ODILE, a genus, family, and 
order of saurian reptiles, comprising the 
largest living forms of reptiles. The 
characters of the order Crocodilia arc as 
follows:—The skin is covered with 
square bony plates; the tail is long and 




CROCUS 


CROMWELL 


compressed laterally. The four feet are 
short, and there are five toes on each 
of the two fore-feet, and four on each of 
the two hind-feet, the latter more or less 
webbed; the limbs are feeble. The 
jaws are long and their gape of enor¬ 
mous width. The nostrils are at the 
extremity of the snout, and capable 
of being closed to prevent ingress of 
water. The heart is four-chambered. 
Crocodiles have unequal teeth and no 



Crocodile. 


abdominal plates, and the cervical and 
dorsal plates are distinct for the most 
part. The crocodile of the Nile is the 
best-known member of the order; 
another species is met with in South 
Asia, Sunda, and the Moluccas. The 
crocodile is formidable from its great 
size and strength, but on shore its short¬ 
ness of limb, great length of body, and 
difficulty of turning enable men and 
animals readily to escape pursuit. In 
the water it is active and formidable. 
It is exclusively carnivorous, and al¬ 
ways prefers its food in a state of putre¬ 
faction. In Egypt it is no longer found 
except in the upper or more southern 
parts, where the neat is greatest and the 
population least numerous. Crocodiles 
are still common enough in the river 
Senegal, the Congo, Niger, etc. They 
grow sometimes to a length of 30 feet, 
and apparently live to a vast age. 

CROCUS, a genus of plants, forming 
one of the most common ornaments of 
the garden. They may be divided, ac¬ 
cording to their period of flowering, 
into vernal and autumnal. Among the 
vernal crocuses may be mentioned the 
white and purple, distinguished by the 
yellow tube of its flower bearded with 
hairs, and its sweet scent; the Scotch 
crocus, with beautiful pencilled sepals, 
and clear or bluish-white petals. Among 
the autumnal species are two whose 
long, reddish-orange, drooping stigmas, 
when dried, form saffron. See Saffron. 

CRCESUS, the last king of Lydia, son 
of Alyattes, whom he succeeded in 560 
b.c., extending the empire from the 
northern and western coasts of Asia 
Minor to the Halys on the east and 
Mount Taurus on the south, including 
the Greek colonies of the mainland. 
His riches, obtained chiefly from mines 
and the gold-dust of the river Pactolus, 
were greater than those of any king 
before him, so that his wealth became 
proverbial. 

CROFTERS, petty farmers renting a 
few acres of land, with sometimes the 
right of grazing their cattle in common 
on a piece of rough pasture. Crofters 
are numerous in the Highlands and in 
the Western Islands of Scotland, as well 
as in some other localities. 

CROKER, Richard, an American 
politician born in Ireland in 1843, emi¬ 


grated to N. Y. City as a child. He be¬ 
gan life as a laborer and entered politics 
as a ward worker. He served as aider- 
man, rose in power in Tammany Hall, 
and in 1886 became the democratic 
leader of New York City politics. In 
1902 he resigned from Tammany and 
went to England to live. 

CROLY, Jane Cunningham, (Jennie 
June), an. American writer, born in 
England in 1831, emigrated to the 
United States as a girl. She died in 
1901. She was widely known for the 
part she took in women’s reform move¬ 
ments and women’s clubs. She was 
a liberal contributor to newspapers and 
magazines and published several books 
for women. 

CROMLECH (krom'lek), an ancient 
monument consisting of two or more 
columns of unhewn stone supporting a 
large tabular block so as to form a 
rectangular chamber, beneath the floor 



Cromlech at Lanyon, Cornwall. 


of which is sometimes found a cist in¬ 
closing a skeleton and relics. Some¬ 
times the cromlech was encircled by a 
ring of standing-stones, as in the case 
of the standing-stones of Stennis, in 
Orkney; and sometimes it was itself 
buried beneath a large mound of earth. 

CROM'WELL, Oliver, Lord-protector 
of the Commonwealth of England, Scot¬ 
land, and Ireland, was born at Hunt¬ 
ingdon April 25 ; 1599. The first really 
authentic fact in his biography is his 
leaving school at Huntingdon and 
entering Sidney-Sussex College, Cam¬ 
bridge, April 23, 1616. On the death 
of his father in 1617 he returned home, 
and in 1620 married Elizabeth, daughter 
of Sir James Bourchier. In 1628 he 



Oliver Cromwell. 


was member of parliament for the 
borough of Huntingdon, to which he 
returned on the dissolution in 1629. 
During the short and long parlia¬ 
ments he represented Cambridge, his 
influence gradually increasing. At the 
battle of Winceby (1643) he led the van 
narrowly escaping death, and in the 
following year he led the victorious left 
at Marston Moor, deciding the result of 
the battle. As the result of the disci¬ 
pline introduced by Cromwell the decisive 
victory of Naseby was gained in 1645, 
and Leicester, Taunton, Bridgewater, 


Bristol, Devizes, Winchester, and Dart¬ 
mouth fell into the hands of the parlia¬ 
ment. On the occasion of the surrender 
of Charles by the Scottish army in 1646 
Cromwell was one of the commissioners. 
Though at first supporting parliament in 
its wish to disband the army, which re¬ 
fused to lay down its arms till the 
freedom of the nation was established, 
he afterward saw reason to decide in 
favor of the latter course. Hastily 
suppressing the Welsh rising, he march¬ 
ed against the Scottish royalists, whom 
he defeated with a much inferior force 
at Preston (Aug. 17, 1648). Then fol¬ 
lowed the tragedy of the king’s execu¬ 
tion, Cromwell’s name standing third 
in order in the death-warrant. Affairs 
in Ireland demanding his presence, he 
was appointed lord-lieutenant and com¬ 
mander-in-chief; and by making a 
terrible example of Drogheda (Septem¬ 
ber, 1649), crushed the royalist party in 
that country within six months. Re¬ 
signing the command to Ireton, he 
undertook, at the request of the parlia¬ 
ment, a similar expedition against Scot¬ 
land, where Charles II. had been pro¬ 
claimed king. With an army greatly 
reduced by sickness he saved himself 
from almost inevitable disaster hy the 
splendid victory at Dunbar (Sept. 3, 
1650), and a year later put an end to the 
struggle by his total defeat of the 
royalists at Worcester (Sept. 3, 1651). 

He already exerted a weighty in¬ 
fluence in the supreme direction of 
affairs, being instrumental in restoring 
the continental relations of England, 
which had been almost entirely dis¬ 
solved, and regulating them so as to 
promote the interests of commerce. The 
navigation act, from which may be 
dated the rise of the naval power of 
England, was framed upon his sug¬ 
gestion, and passed in 1651. The 
rump parliament, as the remnant of 
the long parliament was called, had 
become worse than useless, and on April 
20, 1653, Cromwell, w T ith 300 soldiers, 
dispersed that body. He then sum¬ 
moned a council of state, consisting 
mainly of his principal officers, which 
finally chose a parliament of persons 
selected from the three kingdoms, nick¬ 
named Barebone’s Parliament, or the 
Little Parliament. Fifteen months after 
a new annual parliament was chosen; 
but Cromwell soon prevailed on this 
body, who were totally incapable of 
governing, to place the charge of the 
commonwealth in his hands. The» chief 
power now devolving again upon the 
council of officers (Dec. 12, 1653), they 
declared Oliver Cromwell sole governor 
of the commonwealth, under the name 
of Lord-protector, with an assistant 
council of twenty-one men. The new 
protector behaved with dignity and 
firmness. Despite the innumerable 
difficulties which beset him from adverse 
parliaments, insurgent royalists, and 
mutinous republicans, the early months 
of his rule established favorable treaties 
with Holland, Sweden, Portugal, Den¬ 
mark, and France. In Sept. 1656 he 
called a new parliament, which under¬ 
took the revisal of the constitution and 
offered Cromwell the title of king. On 
his refusal he was again installed as 
Lord-protector, but with his powers 












CRONSTADT 


CROSS-EXAMINATION 


now legally defined. Early in the fol¬ 
lowing year, however, he peremptorily 
dissolved the house, which had rejected 
the authority of tne second chamber. 
Abroad his influence still increased, 
reaching its full height after the victory 
of Dunkirk in June, 1658. But his 
masterly administration was not effected 
without severe strain, and upon the 
death of his favorite daughter, Eliza¬ 
beth Claypole, in the beginning of 
August, 1658, his health began to fail 
him. Toward the end of the month he 
was confined to his room from a tertian 
fever, and on Sept. 3, 1658, died at 
Whitehall, in the sixtieth year of his 
age. He was buried in King Henry 
VII.’s Chapel, in Westminster Abbey, but 
after the restoraton his body was taken 
up and hanged at Tyburn, the head 
being fixed on a pole at Westminster 
Abbey, and the rest of the remains 
buried under the gallows.—Great as a 
general. Cromwell was still greater as a 
civil ruler. 

CRONSTADT (kron'stat), a town of 
Austria, in Transylvania, after Her- 
mannstadt the principal seat of the 
industry and trade of the province, 
lying in a mountainous but well-wooded 
and romantic district near its southeast 
corner. Pop. 34,511. 

CRONSTADT, a maritime fortress of 
Russia, about 20 miles w. St. Petersburg, 
both by its position and the strength of 
its fortifications, the bulwark of the 
capital, and being also the most im¬ 
portant naval station of the empire. 
Cronstadt used to be the commercial 
port of St. Petersburg, but since the 
construction of a canal giving large 
vessels direct access to the capital it has 
lost this position. Pop. 48,276. 

CROOKES, Sir William, a noted 
British chemist and physicist, born in 
London in 1832. He was one of the ear¬ 
liest physicists to study radio-activity, 
and invented the term “radiant matter.” 
He did most valuable work in spectros¬ 
copy, in the chemistry of dyes, and 
devised the Crookes tubes which led to 
the discovery of the X-ray. His radiom¬ 
eter, a little instrument which is moved 
by light-rays, is familiar to almost 
everyone who has looked into the show- 
window of an optician. 

CROQUET (kro'ka), an open-air game 
played with balls, mallets, hoops, and 
pegs on a level area, which should be at 
least 30 yards long by 20 wide. The 
iron hoops (shaped like the letter U) are 
fixed with their two ends in the ground, 
arranged in a somewhat zigzag manner 
over the ground; they are usually ten 
in number. The posts or pegs (two in 
number) are placed at the near and far 
end of the field respectively, marking 
the starting and turning points. The 
game may be played by any number of 
persons up to eight, either individually, 
or arranged in couples or in sides. The 
object of the players is to drive with the 
mallets the balls helonging to their 
own side through the hoops and against 
the posts in a certain order, and to 
prevent the balls of their opponents from 
completing the journey before their 
own by playing them against those of 
the enemy, and driving them as far as 
possible from the hoop or post to be 
played for; the player or players whose 


balls first complete the course claiming 
the victory. 

CROSBY, Frances Jane, an American 
writer of hymns, born in New York in 
1820. She became blind when a child, 
a fact which probably influenced her 
religious emotionality. Among her 
well known hymns are “Safe in the 
Arms of Jesus,” and “Pass Me Not O 
Gentle Savior.” 

CROSS, one straight body laid at any 
angle across another, or a symbol of simi¬ 
lar shape. Among the ancients a piece of 
wood fastened across a tree or upright 
post formed a cross, on which were exe¬ 
cuted criminals of the worst class It 
had, therefore, a place analogous to 
that of the modern gallows as an instru¬ 
ment of infamous punishment until it 



1, Cross of Calvery, a cross on three steps. 2, 
Latin Cross, a cross the transverse beam of 
which is placed at one-third the distance from 
the top of the perpendicular portion, supposed 
to be the form of cross on which Christ suffered. 
3, Tau Cross, (so called from being formed like 
the Greek letter r, tau), or cross of St. Anthony, 
one of the most ancient forms of the cross. 4, 
Cross of Lorraine. 5, Patriarchal Cross. 6, St. 
Andrew’s Cross, the form of cross on which St. 
Andrew, the national saint of Scotland, is said 
to have suffered. 7, Greek Cross, or cross of 
St. George, the national saint of England, the 
red cross which appears on British flags. 8, 
Papal Cross. 9, Cross nowy quadrat, that is, 
having a square expansion in the center. 10, 
Maltese Cross, formed of four arrow-heads 
meeting at the points; the badge of the Knights 
of Malta. 11, Cross fourchge or forked. 12, 
Cross patt6e or form^e. 13, Cross potent or 
Jerusalem Cross. 14, Cross fleury, from the 
fleur de lis at its ends. 

acquired honor from the crucifixion of 
Christ. The custom of making the sign 
of the cross in memory of Christ may 
be traced to the 3d century. Constan¬ 
tine had crosses erected in public places, 
palaces, and churches, and adopted it, 
according to a legend, as the device for 
a banner in consequence of a dream 
representing it as the symbol of victory. 
In his time also Christians painted it at 
the entrance of their houses as a sign of 
their faith, and subsequently the 
churches were for the most part built in 
the form of a cross. It did not, however, 
become an object of adoration until 
after the alleged discovery of the true 
cross by the Empress Helena (a.d. 326). 
Its adoption as the Christian symbol 
may be held to connect itself with the 
fact that it was used emblematically 
long before the Christian era, in the 
same way that traces of belief in a 
trinity, in a war in heaven, in a paradise, 
a flood, a Babel, an immaculate con¬ 
ception, and remission by the shedding 
of blood, are to be found diffused 
amongst widely sundered peoples. The 
general meaning attached to the sign 
appears to have been that of life and 
regeneration Since its adoption by 
Christianity it has undergone many 


modifications of shape, and has been 
employed in a variety of ways for orna¬ 
ments, badges, heraldic bearings, etc. 
After the introduction of the cross into 
the military ensigns of the crusaders 
its use in heraldry became frequent, 
and its form was varied more than that 
of any other heraldic ordinary, some of 
the varieties being of great beauty. The 
name cross is also given to various 
architectural structures, of which a 
cross in stone was a prominent feature; 
thus we have market crosses, peaching 
crosses, monumental crosses, etc 
CROSS, Exaltation of the, a Catholic 
festival celebrated on the 14th of 
September in honor of the recovery of 
a portion of the true cross from the 
Persians by Heraclius (628 a.d.) and 
its erection on Mount Calvary. 

CROSS, Victoria. See Victoria Cross 
CROSS'BILL, a genus of birds of the 
finch family, deriving their name from 
a peculiarity of their bill, the mandibles 
of which are curved at the tips, so as to 




American crossbill. 

cross each other, sometimes on the one 
side and sometimes on the other. The 
form of the bill enables them to extract 
with ease the seeds of the pine, their 
usual food, from underneath the scales of 
the cones. They build and also breed 
at all seasons of the year, in December, 
as in March, April, or May 

CROSS-BILL, a bill brought by a 
defendent against he complainant in 
an action at law. It is used in equity or 
chancery cases, and its purpose is to 
bring the details of the case more 
fully before the court. 

CROSS-BOW, or ARBALIST, form¬ 
erly a very common weapon for shooting, 
consisting of a bow fastened athwart a 
stock. The bow, which was often of 
steel, was usually bent by a lever wind¬ 
lass, or other mechanical contrivance, 
the missile usually consisting of a square- 
headed bolt or quarrel, but occasionally 
of short arrows, stones, and leaden bul¬ 
lets. Though largely used on the Euro¬ 
pean continent the cross-bow was super¬ 
seded at an early period in England by 
the more efficient long-bow, from which 
twelve arrows could be despatched per 
minute to three bolts of the cross-bow 

CROSS-BREEDING, the breeding to¬ 
gether of animals of different races or 
stocks. See Breeding. 

CROSS-EXAMINATION, a term ap¬ 
plied to the examination given a wit¬ 
ness by one party to a suit after the 
other party has finished the direct 
examination. Cross examination always 
assumes previous examination There 








CROSS-FERTILIZATION 


CROWNINSHIELD 


is re-cross examination (when re-direct 
examination has been taken up after 
cross-examination) and cross-examina¬ 
tion “in rebuttal”—to re-direct exami¬ 
nation. Cross examination must be 
limited to matters touched upon by 
direct examination. Its purpose is to 
weaken the value of the witness’s testi¬ 
mony. 

CROSS-FERTILIZATION, in botany, 
the fertilization of the ovule of one 
flower by the pollen of another, usually 
effected by the agency of insects, the 
action of the wind, water, etc. See 
Botany. 

CROSS-TREES, in ships, certain pieces 
of timber at the upper ends of the lower 
and top masts, athwart which they are 



laid, to sustain the frame of the tops in 
the one, and extend the top-gallant 
shrouds on the other. 

CRO'TON, a genus of herbaceous 
lants, shrubs, and trees, order Euphor- 
iaceae, comprehending a great number 
of species, many of which possess im¬ 
portant medical properties. See Croton 
Oil. 

CROTON-OIL, a vegetable oil ex- 

f ressed from the seeds of the Croton. 

t is so strongly purgative that one drop 
is a full dose, and half a drop will some¬ 
times produce a powerful effect, and it 
should never be used except by the 
direction of an experienced physician. 
When applied externally it causes 
irritation and suppuration, and thus it 
is used as a counter-irritant in neu¬ 
ralgia, etc. 

CROUCH, Frederick Nicholls, an 
American musician born in London in 
1808, died in Maine in 1896. His prin¬ 
cipal works were Kathleen Mavourneen, 
The Soldier’s Grave, The Emigrant's 
Lament, Friendship, and Twenty Years 
Ago. 

CROUP (krop). Two diseases are 
commonly confounded under the term 
“croup,” one a simple and, if promptly 
treated, a readily subdued disease, the 
other most fatal. The former is simple 
inflammation of the inner lining mem- 
brame of the larynx—the box of the 
windpipe—or of the windpipe itself, or 
of both. It is common in children, and 
as the air-passage of children is narrow, 
the swelling produced by the inflam¬ 
mation so diminishes the fair-way that 
difficult breathing, hoarseness of voice, 
and a cough like a muffled bark are 
quickly produced, while the breathing 
sounds loud and harsh. The other 
disease is diphtheria of the larynx or 
windpipe, or both, in which a false 
membrane is formed which lines the air- 
passages, and so narrows them. Croup 


frequently proves fatal by suffocation, 
induced either by spasm affecting the 
glottis, or by a quantity of matter 
blocking up the air-passages. The 
earliest symptoms should be noted, and 
the treatment in the absence of im¬ 
mediate medical advice should consist 
in the application of hot poultices to the 
upper part of the chest, while at the 
same time the child is made to inhale 
the steam from hot water. Hot drinks 
are beneficial, and the bowels should be 
freely opened. 

CROW, a genus of birds, type of the 
family Corvidae. It includes, as British 
species, the carrion-crow, the hooded or 
Royston crow, the raven, the rook, and 
the jackdaw, the last three of which are 
described under their respective heads. 
The carrion-crow, or simply the crow, 
is 18 or 19 inches in length, and about 36 
between the tips of the wings. Its 
plumage is compact and glossy blue- 
black with some greenish reflections. 
Its favorite food is carrion of all kinds; 
but it also preys upon small quadrupeds, 
young birds, frogs, lizards, etc., and is a 
confirmed robber of the nests of game 
birds and poultry. It is not gregarious, 
being generally met with either solitary 
or in pairs. It builds a large isolated 
nest, with from four to six eggs, gen¬ 
erally of a bluish-green with blotches of 
brown. The carrion-crow is easily 
tamed, and may be taught to articulate 
words. The American crow is similar 
to the foregoing, but is smaller and. less 
robust, and is somewhat gregarious. 
This crow is common in all parts of the 
U. States, and is deemed a great nuisance 
by farmers from preying on their corn. 
The fish-crow, another American crow, 
resembling the preceding but smaller, 
is abundant in the coast districts of the 
southern states. Its favorite food is 
fish, but it also eats all kinds of garbage, 
mollusca, etc. In winter its food is 
chiefly fruit, and it is then fat and con¬ 
sidered good eating. 

CROW-BLACKBIRD, the name of 
certain American birds. The great 
crow-blackbird, found in the southern 
states, Mexico, and the West Indies, is 
16 inches long, and of a glossy black 
plumage. The female is of a light-brown 
above and whitish beneath. The purple 
grackle, lesser or common crow-black- 
bird, is similar in color to the preceding, 
but smaller. They reach the middle 
states of America from the south in 
flocks in the latter part of March, and 
build in April in the tall pines or cedars 
On their first arrival they feed upon 
insects, but afterward commit great 
ravages upon the young corn.. In 
November they fly southward again. 

CROWN, a circular ornament for the 
head. As now used the name is limited 
to the head-dress worn by royal per¬ 
sonages as a badge of sovereignty, but 
it was formerly used to include, the 
wreaths or garlands worn by the ancients 
upon special occasions. Thus, among 
the Greeks and Romans, crowns made 
of grass, flowers, twigs of laurels, oak, 
olive, parsley, etc., and latterly of gold, 
were made use of as honors in atheletic 
contests, as rewards for military valor, 
and at feasts, funerals, etc. It is, how¬ 
ever, with the eastern diadem rather 
than with the classic corona that the 


crown as a symbol of royalty is con¬ 
nected; indeed, is was only introduced 
as such a symbol by Alexander the 
Great, who followed the Persian usage. 
Antony wore a crown in Egypt, and the 
Roman emperors also wore crowns of 
various forms, from the plain golden 
fillet to the radiated or rayed crown 
In modern states they were also of 
various forms until heralds devised a 
regular series to mark the grades of 
rank from the imperial crown to the 
baron’s coronet. The English crown 



, 1» Crown of England. 2, Russian Crown. 3, French 
Jrown. 4, Austrian Crown. 6, Imperial Crown (Charle¬ 
magne’s). 


has been gradually built up from the 
lain circlet with four trefoil heads worn 
y William the Conqueror. This form 
was elaborated and jeweled, and 
finally arched in with jeweled bands 
surmounted by the cross and scepter. 
As at present existing the crown of 
England is a gold circle, adorned with 
pearls and precious stones, having 
alternately four Maltese crosses and 
four fleurs-de-lis. From the top of the 
crosses rise imperial arches, closing 
under a mound and cross. The whole 
covers a crimson velvet cap with an 
ermine border. The crown of Charle¬ 
magne, which is preserved in the im¬ 
perial treasury of Vienna, is composed 
of eight plates of gold, four large and 
four small, connected by hinges. The 
large plates are studded with precious 
stones, the front one being surmounted 
with a cross; the smaller ones, placed 
alternately with these, are ornamented 
with enamels representing Solomon, 
David, Hezekiah, and Isaiah, and Christ 
seated between two flaming seraphim. 
The Austrian crown is a sort of cleft 
tiara, having in the middle a semi-circle 
of gold supporting a mound and cross; 
the tiara rests on a circle with pendants 
like those of a miter. The royal crown 
of France is a circle ornamented with 
eight fleurs-de-lis, from which rise as 
many quarter-circles closing under a 
double fleur-de-lis. The triple crown 
of the popes is more commonly called 
tiara. 

CROWN, a British silver coin value 
five shillings ($1.20), first coined by 
Henry VIII. None were coined from 
1851 to 1887. In 1847 and 1848 some 
pattern crowns were struck with a gold 
center, but the experiment was carried 
no further. 

CROWN'INSHIELD, Arthur Schuyler, 
an American naval officer, born in 1843 
and educated at the naval academy. 
He took part in the naval battles of the 
civil war, and during the Spanish war 
was a member of the Board of Naval 








CROWN LANDS 


CRUSADES 


Strategy which sat at Washington, 
D. C. He died in 1809. 

CROWN LANDS, the lands belonging 
to the British crown. These are now 
surrendered to the country at the be¬ 
ginning of every sovereign’s reign in 
return for an allowance (the civil list) 
fixed at a certain amount for the reign 
by parliament. They are placed under 
commissioners, and the revenue de¬ 
rived from them becomes part of the 
consolidated fund. 

CROWN SOLICITOR, in England, the 
solicitor to the treasury, who instructs 
counsel in all state prosecutions. In 
Ireland, an officer attached to each 
circuit, paid by a salary, whose duty it 
is to take charge of every case for the 
crown in criminal cases. 

CROY'DON, a mun., pari., and co., 
borough, England, in county Surrey, 10 
miles s. of London, of which it is prac¬ 
tically a suburb, near the sources of the 
Wandle, and near the Banstead Downs. 
Of special interest are the remains of 
the ancient palace, long a residence of 
the Archbishops of Canterbury. Pop. 
133,885. 

CROZIER. See Crosier. 

CRU'CIBLE, a vessel employed to 
hold substances which are to be sub¬ 
mitted to a high temperature without 
collecting the volatile products of the 
action. It is usually of a conical, 
circular, or triangular shape, closed at 
the bottom and open at the top, and is 
made of various materials, such as fire¬ 
clay, platinum, a mixture of fire-clay 
and plumbago, porcelain, etc. 

CRU'CIFIX, a cross bearing the figure 
of Christ. As & rule the figures on the 
most ancient crucifixes were not carved, 
but were engraved on gold, silver, or iron 
crosses. At a later period they were 
painted on wood, and it is only in the 
9th century in the pontificate of Leo 
III., that the figure of Christ appears 
carved upon the cross in bas-relief. 
Originally the body was represented 
clothed in a tunic reaching to the feet; 
afterward the clothing was removed 
with the exception of a cloth round the 
loins. Until the 11th century Christ 
is represented alive; since that period 
he has been represented as dead. In the 
earlier crucifixes, also, the number of 
nails by which Christ is fixed to the 
cross is four,one through each hand and 
each foot, while in the more modern 
ones one foot is laid above the other 
and a single nail driven through both. 
Many crucifixes bear also the super¬ 
scription in an abbreviated form, and 
accessory symbols and figures. 

CRUCIFIXION, a mode of inflicting 
capital punishment, by affixing crim¬ 
inals to a wooden cross, formerly 
widely practiced, but now chiefly con¬ 
fined to the Mohammedans. Different 
kinds of crosses were employed, espe¬ 
cially that consisting of two beams at 
right angles, and the St. Andrew’s 
cross. 

CRUDEN, Alexander, compiler of the 
Concordance to the Scriptures, was born 
at Aberdeen in 1701. He took the 
degree of M. A., at Marischal College, 
and in 1722 proceeded to London. His 
great work appeared in 1737, under the 
title of A Complete Concordance of the 


Holy Scriptures of the Old and New 
Testament. He died in Islington in 
1770. 

CRUELTY TO ANIMALS, in the 

modern sense the wanton maltreatment 
of beasts. Until recent times the senti¬ 
ment against cruelty to animals did not 
take definite form until 1826, when the 
first society of prevention was organized 
in England. The first apostle of pre¬ 
vention in the U. States was Henry 
Bergh, through whose efforts almost 
all states have been led to adopt laws 
severely punishing cruelty to animals. 

CRUELTY TO CHILDREN, the mod¬ 
ern notion that it is a crime to mistreat 
one’s own children. In 1875 the New 
York Society for the Prevention of 
Cruelty to Children was organized and 
has been widely copied in other cities. 
These societies do not concern them¬ 
selves with child labor, which is cruelty 
to children on a social scale and one of 
the greatest crimes of which society is 
guilty. 

CRUTKSHANK, George, the greatest 
of English pictorial satirists after 
Hogarth, born in London 1792, of 
Scottish extraction. The earliest of his 
drawings known is dated 1799, when 
he was only seven years of age, and 
when fifteen he was comparatively 
distinguished. In 1837 he commenced 
in Bentley’s Miscellany his famous 
series of etchings on steel illustrative of 
Dickens’ Oliver Twist, followed two 
years later by those for Ainsworth’s 
Jack Sheppard, and then by those for 
Windsor Castle and the Tower of Lon¬ 
don. Having connected himself with 
the temperance movement he produced 
the Bottle, a powerful and popular 
series of designs, but marking clearly 
the limits of his art. His temperance 
connection and his absurd claims to 
having suggested the idea of Dicken’s 
Oliver Twist, undermined his artistic 
reputation. Poorly paid for work by 
which others profited, he was latterly 
obliged to part with the vast collection 
of his works, and in 1866 $250.00 a year 
was settled on him from the Royal 
Academy’s Turner Annuities. He lat¬ 
terly turned his attention to oil-painting, 
his most noteworthy pictures being Tam 
o’ Shanter, Disturbing a Congregation, 
and The Worship of Bacchus. He died 
in 1878. 

CRUSADES, the wars carried on by 
the Christian nations of the West, from 
the end of the 11th till the latter half of 
the 13th century, for the conquest of 
Palestine. They were called Crusades, 
because the warriors wore the sign of 
the cross. The antagonism between the 
Christian and Mohammedan nations 
had been intensified bv the possession 
of the Holy Land by the Turks and by 
their treatment of pilgrims to Jerusa¬ 
lem; and the first strenuous appeal was 
assured of response alike from the pious, 
the adventurous, and the greedj r . The 
immediate cause of the first crusade 
was the preaching of Peter of Amiens, 
or Peter the Hermit, who in 1093 had 
joined other pilgrims on a journey to 
Jerusalem. A well-conducted regular 
army of 80,000 men was headed by 
Godfrey of Bouillon; Hugh of Verman- 
dois, brother to Philip, king of France; 
Baldwin, brother of Godfrey; Robert 


II. of Flanders; Robert II. of Nor¬ 
mandy, brother of William II., king of 
England; Raymond of Toulouse; and 
other heroes. After remaining nearly a 
year in the neighborhood of Antioch 
they commenced, in May, 1099, their 
march against Jerusalem, the siege of 
which they commenced in June. Their 
numbers were now reduced to little 
more than 20,000 men; but after a 
fierce struggle the town was taken by 
storm on July 15, and Godfrey of 
Bouillon was chosen king of Jerusalem, 
or, as he preferred to term himself, 
Protector of the Holy Sepulcher. At 
his death in 1100 he was succeeded by 
his brother Baldwin, who had in the 
early part of the crusade established 
himself in Edessa, and made himself 
ruler of an extensive territory stretching 
over the Armenian mountains and the 
plain of Mesopotamia. 

The second great and regularly-con¬ 
ducted crusade was occasioned by the 
loss of Edessa, which the Saracens 
conquered in Dec., 1144. Fearing still 
graver losses, Pope Eugenius III., 
seconded by Bernard of Clairvaux, 
exhorted the German emperor Conrad 

III. , and the King of France, Louis VII., 
to defend the cross. Both these 
monarchs obeyed, and in 1147 led large 
forces to the East, but returned without 
accomplishing anything in 1149. 

The third crusade was undertaken 
after the capture of Jerusalem by 
Saladin in 1187, the monarchs Frederick 

I. (Barbarossa) of Germany, Philip 
Augustus of France, and Richard I. 
(Cceur de Lion) of England, leading 
their armies in person. Richard de¬ 
feated Saladin and occupied Jaffa or 
Joppa; but having twice vainly set out 
with the design of besieging Jerusalem, 
he concluded (Sept. 2, 1192) a truce of 
three years and three months with 
Saladin, who agreed that pilgrims 
should be free to visit the Holy Sepul¬ 
cher, and that the whole sea-coast from 
Tyre to Jaffa (including the important 
fortress of Acre) should belong to the 
crusaders. 

The fourth crusade was set on foot 
by Pope Innocent III., W'ho commis¬ 
sioned Fulk of Neuilly to preach it in 
1198. Among its chief promoters was 
Godfrey of Villehardouin, seneschal of 
Champagne; Baldwin, count of Flan¬ 
ders and Hainaut; Dandolo, the aged 
doge of Venice; and the Marquis of 
Montferrat, who was chosen leader. 
The crusaders assembled at Venice in 
the spring of 1201, but were diverted 
from their original purpose first by the 
capture of the Dalmatian town of Zara, 
and then by the expedition which ended 
in the sack of Constantinople and the 
establishment of a Latin empire there 
(1204)’; 

The fifth crusade, undertaken by 
Andreas of Hungary in 1217, and shared 
in by John of Brienne, to whom the 
title of King of Jerusalem was given 
had little other result than the tem¬ 
porary occupation of the Nile delta. 

The sixth crusade, that of Frederick 

II. , emperor of Germany, u r as under¬ 
taken at the instance of Popes Honorius 

III. and Gregory IX. The seventh and 
eighth Crusades were led by St. Louis of 
France (Louis IX.) in person. 





CRUSTACEA 


CUBA 


Despite their want of success, the 
•crusades were of considerable indirect 
value in that by these joint enterprises 
the European nations became more 
connected with each other, the class of 
citizens increased in influence, partly 
because the nobility suffered by extrava¬ 
gant contributions to the Crusades, and 
partly because a more intimate com¬ 
mercial intercourse greatly augmented 
the wealth of the cities, and a number 
of arts and sciences, till then unknown 
in Europe, were introduced. 

CRUSTA'CEA, one of the primary 
branches into which is divided the great 
group of Articulate or Annulose animals. 
The body is divided into head, thorax, 
and abdomen, of which the two former 
are united into a single mass, cephalo- 
thorax, covered with a shield or cara¬ 
pace, and the abdomen usually presents 
the appearance of a tail. In some—the 
sand-hopper, wood-louse, etc.—the head 
is partially distinct from the thorax. 
The Crustacea breathe by branchke or 
gills, or by membraneous vesicles, or by 
the general surface; and the body is com¬ 
posed of a series of rings more or less 
distinct. They possess the faculty of 
reproducing lost parts in an eminent 
degree. 

CRWTH (kruth), a Welsh name for a 
kind of violin with six strings, formerly 
much used in Wales. Four of the 



strings were played on by a bow, and 
two were struck or twitched by the 
thumb. Its general length was 22 
inches, and its thickness H inch. 

CRYPT, originally a subterranean 
cell or cave, especially one constructed 
for sepulture. From the usage of these 
by the early Christians crypt came to 
signify a church underground or the 
lower story of a cathedral or church. 
It is usually set apart for monumental 
purposes, but is sometimes used as a 
chapel. The crypt is a common feature 
of cathedrals, being always at the east 
end, under the chancel or apse. The 
largest in England is that of Canterbury 
Cathedral; that of Glasgow Cathedral, 
formerly used as a separate church, is 
one of the most perfect pieces of archi¬ 
tecture in Britain. . . 

CRYPTOG'RAPHY, the art of writing 
in secret characters or cipher, or with 
sympathetic ink. The simplest method 
consists in choosing for every letter of 
the alphabet some sign, or another 
letter or group of letters. Thus the 
letter of Charles I. to the Earl of Gla¬ 
morgan with respect to the Catholics 
of Ireland was composed in an alphabet 
of 24 strokes variously placed about a 
line The names in the records of the 
Clan-na-Gael Society were, according 
to the Times newspaper, written in a 


cipher formed by taking in each case 
the letter previous to that intended; 
and the cipher devised by Lord Bacon 
consisted in an alphabet formed by 
different arrangements of the letters 
a and b in groups of five. All these 
methods, however, are easily deciphered 
by experts, as also is that employed by 
the Earl of Argyle in his plot against 
James II., in which the words of the 
letter were set down at concerted dis¬ 
tances, the intervals being filled up 
with misleading words. Even the more 
complex, however, present, as a rule, 
only temporary difficulty to an expert. 
The fact that the most frequently 
recurring letter in the English language 
is the letter e, that the most common 
double vowels are ea and ou, that r, s, 
and t are the most frequent terminal 
letters, etc., are of no small assistance in 
forming a key to any given cryptogram. 

CRYSTAL, in chemistry and miner¬ 
alogy, any body which, by the mutual 
attraction of its particles, has assumed 
the form of some one of the regular 



geometric solids, being bounded by a 
certain number of plane-surfaces. The 
chemist procures crystals either by 
fusing the bodies by heat and then 
allowing them gradually to cool, or by 
dissolving them in a fluid and then ab¬ 
stracting the fluid by slow evaporation. 
A crystal consists of three parts. 1st, 
Plane surfaces, called faces, which are 
said to be similar when they are equal 
to one another and similarly situated; 
dissimilar, when they are unequal or 
have a different position. 2d, Edges, 
formed by the meeting of two faces. 
They are said to be similar when formed 
by similar faces; dissimilar, by dis¬ 
similar faces. Equal edges are formed 
when the faces are inclined at the same 
angle to one another; unequal, when 
they are inclined at different angles. 
3d, Solid angles, formed by the meeting 
of three or more faces; and in this case 
also there are similar and dissimilar, 
equal and unequal solid angles, accord¬ 
ing as they are formed by similar or dis¬ 
similar faces, and equal or unequal 
angled edges. The angles of crystals are 
measured by an instrument called the 

S °CR YST AL'LOM AN C Y, a mode of 
divining by means of a transparent 
body, as a precious stone, crystal globe, 
etc The operator first muttered over 
it certain formulas of prayer, and then 
gave the crystal (a beryl was preferred) 
into the hands of a young man or virgin, 
who received an answer from the spirits 
within the crystal. 

CUBA, the largest and most westerly 
of the West India Islands, lying at the 
entrance to the Gulf of Mexico, about 
150 miles from Florida and \ucatan. 
Its length is 750 miles; breadth, 20 to 
over 120; area, 43,220 sq. miles Since 
the Spanish-American war of l»y» 
Cuba has been independent, and is now 


under its own republican government 
The navigation of the coast is unsafe, on 
account of rocks and shoals, but there 
are many excellent and easily-accessible 
ports and anchoring places. The chief 
commerical ports and harbors are, on the 
north, Havana (the capital), Matanzas, 
Cardenas, Sagua, Remedios; on the 
south, Santiago, Trinidad, Cienfuegos, 
and Guantanamo. The surface ex¬ 
hibits various chains or groups of hills 
extending from west to east, and in the 
extreme southeast is a mountain range 
rising to the height of over 8000 feet. 
At the foot of the hills the country opens 
into extensive savannahs. A consider¬ 
able number of small streams water the 
island on both sides. Cuba is rich in 
minerals; those worked are chiefly 
copper and iron. Bitumen is plentiful, 
both in a liquid form and in a soft 
resinous state. There are many mineral 
springs, and on the north coast are ex¬ 
tensive lagoons, which in dry years 
produce immense quantities of marine 
salt. The climate is hot and dry during 
greater part of the year, but is, on the 
whole, more temperate than that of 
some other islands in the same latitude. 
Rain often descends in torrents from 
July to September, but no snow is 
known to fall on the highest mountains, 
though frost occurs occasionally. The 
soil is fertile and the vegetation is ex¬ 
ceedingly luxuriant. Forests of mahog¬ 
any, ebony, cedar, fustic, and other 
useful woods, abound; and the fields 
are covered with flowers and odoriferous 
plants. The principal cereal cultivated 
is the indigenous maize, or Indian corn. 
Rice is also produced in many districts; 
but the principal crops are sugar and 
tobacco, with a little cotton, cocoa, 
coffee, indigo, etc. The best tobacco is 
grown in the district of Vuelta Abajo, 
near Havana. A considerable extent of 
country is appropriated also to cattle- 
breeding farms, and to farms on which 
fruit and vegetables are raised. The 
principal fruits are the pine-apple, 
oranges, shaddocks, plantains, bananas, 
melons, lemons, and sweet limes; figs 
and strawberries are also to be had. 
The most valuable domestic animals are 
the ox, horse, and pig, which form a 
large proportion of the wealth of the 
island; the sheep, goat, and mule are 
inferior in quality and numbers. Among 
the few indigeneous mammals are two 
species of aguti and an opossum. The 
sylvan birds are numerous and in great 
variety; but birds of prey are few, and 
snakes and reptiles are not very numer¬ 
ous. The shores abound with turtle, 
and in the deep gulfs and bays the 
alligator is found. The manati is met 
with in the deep pools of fresh water, 
and the iguana is not uncommon. The 
manufactures are confined to the making 
of sugar, rum, molasses, and cigars, 
and these, with tobacco, form the chief 
exports. Next in commercial impor¬ 
tance rank mahogany and other valuable 
timber and fruit. The chief imports are 
grain and flour, salted provisions, 
brandy, wines, hardware, and cotton, 
linen, and woolen manufactures. The 
great talk of the trade is with the U. 
States. There is also a considerable 
trade between Cuba and Great Britain. 
The legal system of money, weights, and. 





























CUBATURE OF A SOLID 


CUMBERLAND 


measures of Cuba are the same as those 
of Spain. The internal traffic of the 
island has been greatly facilitated by 
road improvements and by railways, 
the length of which in operation now 
amounts to about 1000 miles. Steam- 
vessels ply between Havana and other 
parts of tne coast. Under Spain Cuba 
was governed by a captain-general. 
Cuba was first discovered on October 28 , 
1492, by Columbus, who revisited it in 
1494, and again in 1502. In 1511 the 
Spaniards formed the first settlement on 
the island, and the native inhabitants 
were soon extirpated. Negro slaves 
were introduced in 1524. Attempts to 
put an end to slavery were made in 1820 
and 1845 without result; but in 1868 a 
law, designed gradually to put an end 
to slavery, was passed. In that year 
commenced an insurrectionary struggle 
against the mother country, which 
lasted for ten years. The final abolition 
of slavery dates only from 1886. In 
1895 began another insurrection, which 
continued till the war with the U. States. 
The pop. is 1,772,797, of' whom over 
500,000 are colored. During 1906 an 
insurrection took place against the 
Palma government which necessitated, 
on the appeal of the Cubans, the placing 
of an American military governor with 
forces on the island pending the settle¬ 
ment of the troubles. Early in 1907 
there were threats of insurrection against 
the United States. 

CUBATURE OF A SOLID, the finding 
of the solid or cubic contents of it. 

CUBE, in geometry, a regular solid 
body with six equal square sides. The 
6olid content of any cube is found by 
multiplying the superficial area of one 
of the sides by the height; or, what 
comes to the same thing, by multiplying 
the number that expresses the length of 
one of the edges by itself, and the prod¬ 
uct thus found by that number again. 
Cubes are to one another in the triplicate 
ratio of their diagonals.—Cube, or cubic 
number, in arithmetic, that which is 
produced by the multiplication of a 
square number by its root; thus 64 
is a cube number, and arises by mul¬ 
tiplying 16, the square of 4, by the root 4. 

CUBE ROOT, the number or quantity 
which, multiplied into itself and then 
into the product, produces the cube; 
or which, twice multiplied into itself, 
produces the number of which it is the 
root: as 2 is the cube root of 8, because 
twice 2 are 4, and twice 4 are 8. 

CUBIC FOOT of any substance, so 
much of it as is contained in a cube 
whose side is 1 foot. 

CUBIT, in the mensuration of the 
ancients, a long measure, equal to the 
length of a man’s arm from the elbow 
to the tip of the fingers, or, say equal 
to 18 inches. 

CUCK'OO, a scansorial or climbing 
bird. The note from which it derives 
its name is a love-call used only in the 
mating season. The greater number of 
species belonging to the genus are con¬ 
fined to hot countries, more especially 
India and Africa, though some are 
summer visitants of colder climates. 
In America no true cuckoos are found, 
the genus to which the so-called Ameri¬ 
can cukcoo belongs, differing very 
essentially from them in its habits. 


CU'CUMBER, the fruit of the plant 
belonging to the Cucurbitacese or gourd 
order, and supposed to have been 
originally imported into Europe from 
the Levant. Though grown in England 
in the 14th century, it did not become 
generally used until after the reign of 
Henry VIII. It is an annual with 
rough trailing stems, large angular 
leaves, and yellow male and female 
flowers set in the axils of the leaf-stocks. 
Other species of the cucumber genus are 
the common melon, and the water 
melon. 

CUCUMBER-TREE, a fine American 
forest tree, so named from the appear¬ 
ance of its fruit. 



The cuckoo. 

CUD'DAPAH, or KADAPA, a district 

and town, Hindustan, presidency Ma¬ 
dras. The district area is 8745 sq.miles. 
The forests contain much valuable tim¬ 
ber, and the minerals include iron ore, 
lead, copper, diamonds, etc. Pop. 
1,272,072. — The town lies on a small 
river of same name, an affluent of the 
Pennar, 140 miles n.w. Madras. It ex¬ 
ports indigo and cotton. Pop. 17,387. 

CUIRASS (kwi-ras'), an article of de¬ 
fensive armor, protecting the body both 
before and behind, and composed of 


of Charles II., and in France a little 
later. It was reintroduced by Napo¬ 
leon I., and the achievements of his 
cuirassiers led to its adoption for regi¬ 
ments of heavy cavalry in most Eu¬ 
ropean armies. 

CULLO'DEN MOOR, a heath in Scot¬ 
land, 4 miles e. of Inverness, celebrated 
for the victory obtained April 27, 1746, 
by the Duke of Cumberland over Prince 
Charles Edward Stuart (the Pretender) 
and his adherents. The battle was the 
last fought on British soil, and the 
termination of the attempts of the 
Stuart family to recover the throne of 
England. 

CULLOM, Shelby Moore, an Ameri¬ 
can senator, born in KentuckyJn 1829, 
removed to Illinois in 1855 as a lawyer. 
He served in the state legislature and 
was twice speaker of the house (1861 
and 1873), was a member of congress for 
three terms, governor of Illinois from 
1876 to 1883. and since then has been 
United States senator. He is one of 
the leaders of the republican party in 
Illinois. 

CULMINATION, in astronomy, the 
assing of a star through the meridian, 
ecause it has at that moment reached 
the highest point of its apparent path 
in the sky. 

CUM'BERLAND, the extreme north¬ 
western county of England. Length, 
north to south, 75 miles; extreme 
breadth, 45 miles, area, 970,161 acres, 
rather more than a half of which is 
under cultivation. There is great 
variety of surface in different parts. 
The two largest rivers are the Eden 
and the Derwent. The county em¬ 
braces part of the “lake country” of 
England. The largest lakes are Der¬ 
went water, Bassenth waite, Lowes water, 
Crummock, Buttermere, Ennerdale, 
Wastwater, Thirlmere, and part of 
Ullswater. Cumberland is rich in min¬ 
erals, including lead, gypsum, zinc, and 
especially coal and rich hematite iron- 
ore. In the western division of the 
county there are a great many blast¬ 
furnaces, and works for the manufac¬ 
ture of steel and finished iron. The 






. —^- -wy »•*—• 


Culloden moor. 


leather, metal, or other materials vari¬ 
ously worked. It was in common use 
throughout Europe in the 14th century. 
In England it fell into disuse in the time 


principal crops raised are oats, barlej 
wheat, and turnips, but the bulk of th 
inclosed lands is sown in clover am 
grass. Population 270,000 





























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